Tag Archives: Donald Trump

International news, national news, political news

A full-blown scandal appears to be brewing

As I watch the chaos unfold within the Donald J. Trump White House I am wondering: Are we witnessing the beginning of a serious political crisis … already?

This is breathtaking in scope.

National security adviser Michael Flynn is pushed out of office over concerns that he might have negotiated with a foreign government before the Trump administration took office.

But that’s only the beginning. Now we’re getting questions from Republicans — supposed political allies of the president — about whether Flynn was acting alone or whether he was doing Donald Trump’s bidding.

Then we have this mess over when Flynn came clean to the vice president and whether the president was aware of Flynn’s conduct as it was occurring.

Congressional Democrats are demanding an independent investigation. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer insists that the Justice Department is incapable of doing a thorough probe of where this matter might end up.

Democrats aren’t alone, though. A leading Senate Republican — Lindsey Graham — has asked out loud whether Flynn was acting on orders from the then-president elect.

Many Americans, such as yours truly, are utterly flabbergasted at what appears to be transpiring. Trump has been president for less than a single month and there appears to be some serious concern that the government is unraveling.

What gives here? Trump isn’t talking. White House senior staffers aren’t talking. The vice president appears to be seriously angry over the deception that Flynn pulled on him.

Oh, man. This presidency appears to be careening toward full-blown crisis mode. All because a national security adviser cozied up to Russian government officials before federal law would give him permission to do so.

Moreover, we have the amazing timing of the president’s tweets relating to Russia’s decision not to retaliate against U.S. sanctions relating to Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

We need some answers. Now!

national news, political news

Chaos need not be the new White House norm

As I watch Donald J. Trump’s chaotic first few weeks as president of the United States, I have to keep reminding myself: Does it really need to be this way?

Of course it doesn’t. We’re watching Trump stumble-bum his way through controversy after controversy and his ridiculous rants and riffs with foreign leaders.

Now we’re watching an potentially unfolding major-league scandal involving the president’s former national security adviser, who quit this week in the wake of reports that he had inappropriate — and possibly illegal — discussions with Russian government officials prior to Trump taking office.

Two presidents in my lifetime have taken office amid terrible tragedy and tumult. In both cases, these men grabbed the reins of power and assumed the role of president as if they’d been there all along.

Example one: Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office on a jetliner sitting on a tarmac at Love Field in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. His predecessor’s body was in a casket in the back of the plane and the nation was in utter shock over what had happened earlier that day when a gunman murdered President John F. Kennedy.

LBJ flew back to Washington and asked the nation to pray for him. We did. He convened his team and got to work immediately.

The nation buried JFK a few days later, President Johnson went to Congress and declared “all that I have I would surrender” to avoid standing before the nation in that moment.

The nation marched forward.

Example two: Gerald Rudolph Ford became president on Aug. 9, 1974 as his predecessor resigned in disgrace. The House of Representatives stood poised to impeach Richard Nixon for high crimes and misdemeanors relating to the Watergate scandal. It took a stalwart Republican U.S. senator, Barry Goldwater, to tell the president his time was up. He had no support in the Senate, where he would stand trial after the House impeached him.

President Nixon quit. President Ford took the oath and then told us, “Our long national nightmare is over.” He told us he was “acutely aware” he hadn’t been elected vice president or president. But he was the right man for the job.

He, too, called his team together and instructed them to get back to work.

President Ford would lose his election battle in 1976 to Jimmy Carter. It was Carter who, upon taking the oath of office in January 1977, would turn to his predecessor and begin his inaugural speech by thanking the former president for “all he had done to heal our country.”

Presidents Johnson and Ford had something in common: they both had extensive government experience prior to assuming their high office. They knew how the government worked. LBJ had served as Senate majority leader before becoming vice president in 1961 and had many friends on both sides of the partisan divide. Ford had served as minority leader in the House of Representatives before Nixon tapped him to be vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew quit after pleading no contest to a corruption charge. Ford also had many friends on both sides of the aisle.

These men assumed the presidency under far more trying circumstances than Trump did, yet they made the transition with relative ease … compared to the madness we’re witnessing these days with the 45th president.

