Donald J. Trump needs to get out more.
A man is arrested for setting off bombs in New York City and in New Jersey. The police inflict non-life threatening injuries on the guy in a shootout.
The suspect is taken to a local hospital.
The response from the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States?
The suspect is going to get “room service” at the hospital.
Room service. At a hospital.
In Trump’s world, hospital “room service” is a perk.
Good … grief.
This probably isn’t nearly as spectacular a political story as some are making it out to be.
Still, it’s an important development in the presidential campaign of 2016.
Former President George H.W. Bush — aka Poppy Bush, Bush 41 and Bush the Elder — has told a member of a leading Democratic family that he’s going to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton over Republican Donald J. Trump.
The person who “outed” Bush 41 happens to be Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Maryland — and the eldest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy.
Sure, it’s an important story. President Bush is as “establishment Republican” as you can get. He served in many high-profile government capacities before being elected president in 1988. Now he’s going to vote for the wife of the man who defeated him for re-election in 1992. Bush’s forsaking of Trump’s candidacy speaks to the reluctance among many Republicans to back their party’s nominee.
But hold on. Is this a jaw-dropper? Hardly.
President Bush is a dedicated family man who loves his children more than life itself. When a politician attacks the kids, as Trump did this year en route to the GOP nomination, it’s only natural for Dad to take it personally.
Trump called former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush “Low Energy Jeb” and chided him repeatedly for his failure to do better against Trump in the GOP primary campaign.
Then there is this: Trump said the younger President Bush — George W. — “lied” the country into going to war in Iraq. He accused W. of fabricating the pretext for taking out Saddam Hussein by saying he had “weapons of mass destruction” and that he was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Setting aside whether one believes Trump’s assertions about W.’s veracity — and they do ring true to me — it’s totally understandable that the first President Bush would hold those utterances against the man who made them.
With 49 days to go before the election, it remains to be seen whether Poppy’s plan to vote for Hillary will bring other disaffected establishment Republicans along.
As for George H.W. Bush’s apparent defection … I do get it.
I feel the need to revisit briefly an idiotic notion by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
He’s issued a warning to former GOP presidential candidates that they might “face consequences” if they seek the presidency in the future if they continue to refuse to back this year’s nominee, Donald J. Trump.
My question simply is this: Who in the hell does Priebus think he is?
Priebus said potential future candidates such as, say, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz might find some insurmountable obstacles if they seek the party nomination in 2020.
Wait a second! Didn’t former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz face the scorn of her partisans for allegedly rigging the party nomination to favor Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Priebus now insists that the former GOP presidential candidates line up behind Trump … or else face the consequences.
That is a ridiculous and gratuitously ham-handed approach to pre-determining who the party’s next nominee ought to be.
The GOP presidential field signed a pledge to support whoever the party nominated for president. The pledge, though, isn’t legally binding. It’s not even politically binding, given that neither major party has a rule requiring blind loyalty.
Chairman Priebus is exhibiting delusions of grandeur if he thinks he can hand out “consequences” for future candidates who don’t abide by his wishes.
Donald J. Trump sought to put the expected political spin on the arrest of a man suspected of detonating a bomb in New York City.
Yes, the Republican presidential nominee said that Ahmad Khan Rhamani will get “room service” in a New York hospital, he’ll be treated by the finest doctors in the world and will be represented by a top-flight lawyer.
I’ll now say something good about the law enforcement officials who performed an amazing bit of investigation in making the arrest.
Someone set off a bomb that injured 29 people in New York. Police were able to find remnants of another device they found and using forensic evidence gathered at the blast site, they managed to locate someone they called a “person of interest.”
Then they arrested Rhamani and charged him with attempted murder.
What do we know for certain about the suspect? Not enough yet to make any broad assumptions.
The local police, along with state law enforcement officials and federal agents worked in a coordinated fashion to make an arrest.
I guess I should add that Trump went on “Fox and Friends” this morning to criticize the NYPD … before the department was able to announce the arrest of a suspect in the bombing.
We are a jumpy nation at the moment. Someone committed an act of terrorism. Was it Rhamani, a naturalized U.S. citizen who had made trips recently to Afghanistan and Pakistan? We’ll know in due course.
Was he acting as an agent of a known radical Islamic terrorist organization? We’ll get to that fact as well.
I believe it is wise at this moment to thank the local, state and federal authorities for the tremendous bit of police work that has resulted in the arrest of a suspect in this latest spasm of violence.
