Tag Archives: Donald Trump

military news, national news, political news

Trump is about to get an earful from U.S. spooks

My fondest wish at this very moment is to be a fly on the wall at the Trump Tower office where the president-elect of the United States is going to hear from the intelligence he has disparaged about what they know about Russian efforts to hack into our electoral process.

Donald Trump is playing host Friday to the director of national intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. They’re going to tell them what they know about Russian efforts to influence the presidential election we just endured.

Will the president-elect disparage these intelligence professionals to their faces? Will he tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about? Will he stand by the assertions of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who’s been hiding in a foreign embassy to avoid prosecution on criminal charges?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/six-big-take-aways-from-the-extraordinary-congressional-hearing-on-russian-hacking/ar-BBxWytL?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

DNI Jim Clapper said there’s a line between honest skepticism and “disparagement.” Indeed, Trump has disparaged the intelligence community’s ability to do its job, which is to provide national security information that presidents need to protect Americans from foreign adversaries.

Clapper was one of the intelligence honchos who spoke today to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee about the Russian hacking story. It was an amazing hearing. It produced pointed questions about the doubts that Trump has cast on the intelligence community. It also produced amazing answers from the intelligence pros about whether they would believe Julian Assange’s assertions dismissing Russian involvement in these hacking efforts.

The hearing today was a preliminary event, a setup for the main event set for Friday at Trump Tower.

I need serious help as I seek to turn into that fly on the wall. Oh, to listen to what the spooks tell Trump the evidence they have about Russian hackers.

national news

Size may matter at the next inaugural

Size became something of a back-story issue during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Donald J. Trump boasted continually about the size of the crowds at his rallies. He compared them to those of his Republican Party primary rivals and then to those of Democratic Party nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And, oh yeah, size of an entirely different kind became a talking point during one of those endless GOP presidential debate with Trump and his horde of challengers. I won’t go any further with that one.

But, take a peek at the picture attached to this blog post.

It was taken on Jan. 20, 2009, when Barack H. Obama delivered his first inaugural speech in front of the U.S. Capitol Building. The size of that crowd is now generally accepted as the largest assemblage ever for a presidential inaugural. The previous record crowd was thought to be at President Lyndon Johnson’s inaugural on Jan. 20, 1965.

LBJ had just been elected in his own right in a historic landslide and he — like Obama — took office amid a national mood of hope for a better day. Lord knows the country had gone through the tragic nightmare of a presidential assassination in November 1963.

My thought, then, is this: Will Donald Trump be able to boast about the size of the crowd that gathers before him in 14 days as he delivers his inaugural speech?

That ol’ trick knee of mine is telling me the Trump inaugural crowd is going to be, um, substantially smaller than the one pictured with his post.

And it well could speak volumes about the hope — or the lack of hope — much of the country will feel when the new president takes the oath of office.

But, hey. It’s only a crowd and in this context — in the world of Trump — size really doesn’t matter.

Or does it?

legal news, national news, political news

SCOTUS fight drips with irony

I cannot resist commenting on the irony that envelops the upcoming fight over filling the ninth seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Donald J. Trump is going to nominate someone to fill the seat vacated by the death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia. U.S. Senate Democrats are vowing to fight whoever the new president nominates.

For the record, I’ll stipulate once again that I believe strongly in presidential prerogative on these appointments. I believe the president deserves to select whoever he wants to sit on the highest court; I also believe in the Senate’s “advise and consent” role in deciding whether to approve these nominations.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/senate-supreme-court-fight-mitch-mcconnell-chuck-schumer-233194

But here’s where the irony covers this discussion.

Senate Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s effort to nominate a centrist jurist, Merrick Garland, to the seat after Scalia died. They denied Garland a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They said within hours of Scalia’s death that Obama must not be allowed to fill the seat; that task, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, belonged to the new president.

Senate Republicans denied Barack Obama the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility. They engaged in a shameless — and shameful — game of politics.

Their response now? Why, they just cannot believe that Democrats might vote en masse against anyone Trump nominates. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vows that Democrats are going to dig in against anyone Trump picks for the court.

Revenge, anyone?

Senate Democrats likely cannot do what Republicans did when they denied Merrick Garland even a hearing to determine whether he should take a seat on the Supreme Court.

Indeed, the court needs a ninth vote to avoid deadlocked decisions. For that matter, the court should have welcomed the ninth justice long ago when President Obama nominated Merrick Garland.

Ahh, the irony is rich. Isn’t it?

