Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news, political news

So, ‘wiretap’ doesn’t mean wiretap?

The White House has issued one of the strangest “clarifications” in modern political history.

It was that Donald J. Trump didn’t mean “wiretap” when he referred to it in a series of tweets regarding an allegation he leveled at President Barack Obama.

He had said that Obama had ordered a “wiretap” of his Trump Tower offices during the 2016 presidential campaign. Yes, he used  a very close variation of that word.

But, but, but …

The White House said today he didn’t actually mean “wiretap.”.

Do you follow me? I didn’t think so. I cannot follow it, either.

Here’s one of Trump’s tweets: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

OK, so he didn’t use the word “wiretap” in this tweet. “Tapp my phones,” though, means the same thing. Doesn’t it? I thought so.

Oh, but no-o-o-o. The president didn’t mean it, according to the White House press office.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has asked for a bit more time to provide proof — presuming that some might exist — that backs up the president’s scurrilous accusation that former President Obama broke the law.

national news

Time to put up or shut up … Mr. President?

Today might be the day when the president of the United States delivers the goods on what he knows — allegedly — about a so-called wiretap ordered by President Obama on the Trump Tower offices.

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee reportedly has sent a letter to the White House asking for evidence that Donald J. Trump has to back up his allegation that Obama tapped the New York campaign offices to search for proof that Trump was colluding with Russian government officials who sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

Trump hasn’t provided any proof. House Intelligence panel officials want to see it.

Is this a firm deadline? Ohhh, probably not. But the president needs to provide proof of the incendiary accusation he has leveled against his immediate predecessor. He has accused Barack Obama of breaking the law, committing a felony. That’s what this clown does; he says things to garner headlines without any substantiation.

Absent any proof we are left to wonder out loud about what the president is trying to do. Why in the world does he do these things?

Is this act alone — a reckless accusation that the former president has broken the law — an impeachable offense? There’s some chatter that, yes, it is. I am not prepared to jump on that haywagon.

This president, though, has demonstrated graphically a willingness to say anything, to damage anyone. He has yet to demonstrate an ability to corroborate his fiery rhetoric.

military news, national news, political news

McCain: Prove it or drop it, Mr. President

John McCain is demonstrating yet again that he still might be angry at Donald J. Trump’s insulting assertion during the 2016 campaign that the former Navy pilot is a “war hero only because he was captured” by the enemy during the Vietnam War.

Whatever the motive, the Arizona Republican U.S. senator is on point with this declaration: Either provide proof that former President Obama wiretapped your offices during the 2016 campaign or retract it.

The president has done nothing to suggest he has a shred of evidence to back up his scurrilous contention that Obama ordered a wiretap. He has essentially defamed his predecessor by accusing him of committing a felony.

Trump has all the intelligence capabilities available to him to deliver the goods. He hasn’t. Absent any “goods,” he needs to take it all back, admit what many of us know already — that he sought to divert attention from the Russia election-meddling matter.

But, wait! The two things — allegations of Russian meddling and the wiretap allegation — are related!

national news, political news

Can we trust POTUS to tell the truth — ever?

Now that we’ve pretty much established that Donald J. Trump is a serial liar, let’s ponder what this might mean as he talks to other world leaders.

Do they believe him when he pledges the United States to a certain policy? Can they trust that his word is good? Will they be able to conduct their own policies knowing that the U.S. president has their back?

Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that his word is good — until he changes his mind.

He promised to stop using Twitter once he became president; he said millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election; Trump allegedly witnessed Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11; he said he “knows more about ISIS than the generals”; Trump asked several federal prosecutors appointed by his predecessor to stay on the job, then demanded their resignations; he has accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his campaign offices.

He once said “the shows” provide him with all the knowledge he needs to deal with foreign crises. Trump has said he is his own primary adviser, that he has a “great mind.”

There’s more examples to offer. But in all of those, either he told a flat-out lie or has failed to produce a shred of proof to back up anything he has said.