We are witnessing in real time, I submit, the consequences of electing someone who brought zero public service experience to the most difficult and complicated job on Planet Earth.

military news, national news, political news

Resigned, fired; tomato, tom-ah-to

The “resignation” of national security adviser Michael Flynn has taken a curious turn.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said today that Donald J. Trump’s trust in Flynn had been waning. Therefore, when questions arose about Flynn’s supposed conversations with Russian government officials, the decline in the president’s trust in Flynn accelerated.

Spicer said the president asked for and received Flynn’s resignation.

Asked for and received …

That tells me Flynn essentially was canned, booted, tossed, fired from his job.

Why be coy about this? Does the president not want to force Flynn to put “fired from national security adviser post” on his resume, as if a future employer won’t know the circumstances of his departure from a job he held for less than a month?

It’s a rhetorical game they play at this level of government.

Whatever the case, this matter isn’t over. We still have some questions to resolve.

Did Flynn tell the president about the conversations with the Russians as he was having them? Did the president dispatch Flynn to talk to the Russians about those pesky sanctions the Obama administration had imposed? Did the ex-adviser lie to the vice president? Did the VP know about the lie and did he inform the president — at the time?

OK, so the president sought Flynn’s resignation. I am going to presume there was an “or else” attached to the request.

national news, political news

Trump needs to get out more

2 Comments

I am going to make a request of the president of the United States.

Mr. President, you need to take wing in that big jet of ours and visit the nation you are trying to govern. And no, sir, I don’t mean just those states you won. You need to go to those places you lost bigly to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.

I’ve griped in the past about previous presidents’ failure to reach out to those parts of the country that backed the other guy.

The only time Barack Obama ever came to Texas, for example, was to attend those private, high-end fundraisers. He didn’t visit the Panhandle, which voted twice for his Republican opponents by, oh, significant margins. We have concerns, too, that the president should have addressed. Farm policy is a big deal around here, you know?

So it is with Trump. He spent a good bit of the transition period visiting those deep-red states he won in 2016. It was that so-called “thank you tour” in which he seemingly continued harping on the campaign themes that helped him win the election in the first place. He kept chiding Clinton for failing to visit states such as Wisconsin in the final weeks of the campaign. He talked about his “massive landslide” victory, which of course it wasn’t.

Trump promised to be every American’s president. He vowed to unify the country. He has pledged to work for the common man and woman.

Well, he gets to fly on that big Boeing 747 that we pay for and maintain. It’s not his plane, but it’s ours. I am more than willing to foot the bill for it as long as the president puts it to good use.

The way I see it, flying that bird to places like San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Albuquerque and Denver is a pretty good use of the plane. He even ought to visit some liberal enclaves in those red states, too. You’ve heard of Austin, right, Mr. President?

Sure, he’ll get some protestors. That goes with the territory.

He jets back and forth between Washington and his posh estate in South Florida. I believe he’s been there three weekends in a row. Hey, he knows they love him there.

We’ve got a great big country out here full of citizens who cast ballots for the other candidate. Pay them a visit, too, Mr. President. Tell them how you plan to “make America great again.”

They’re all ears. As am I.

national news, political news

Honeymoon? What honeymoon?

Talk about rocky rollouts.

Presidents of the United States take command in what we call a “peaceful transition” of power. It’s supposed to be seamless. It’s intended to miss nary a beat. One guy steps off the inaugural podium as the former president and the new guy takes over as if he’s been there all along.

Then we have the transition from Barack H. Obama to Donald J. Trump.

What a mess!

As near as I can tell, the former president kept his end of the bargain, seeking to provide all the necessary support, advice and counsel to the new president.

What’s happened? Oh … let’s see.

* The new president issued an executive order that calls for a temporary ban on refugees coming here from seven mostly Muslim countries; then a federal judge strikes it down and his decision is upheld by a federal appeals court. Up next? The U.S. Supreme Court, more than likely.

