Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Feeling badly about scolding Obama

Let’s assume for a moment that my prediction that Donald Trump won’t run for president next year turns out to be wrong.

If he does declare his candidacy, I might be forced to eat some crow regarding my recent scolding of President Obama for using the first-person singular pronoun too liberally while accepting credit for the good things he’s done as president.

Barack Obama is a piker compared to The Donald.

Trump told the Des Moines Register that he’s the “most successful candidate ever to run” for president. He declared “the American dream is dead,” and then said he’d bring it back all my himself. He said he’d wipe out the Islamic State quickly and its elimination would be a “beautiful thing.”

Sheesh!

Can this guy really and truly be serious? Is he really, honestly going to run for president and use his immense personal wealth as a reason to elect him?

Mr. President, I don’t want to take back what I said, but I will if Donald Trump declares his intention to succeed you in the White House.

My head is about to explode.

 

Why the fixation with The Donald?

Why, media? Why?

Why do you — and I guess, me — keep writing about Donald Trump in the context of a presidential campaign?

The Donald isn’t going to run for president of the United States. Not this time, not ever.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/megyn-kelly-donald-trump_n_7350412.html?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000078&utm_source=thinkprogress.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_facebook

How do I know this? Well, I don’t know it. I just feel it in my bones.

The man’s got that TV show that earns him lots of money. That’s what he appears to be about, anyhow. Money. He boasts about how much of it he has. He’s not shy about flaunting his wealth. For the life of me I don’t understand why some people don’t take extreme offense at his self-aggrandizing.

But he does.

He’s made a complete ass of himself during the entire Obama presidency questioning whether the president is constitutionally eligible to hold the office to which he was elected and re-elected. He continues to act the part of buffoon and clown.

But now he’s saying he’s going to announce his candidacy sometime in June? That’s what he told Megyn Kelly.

I will not hold my breath waiting for that announcement.

It’s not going to come.

Then again, if it does … well, the fun will really begin as the Republicans start searching for their 2016 presidential nominee.

 

Birthers beware: Obama going to Kenya

This story is utterly hilarious and I cannot wait for President Obama to jaunt down the steps of Air Force One in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, of all places.

The president is visiting the African country and is likely to stick straight in the eyes — and ears — of the so-called “birthers” who keep yapping that he wasn’t born in the United States and that he is somehow not qualified to be president.

To which I say: So bleeping what?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/237384-former-nh-gov-obama-is-inciting-birthers-with-kenya-trip

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a player in the Republican Party hierarchy, thinks the president’s trip is going to energize the birthers. These are the clowns, such as Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas and perhaps a majority of the Texas Legislature for all I know, who keep implying that if Obama was born in Africa that he’s somehow disqualified from holding the office to which he was elected twice.

I have a two-word response: Ted Cruz.

The junior senator from Texas and GOP presidential candidate was in fact born in Canada. His mother is American, his father is Cuban. He’s been declared a U.S. citizen by every constitutional scholar under the sun. President Obama’s mother was American, his father was Kenyan. However, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii — but that hasn’t stopped the crackpot wing of the Republican Party from continuing to raise this birth issue whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Gov. Sununu thinks it well might rise again when the president jets off to Kenya later this year. “I think his trip back to Kenya is going to create a lot of chatter and commentary amongst some of the hard right who still don’t see him as having been born in the U.S.,” he said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”

The place of his birth doesn’t matter. He was born in Hawaii, U.S.A. Even if he wasn’t born in one of our 50 states, his mother’s citizenship makes this entire chatter moot.

The president’s upcoming Kenya trip only illustrates one thing: He’s got his mojo back.

Enjoy yourself, Mr. President.

 

The Donald remakes birther argument

Donald Trump is at it again.

The hotel/casino mogul who keeps insisting that Barack Obama is not qualified to hold the office of the presidency now suggests that Ted Cruz is ineligible to become president.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-ted-cruz-birther-233710183.html

Trump keeps yammering that Obama was born abroad, even though it is has been known for decades he was born in Hawaii. Actually, The Donald is misinterpreting the U.S. Constitution with the birther argument against Obama.