Let us now allow the justice system to do its job.
This graphic showed up on my Facebook news feed, so I thought I’d share it here … and offer a quick comment.
The item here illustrates a fundamental failure of the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
He has said at various times that Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. What that blanket comment made on the campaign stump reveals is the candidate’s utter ignorance of the power invested in the presidency.
The president cannot abolish a constitutional amendment.
Congress has to have a say. So do the states. As the graphic illustrates, it takes a super-majority in both cases for an amendment to be added — or rescinded.
None of that stops Trump from fomenting fear.
The man has no clue about the limits of presidential power.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is demonstrating once again why he was my favorite Republican candidate for president of the United States.
He has just told GOP chairman Reince Priebus, effectively, to stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Priebus chided many of the former foes of GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump for failing to back the candidate. He threatened them with political repercussions if they decide in 2020 or 2024 to run for the White House again.
According to Politico: “Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics,” said John Weaver, Kasich’s adviser, adding, “The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/kasich-priebus-trump-228343#ixzz4KiEL6VXD
Kasich was one of the thundering herd of GOP candidates who signed a non-binding pledge to back the party nominee. He did so early in the campaign. Then, as the field began to shrink — and Trump’s insults piled up — Kasich began having second thoughts about Trump’s fitness to become the next president.
Kasich finally dropped out of the race and has declared his refusal to endorse Trump’s candidacy. He declined to attend the GOP convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where Kasich serves as governor.
Principle matters more to Kasich than fealty to a deeply flawed political candidate.
Priebus, meanwhile, comes off as a partisan pipsqueak.
I’ve been watching those polls. They alarm me.
The presidential campaign that was supposed to be a lock for Hillary Rodham Clinton has turned into something quite different. It’s becoming a nail-biter, as Donald J. Trump has closed the gap to within a whisker.
I worry for our country no matter who wins this election. Whether it’s the Democrat Clinton or the so-called Republican Trump, my concern lies in the unrest that has been fomented by the GOP nominee.
Look, the choice doesn’t thrill me. Trump’s rise in the public opinion surveys, though, suggests that Trump has tapped into something foreboding and grim. He keeps yapping about the “failure” of our national leadership. For the life of me, I cannot fathom what in the world he’s talking about.
Failure to do what? To stop the economic free-fall that was underway in 2009? To prevent a major terror attack on our soil while killing bad guys on the battlefield?
As I have read and absorbed all the hideous statements that have poured out of Trump’s mouth since the day he declared his presidential candidacy, I keep asking myself: Do Americans really and truly want someone of this caliber serving as their head of state?
How does one truly endorse a political figure who:
— Says a U.S. senator is a war hero only because he got captured by the enemy?
— Mocks a reporter’s physical disability?
— Says women should be punished for obtaining an abortion?
— Fails to disavow immediately the endorsement of a known hater, one-time Ku Klux Klan grand dragon/wizard David Duke?
— Proposes an unconstitutional ban on Muslims seeking to enter this country?
— Proposes to build a wall across our southern border and then demands that another sovereign nation pay for it?
— Says a distinguished American judge cannot preside over a case involving Trump University simply because his parents are Mexican immigrants.
— Denigrates the U.S. military as a “disgrace”?
— Says he “knows more about ISIS than the generals, OK?”
— Changes his policy views hourly.
Stop me before my fingers fall off typing these examples.
Yes, I know about the trust issues that plague Clinton’s campaign. I know about the concerns that many voters have that she’s not entirely transparent and truthful.
I wish Clinton would speak to us more candidly and answer the difficult questions that media representatives pose to her.
But given the choice that confronts us, my sincere hope is that Americans are going to realize the profound consequences this country faces by electing someone with zero understanding of the complexities of the office he is seeking.
My head is about to explode.
So help me, it is.
Donald J. Trump’s half-assed declaration that the birther movement he helped perpetuate is now over has glossed over the single most under-reported element of this entire controversy.
It doesn’t matter one damn bit whether baby Barack Hussein Obama Jr. came into this world in Hawaii, Kenya or on Mars. He would have been constitutionally qualified to hold the office of president of the United States.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, declared Obama was “born in the United States. Period.” That ends the lie he’s been telling for more than five years, that Obama was a foreign-born pretender to the presidency.