* Now we have the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, quitting over allegations that he engaged in improper negotiations with Russians regarding sanctions that the Obama administration had leveled against them. The problem is threefold: Flynn might have violated federal law by talking out of turn to the Russians before Trump took office; he apparently lied to the vice president about what he said; and Trump needs to reveal whether he knew about the talks as they were occurring — or even whether he sanctioned them!

* A few Trump Cabinet appointees are being confirmed by narrow margins in the Senate. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was confirmed, in fact, by a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Pence.

* There are reports of civil servants sweating bullets about their futures within the Trump administration.

* Oh, and the president apparently engaged in a free-wheeling discussion the other day — in the open, in front of unauthorized personnel — with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about what the United States might do in response to a North Korean missile launch.

* Trump keeps repeating the phony mantra about alleged voter fraud by illegal immigrants casting ballots for Hillary Clinton. Proof? He hasn’t produced anything!

It ain’t supposed to start like this, man.

The military uses a popular acronym to describe certain circumstances: FUBAR; the cleaned-up version is translated to mean “fouled up beyond all recognition.”

There you have it.

International news

Now, Mr. President, what did you know … and when?

This just in: Michael Flynn has quit as national security adviser for Donald J. Trump.

Flynn resigned over questions relating to alleged conversations he had with Russian government officials prior to Trump becoming president of the United States. Reports have swirled that Flynn had talked about possible loosening of sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed to punish the Russians for their alleged role in interfering with the U.S. presidential election.

The Logan Act, anyone? It bars unauthorized personnel from negotiating with a foreign government. Flynn well might have broken federal law.

Now comes the question, to borrow an inquiry made famous in another serious matter: What did the president know and when did he know it?

Did the president know about Flynn’s conversations as they were occurring? Did he sanction them? Did the president hush it up?

The former acting U.S. attorney general, Sally Yates, wrote a report that suggested Flynn might have been “compromised” by his meetings with Russian officials. Yates then was fired over her refusal to enforce Trump’s ban on refugees from certain countries. Did the president know about these meetings in real time?

Trump now must find a new national security adviser. He has a long list of qualified, competent, knowledgeable individuals who can give him proper counsel regarding national security concerns.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, is known to be a brilliant military tactician and strategist. He also possesses intense feelings about Islam and has called that great religion a “cancer” on the world. I’ve heard two previous presidents — Barack Obama and George W. Bush — say we aren’t “at war with Islam.”

Gen. Flynn, though, got into trouble because of his relationships with Russian government higher-ups. There’s likely to be more to come in this regard.

I’m among those who want to know about what the big man in the Oval Office knew about these discussions — and when he knew it.

International news

When did Flynn talk … and to whom?

Tick, tick, tick.

That might either be the sound of time running out on Donald J. Trump’s national security adviser — or the sound of a bomb about to explode in Gen. Michael Flynn’s face.

Flynn might be working for Trump on borrowed time, owing to his alleged conversation with Russian foreign ministry officials prior to the president taking office.

What’s worse is that Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general who advises the president on national security matters, allegedly lied to Vice President Mike Pence about what he might have told Russian officials.

The crux of this controversy is that Flynn’s alleged conversation dealt with sanctions that President Barack Obama had leveled against Russia concerning reports that Russians hacked into our electoral process and sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Did he speak out of turn to Russian officials?

The question is whether Flynn negotiated with Russians about those sanctions before President Obama turned the levers of power over to Donald Trump. If that’s the case, then we could be talking about a violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized individuals from negotiating with foreign governments.

Add to that the idea that Flynn might have lied to the vice president, well, then you have a serious breach of protocol … not to mention a violation of federal law.

Reports are now circulating that Trump is looking for a suitable replacement. I hope they find one and I hope the replacement is more of a mainstream individual who won’t label Islam to be a “cancer” that must be eradicated.

I already have declared my desire to see Flynn kicked out of Trump’s national security advisory post. If it can be determined that he had that pre-Trump administration conversation regarding U.S. sanctions against Russia, then he has broken the law.

If that’s the case, a resignation might not be enough. There well might be grounds to prosecute this fellow for criminal misconduct.

International news

Now it’s POTUS who’s flinging around information

I’m confused … apparently.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was pilloried and pounded because of her “careless” use of e-mails while served as secretary of state. Republicans wanted to “lock her up!” because she used a personal e-mail server to conduct official State Department business.