International news

Trump continues to diss U.S. intelligence agencies

My head is spinning.

Republicans at one time used to condemn Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, for revealing U.S. national secrets to the rest of the world.

Now some of them — including the president-elect of the United States — believe him more than they believe U.S. intelligence officials who contend that Russian spooks hacked into the American electoral system.

What in the world has happened here?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-cites-assange-claim-about-russia-hacking/ar-BBxT4NI?li=BBnb7Kz

“Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ – why was DNC so careless? Also said Russians did not give him the info!” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

As USA Today reports: “Podesta is the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman whose emails were released by WikiLeaks during the campaign, part of an effort that U.S. intelligence officials attributed to the Russians, perhaps in order to help Trump win the election.”

Trump continues to disparage the intelligence agencies who will be charged with providing him information about our foreign adversaries. Will the president continue to disparage them even as they seek to brief him potential crises?

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss wondered today on MSNBC what might have happened in 1962 had the CIA presented to President Kennedy pictures of “something being built” in Cuba that turned out to be ballistic missile launchers. What if the president had disregarded them? Beschloss asked.

Trump now has sided with someone who has been scorned by politicians within his political party, someone who’s been defending the Russians’ denial of doing anything wrong.

Julian Assange is no friend of the American intelligence network.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said that “I have a lot more faith in our intelligence officers” than in “people like Julian Assange.”

For the ever-loving life of me I cannot figure out what’s happening here. The president-elect of the United States of America is taking the word of a reputed national security threat over the word of those assigned to protecting our national interests?

I need to take something for my spinning head.

national news, political news

Clintons to attend Trump inaugural … who’da thunk it?

Bygones won’t necessarily be bygones come Jan. 20 for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

But they’re going to attend the inauguration of the fellow who pulled off arguably the most stunning presidential election upset of the past century … and it involved one of the Clintons.

The Clintons are going to attend Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as president — even though Hillary Clinton fell victim to that shocking upset at Trump’s hands.

Words nearly escape me as I seek to describe the nature of the Trump-Clinton campaign for the presidency. “Rough,” “brutal,” “angry” seem far too timid of descriptive terms.

I’ll leave it to others to attach the appropriate adjective.

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/312542-clintons-to-attend-trumps-inauguration

I am glad, though, to know that the Clintons will attend this event and pay their respects to the office that Bill Clinton once occupied and that Hillary Clinton thought she would assume. Their individual and collective respect for the 45th president, though, likely remains a topic of some speculation.

The only living former president who won’t attend will be George H.W. Bush; he cites health concerns that will keep him away. Former Presidents Carter and George W. Bush will attend, along with Bill Clinton.

A lot of eyes, of course, will be focused on Hillary Clinton. In a normal election year, the spotlight would be on her. As we all learned — many of us to our dismay — this was far from a normal presidential campaign.

Suffice to say that Hillary Clinton’s decision to join her husband at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration speaks loudly and clearly to her own character and grace.

national news

Welcome to a rocky start, Congress

That didn’t take long.

Congressional Republicans decided to gut an ethics watchdog group, prompting the president-elect to send out a tweet that said they should focus on other matters first; then the House GOP caucus decided to scrap the watchdog-gutting, apparently cowed by Donald Trump’s Twitter tirade.

I’m glad the House GOP thought better of the cockamamie idea to place ethics investigations solely within the House Ethics Committee, which is run by Republicans.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/312496-house-gop-scraps-plan-to-gut-ethics-watchdog-after-emergency-meeting

What’s next? The bipartisan independent group will continue to refer complaints to Congress if they deem them legitimate. They’ll be able to accept anonymous complaints.

Does this mean Donald Trump has found some ethical “religion”? Probably not. He’s got a slew of problems himself to resolve.

It does mean, though, that he seems to have put the fear of social media into the minds of his fellow Republicans.

Still, it’s a clumsy start to the next congressional session.

national news

Wow! Trump lashes out at GOP ethics-gutting move

2 Comments

It’s official.

Hell has officially frozen over. Earth is about to spin off its axis. The sun will rise in the west tomorrow morning.

Donald J. Trump has broken ranks with congressional Republicans who, in a surprise move, decided to weaken significantly its ethical oversight function.

The president-elect tweeted his criticism of the GOP leadership’s effort get rid of a bipartisan watchdog group and hand oversight to the House Ethics Committee.

Trump tweeted: “may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! ”

The “DTS” hashtag stands for “drain the swamp,” which Trump had pledged to do.