How does the president of the United States take that record of prevarication to the negotiating table with other foreign leaders? And how do they know whether to believe a single thing this individual says?

Ladies and gents, we have elected a patently untrustworthy man as president.

national news, political news

Congress sees spike in approval rating … what gives?

 

Given my occasional fascination with public opinion polls, I want to share an observation about RealClearPolitics’ average of polls.

It is that public approval of Congress has spiked up about 10 percentage points since Donald J. Trump became president.

Why is that? I think it’s a legitimate question. I might have the answer, although I could be coming at this from deep left field.

It well might be that the public sees the president of the United States as the greater threat to the nation’s stability. RCP’s average of polls puts Congress’s approval rating at more than 22 percent. During the eight years that Barack Obama was president, the RCP poll average usually pegged Congress’s approval in the low teens, occasionally dipping into single digits.

Might it be that the public saw Congress less favorably during President Obama’s time because respondents were concerned about the continual obstruction orchestrated by the Republican Party leadership?

Moreover, might it now be that the RCP polling reflects a public view that Congress can act as a check against the current president’s reckless rhetoric and fickle policy pronouncements?

Just thinking out loud, dear reader.

Your thoughts?

legal news

No pity for Preet Bharara

2 Comments

Preet Bharara doesn’t need any pity.

Indeed, he needs a hand-clap or two for standing up to the president of the United States.

Here’s what he did.

Bharara served as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a post to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama. After the 2016 election, Donald J. Trump reportedly asked Bharara to stay on the job. The federal prosecutor agreed.

Trump took the oath of office, then in a stunning reversal, he sought the resignations of all Obama appointees who had stayed on after the former president had left office.

Bharara was one of them. He refused to quit. What did the president do? He fired him today.

This sequence speaks quite directly to the utter aimlessness of the new administration. The president says one thing, does another and then strikes out against those who try to hold him accountable for the statements he makes.

Bharara will land on his feet. He’s a first-rate lawyer. He’ll likely end up in private practice somewhere and will make a handsome living. Or, he might run for public office.

Or, he might go on a speaking tour, where he’ll also make a lot of money telling the nation about the caprice that the current president seems all too willing to demonstrate.

Oh, and it’s interesting too that the president hasn’t denied — via Twitter or any other medium — that he ever asked the prosecutor to stay on the job.

business news

Trump takes premature credit for job growth?

Donald J. Trump will be able eventually to take credit for job growth.

Just not yet.

It’s interesting to me that some of the chatter today regarding the Labor Department jobs report deals with whether the president should deserve any credit for the big spike in employment.

He doesn’t deserve it. Not this early.

The United States added 235,000 non-farm jobs to payrolls in February. Unemployment ticked downward to 4.7 percent. How did Trump’s economic policies contribute to this trend? They didn’t.

You’ll recall that when Barack Obama took office in 2009, job numbers were plummeting. It took a bit of time for the president’s economic stimulus package to take effect. The former president didn’t deserve blame for falling jobs figures at the beginning of his term.

I also should say he didn’t deserve all the credit for the spectacular job growth that ensued. He deserved some of it.

Eight years later, the nation’s job growth has continued. Joblessness has been cut in half. The annual federal budget deficit has been pared by two-thirds.

Obama handed this economic growth off to Trump. The new president eventually will be able to take some of the credit if the job growth continues well into the first year of his presidency and beyond. I am willing to give him the credit he deserves.

This silly discussion, though, about whether he should crow about job growth during his first full month in office succeeds only in one thing: It rivets attention directly onto the president of the United States, which is all part of the way this guy rolls.

business news, national news, political news

‘Phony’ jobs numbers now become ‘real’

Donald John Trump is demonstrating yet again just why he makes me sick to my stomach.

The U.S. Labor Department today announced that 235,000 non-farm jobs were added to payrolls in February, the first full month of Trump’s presidency; the jobless rate declined to 4.7 percent.

Those are impressive figures. What does the president say?