Leading the “lock her up!” chorus was none other than the guy who’d become president of the United States, Donald John Trump.

Now there’s this: Trump takes Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his glitzy Florida estate and then, allegedly, starts discussing national security matters regarding North Korea in front of unclassified estate staff. Trump reportedly has left sensitive material laying around where just about anyone can get their hands on it.

Where is the outrage over this sloppy handling of material that should be seen only by those with the highest level of security clearances.

Trump and Abe also reportedly were talking openly about how the United States and Japan should respond to North Korea’s launch of a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan.

Didn’t the president get some advice during his presidential security briefings about the dangers of blabbing too loosely about this kind of thing? Oh, wait! He said he didn’t need to be briefed regularly by his national security team. Maybe the spooks who advise the president on these matters never got around to telling him about that stuff.

I’m now waiting to hear from previously outraged Republicans about whether the president of the United States of America is doing something far worse than the things they accused his 2016 campaign opponent of doing.

State news

Happy birthday, Father of Our Country

LAREDO, Texas — They love the Father of Our Country way down yonder in this bustling South Texas community.

I consider it an interesting thing to witness.

Why is that? Laredo sits at Ground Zero of the U.S. immigration debate. The president of the United States wants to build a wall separating the United States from Mexico. It will have a direct impact on this city of 236,000 (and counting) residents.

We drove here to get away from the cold weather that continues to plague the Texas Panhandle. We found it — and then some! — in the Rio Grande Valley. They were setting record high temperatures during our stay at Lake Casa Blanca International State Park.

Laredo this past weekend celebrated its 120th annual George Washington’s Birthday Celebration. The city publishes a glossy magazine commemorating the event, which it describes as “one of the biggest celebrations that contributes to Laredo’s history and a must see in South Texas!”

It began in 1898 when the Improved Order of the Red Men sought to bring together various ethnic groups in Laredo. In doing so, they discovered that George Washington himself was a member of the order.

Princess Pocahontas also became part of the celebration to honor her role in saving the mayor, who had been held captive by Indians who had raided city hall.

It’s all a huge deal in Laredo, where one — such as yours truly — might not expect to see such a huge tribute to our nation’s first president and the commander of the colonial forces that fought the British during the American Revolution.

The event began as a two-day celebration. Now it goes on for several days and it fuses all aspects of a diverse and cosmopolitan community, bringing them all together as one.

Is there a lesson to be learned from this?

I believe so.

If only all American communities could celebrate our founding president’s birthday in such a manner.

political news

Hillary won’t run for anything ever again

Matt Latimer is sniffing something weird.

I don’t know the fellow. He’s written an essay for Politico that posits a preposterous notion: Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to run for president of the United States in 2020.

Let’s me be among the many who will say this: No way, no how is Hillary going to run for anything ever again, let alone for president.

Hillary took her best shot and blew it. She was the odd-on favorite to be elected president in 2016. You remember all that, don’t you? A lot of folks — yours truly included — just knew it would be a lead-pipe cinch that she’d win. Not only that, I actually wondered out loud on this blog whether she’d win in historic fashion; I actually suggested we might be looking at a 50-state shutout.

Silly me.

Hillary had her chance. She is now officially damaged irreparably.

The Democratic Party will need to look for someone new. It should start with anyone not named Clinton. That would eliminate Hillary right off the top.

Latimer harbors this goofy notion that Hillary cannot live with the memory of squandering her best chance at making history. She’ll want to erase that memory by being nominated once more by her party. Too old? Latimer said Clinton is the same age — give or take — as the guy who beat; Trump is certain to seek re-election in 2020 … assuming he’s still in office by the end of his first term.

He might face some serious political trouble, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

My intent here is to dispel any notion that Hillary Clinton is going to run once more.

No way, man. None. It won’t happen.

Hey, it just occurs to me that I swore off political predictions. I said Hillary Clinton wouldn’t run for the Senate in 2000 after her time as first lady had expired. I was wrong then.

Oh well. I’m going to stand by this one.