OK, the president-elect’s desire to repeal Obamacare and slash taxes for wealthy Americans is up for discussion, but I’m glad to see him taking the House Republican leadership to task for its effort to gut a valuable weapon to guard against congressional corruption.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-rebukes-house-republicans-over-bid-to-gut-ethics-office/ar-BBxPCgQ?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Good deal, right? We’ll have to see what he thinks about ethics reform and swamp-draining in, oh, the next few hours. These things, as we know, can be subject to change.

national news

About that swamp-draining idea … try this

Donald J. Trump once pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C., making it a better place to enact laws and to do the public’s business.

Let’s get away from that notion, say Republicans in Congress.

How? Oh, let’s just no longer have an independent ethics organization serving as a watchdog of congressional activities and then we’ll just have such activities overseen by, that’s it, Congress itself!

See how it works?

If there’s something suspicious being done by a member of Congress, why we’ll just have his or her pals in Congress do the investigating and then determine whether there should be any sanction delivered to the offending member.

Do you think that’s going to work?

Aww, me neither.

The House Republican caucus has adopted a new rule proposed by House Ethics Committee Chairman Bob Goodlate, R-Va., to let his panel handle all ethics investigations. It will disband the Office of Congressional Ethics this week.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-gop-votes-to-rein-in-independent-ethics-watchdog/ar-BBxPwWL?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Congress created the independent watchdog arm under the leadership of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in 2008.

According to The Hill, the new law “would bar the office from considering anonymous tips about potential ethics violations and prevent disclosures about investigations.”

Interesting, yes? I think so. You see, quite often tipsters with information to pass along need to remain anonymous to protect themselves against retribution.

Journalists, for instance, get tipped off anonymously all the time; the practice, though, is for the journalist to obtain the name of the tipster while pledging not to reveal his or her name publicly while developing a news story. What is so terrible about a congressional watchdog group operating under the same sort of ground rule?

Trump reportedly has advised his transition team to scrap the “drain the swamp” mantra as they talk about the incoming administration. I believe I am now understanding why the president-elect no longer is wedded to the idea.

His GOP pals are refilling that very swamp.

national news, political news

‘Our Constitution works …’

You want a feeling of dire straits in the greatest nation on Earth?

This 11-minute video ought to remind us all that we have a resilient nation, with a government cobbled together by a document that is as stout as ever.

I mention this because of those who insist we are about to enter an “unprecedented” era of crisis with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

Not so.

On Aug. 8, 1974, the nation watched one president resign and another one take office.

Gerald R. Ford ascended to the presidency after being appointed vice president less than a year earlier; the man he replaced as VP had pleaded no contest to corruption charges. Before that he was a congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., whose No. 1 ambition was to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fate would steer Gerald Ford down an entirely different path.

As president, he told us that “our long national nightmare is over.” Richard Nixon was flying off to private life in California as President Ford took the reins of power.

And as the new president told us, “Our Constitution works.”

Indeed it does.

I harbor deep reservations and concern about whether the new president is up to the job he is about to assume.

However, I take comfort in the words that an earlier president, Gerald Ford, delivered as we sought to recover from a constitutional crisis the likes of which the nation had never before endured.

We certainly did recover. Whatever missteps the new president makes as he begins his term, I remain confident that our Constitution will continue to work just as our founders intended.

You have to keep the faith.

International news

Trump offers us another lie

Call me skeptical, but I think Donald J. Trump is lying to us once again.

The president-elect says he knows things that others don’t know about the Russian hacking story. He knows more than the CIA intelligence experts; more than the National Security Agency analysts; more than the Defense Intelligence Agency spooks.

He said he’ll tell us “Tuesday or Wednesday” about what he knows.

Gosh, I sort of think the president-elect is lying to us … yet again.

He doesn’t know “more” than the CIA or the other intelligence officials. Suppose, though, that he has the information that no one else on Earth knows. Why is he waiting until tomorrow or the day after to tell us?

I won’t call Trump a “liar.” I am saying, though, that I believe he is prevaricating in the extreme on this matter.

Either he has information that he’s gathered from the intelligence sources that he has disparaged, or he has obtained it through unofficial channels and he might have information that cannot be proven or disproven.

The president-elect needs to stop playing mind games with the public on this matter. He is playing a ridiculous and dangerous game of chicken with the intelligence professionals he will need as he prepares to protect the nation from its enemies abroad.

What’s more, the president-elect is playing the media and the public as suckers by tempting Americans with what I believe will be a non-story when he reveals this supposedly exclusive information that “no one knows.”