He declares those numbers are “real” even though he said multiple times during his campaign for the presidency that the Labor Department was cooking the books during Barack Obama’s presidency. He called the job growth registered during President Obama’s time in office “fake”;  he said the numbers were phony; he said the “real jobless rate” was much greater than what the Labor Department was reporting.

As White House press secretary Sean Spicer said today, quoting the president: “They may have been phony in the past but they’re real now.”

Now they’re real?

Trump sickens me for many reasons. At many levels. You name it.

He lies, slings innuendo around, insults his foes, boasts openly about his own prowess.

The Trumpkins lap this crap up, giving this clown license to keep making patently, demonstrably untrue statements.

The job figures are impressive. The president should simply have acknowledged them as progress toward the nation’s continuing economic recovery.

But no-o-o-o! He had to remind millions of us why we detest him.

International news, national news, political news

By all means, subpoena those FBI records

You go, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham!

The South Carolina Republican has said that he is ready to demand records from the FBI for any warrant requests that would have been made to wiretap Donald John Trump’s offices in Trump Tower.

Graham, along with Rhode Island Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, have asked the FBI for any information regarding the outrageous claim that Trump made asserting that former President Obama wiretapped his offices.

One big problem exists regarding what Trump has alleged. He has offered not a shred of evidence to back up what he has said via Twitter. Nothing, man! No proof. No basis.

Graham and Whitehouse are as alarmed as millions of other Americans — such as yours truly — about what Trump has done. He has accused his predecessor as president of the United States of breaking the bleeping law!

It is that assertion for which Graham wants some documentation. Either the president can prove what he has alleged or he cannot. If he can prove his offices were bugged, then we have a scandal of major proportions. If he cannot prove it, well, then we have another scandal of major magnitude.

“We request that the Department of Justice provide us copies of any warrant applications and court orders — redacted as necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods that may be compromised by disclosure, and to protect any ongoing investigations — related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower,” Graham and Whitehouse wrote.

If the FBI doesn’t deliver the goods on request, Graham said he is ready to order those papers delivered to Capitol Hill.

national news, political news

Here comes the dreaded ‘I-word’

The “I-word” has entered the discussion of Donald J. Trump’s troubles involving the Russians, his use of Twitter and a scathing accusation he has made against his predecessor as president of the United States.

One of the nation’s foremost constitutional scholars, law professor Laurence Tribe, believes the president’s reckless use of Twitter to accuse Barack Obama of tapping his phones might be grounds for impeachment.

There you have it, correct? Not exactly.

Tribe, I shall stipulate, is a liberal-leaning fellow who more than likely didn’t vote for Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

But he’s no dummy as it regards the U.S. Constitution and what it allows or disallows.

Tribe’s thesis simply is that the president’s use of a social medium constitutes a reckless disregard for due process and that it implies a certain unfitness for the office he occupies.

Readers of this blog no doubt know what Trump did. This past weekend, he awoke at his Mar-a-Lago estate early one morning and blasted out a tweet that accused former President Obama of “ordering” spooks to tap Trump’s offices at Trump Tower while looking for proof that Trump was colluding with the Russians to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Nasty stuff, right? You bet it is.

It’s also unproven. You see, Trump didn’t offer a shred of proof to back up that ridiculous contention. He has accused President Obama of committing a felony, given that the president cannot “order” a wiretap, which must come from a federal judge, who must have “probable cause” to issue such an order.

The rule of law doesn’t enter into Trump’s tendency to engage in these Twitter tantrums. He just fires this crap into cyberspace. Consequences? Who cares about ’em?

Meanwhile, Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress are demanding Trump provide some basis for this ridiculous assertion. None has been forthcoming.

Spoiler alert: I don’t think we’ll ever see any such basis.

In the meantime, the I-word is out there.

I agree that the bar for impeachment must be kept high. President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 was based on a sex scandal and his failure to adhere to his oath to be truthful to a federal grand jury that questioned him about it. I don’t believe those events met the standard for impeaching a president of the United States … but that’s just me.

This Trump story is far from being resolved. The president had better come up with something provable to back up his contention that President Obama broke the law.

Or else …