It’s always been a racist smear meant to defame the twice-elected first African-American president. Trump knows it. Yet he kept saying it, more than 60 times out loud over the years, according to some sources.
But here’s the deal, folks. Barack Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen when she gave birth to her baby in Honolulu in August 1961. His mother’s citizenship bestowed U.S. citizenship immediately on Barack Obama. None of this “birther” crap matters. The Constitution says only “natural-born” citizens can serve as president. Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen.
Do you remember when Trump raised the same issue about former Republican primary rival Ted Cruz, who actually was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father? Cruz, the Texas U.S. senator, said he earned his U.S. citizenship by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.
End of discussion.
This utter crap about President Obama’s place of birth continues to fester only because of the man’s racial makeup.
For Trump to have perpetuated the lie is a disgrace on its face. His tepid declaration late this past week that, by golly, he was wrong all those years is nearly as disgraceful.
Will it go away now that the GOP nominee has said it’s over? No. Nor should it. This individual, Trump, should do what he says he never does: apologize to the president of the United States for seeking to defame him.
Nearly two weeks in Germany and The Netherlands have been entered into the memory book of our life together.
My wife and I spent some glorious time reconnecting with friends and taking in some of the most spectacular countryside either of us ever has seen.
I took a couple of small notebooks with me. I put them in a back pocket. I had intended to write a great deal about politics and policy while visiting with folks. I didn’t do nearly enough of it.
Our journey, though, did give me a couple of key observations about the state of the world as seen through the eyes of western Europeans.
Donald J. Trump’s rise to political power has them as astonished as many of us.
We met a few friends and colleagues of our German friends. “How do you feel about Trump?” a couple of them asked. I gave them my typical response: I do not understand this presidential campaign. More than one of them, knowing we were visiting from Texas, responded with, “How do you feel, then, living in a state where everyone is a Republican?” Not “everyone,” I reminded them.
Our Dutch friends are equally perplexed about Trump. They do not know what precisely this says about the state of American politics and policy — and they are fearful of what a Trump election would mean to the future of U.S.-Europe alliances.
Join the club, y’all!
The second takeaway?
Germans and Dutch appear to live side by side with Muslim immigrants.
While Trump and his minions offer hysterical responses to the plight of Muslim refugees, I witnessed a lot of Muslims doing business in places like Rothenberg, Germany and Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Women wore their hijabs to cover their hair. They mingled in marketplaces with their children in tow. I didn’t see any outward tension.
I am well aware of the rise of ultra-right-wing nationalism in Germany. I also am aware that not everyone in Europe is welcoming the refugees from Syria with open arms and hearts. But the refugees’ presence is quite noticeable and as we made our way through the communities we visited, I was taken aback — just a bit — by the absence of hysteria that some American politicians imply exists in that part of the world.
We’re home now. We’re glad to have enjoyed a marvelous adventure. In the past most of our international travel has involved something related to my previous life as a print journalist. This one was different. It was totally recreational.
However, I have difficulty throwing aside my tendency to look at the world through a reporter’s prism.
I do not intend to leave you with the impression that I learned all there is to learn about European geopolitical views. It’s just an observation I was able to glean from 11 days across The Pond.
Even so, I learned (a) that Europeans share many Americans’ disbelief in Trump’s rise and (b) that they appear to have a more reasonable and rational reaction to what Trump and others insist is an international crisis.
Go figure, man.
Donald J. Trump’s newfound friends in the conservative political movement need to cease declaring that the “mainstream liberal media” are out to “get” their guy.
That they despise Trump, and that the GOP presidential nominee hates them in return.
They love each other. The media love Trump, who in turn loves the media. He plays the media for the suckers they are.
He called a press conference in which he said he would make a major policy announcement. Instead, he used the event to tout some business deal, a hotel, in which he boasted about how great it is.
The press conference was supposed to center on Trump ending his racist rants about President Obama’s birth. It wasn’t about that. Sure, he said Obama “was born in the United States. Period.” But the bulk of the event was to shower praise on himself his business success.
This is where Trump is crossing a very troubling line: mixing personal business with a campaign for the nation’s highest political office.
Indeed, this latest stunt is part of a pattern.
The media are playing a major role in it.
Trump will continue to rant and rail about the “dishonest political press.” His supporters will cheer him on. He’ll give them more of the same. They’ll cheer him even more loudly.
Meantime, the rest of us are left scratching our heads and wondering: When will this charade stop?