He’s also now doing the same thing with Ted Cruz, the Republican U.S. senator from Texas who today announced his campaign for the presidency.

Cruz was born in Canada. His mother is American; his father is Cuban. Cruz’s U.S. citizenship was established the moment he was born because of Mom’s U.S. citizenship.

End of argument.

Not so, with The Donald, who’s considering a run for the GOP presidential nomination himself.

The Donald does not know of which he speaks when he yammers about constitutional qualifications relating to President Obama and Sen. Cruz.

That won’t shut him up. Too bad for that.

 

Circus act convenes in Iowa

Call him the ringmaster. That would be Congressman Steve King of Iowa, the Republicans’ leading critic of immigration reform and the individual hosting something called the Iowa Freedom Summit.

It should be a showcase for what’s left of the Republican Party’s intellectual heft. There’s still plenty left, but the party’s center-stage attention has been hijacked by some seriously radical individuals — such as Rep. King.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/steve-king-iowa-summit-immigration-dreamers-114552.html?hp=c4_3

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is there, along with Donald Trump, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, ex-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Dr. Ben Carson and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But … all is not lost here. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also is there and I count Christie among the grownups of the party, a guy prone to actually thinking rationally and reasonably.

He’s no doubt going to trot out his conservative credentials to the summit attendees because, well, he’s thinking of running for president next year and the starting point in the campaign is in Iowa, where those GOP caucuses are dominated by the evangelical Christian wing of the party.

The news out of the Iowa event has been twofold: Palin and Trump both have expressed “serious” interest in running for the White House in 2016. Seriously. They’re thinking about it.

Look, the more the merrier. That’s how I see it. Neither of them is a legitimate contender for the presidency of the world’s greatest nation. By my count, I see maybe two individuals at this summit who should be taken seriously: the aforementioned Christie and Scott Walker.

The other serious candidates-in-waiting — Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul — aren’t there. Why? Because they’ve all staked out moderate positions here and there that just don’t comport with the far right wing of the party.

The ringmaster, King, is playing this event beautifully — I will acknowledge. He’s getting a lot of attention and, by golly, he’s getting that GOP base all fired up.

Let the fun continue.

Go, Louie, go for the speaker's job!

This might be the best news yet of the new year — which, I know, is just four days old.

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-TEA Party Fringe, has just announced he’s going to challenge John Boehner as speaker of the House of Representatives.

How does it get any better than that?

Gohmert, you see, is in the running as well for being the goofiest member of Congress. He’s got some competition for that honor. The previous frontrunner was fellow Texan Steve Stockman, who had the bad form to challenge Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary this past spring; he lost badly. He’s now out of the House. Right up there, too, is Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who said illegal immigrants are packing illegal drug across the border while running on “calves the size of cantaloupes.”

Gohmert hails from East Texas and he’s challenging fellow Republican Donald Trump for the unofficial title of “birther in chief.” He and The Donald just do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States of America, in Hawaii, and that — by golly — he’s constitutionally qualified to serve in the office to which he was elected twice.

Now he’s running for speaker. He told his pal Tucker Carlson on Fox News that someone needs to challenge Boehner. Gohmert says he’s gotten “a lot” of support to mount that challenge.

I’d love to ask him how he defines the measure of so-called support. Maybe it is a lot. It surely must be vocal because that’s how the TEA party wing of the GOP operates. It outshouts the other side within the Republican Party and then it outshouts the Democrats.

Hey, the truth is he’s just firing a shot across Boehner’s bow. He’s telling the speaker to watch his right flank. The TEA party will be watching, waiting and looking for any opportunity to undermine the speaker’s instincts to work with the other side.

I’m still glad to see Rep. Gohmert step up — even if it does embarrass some Texas residents back home who really would prefer that he shut his trap.

Bank it: Trump isn't running for president

My former colleagues at the Amarillo Globe-News have run a column by a guy who fancies himself as a player in Republican political circles.

He is Matt Towery, a former Georgia GOP state legislator and a pal of Newt Gingrich. He’s also a friend of the Globe-News’s corporate ownership, which is the major reason he is published occasionally in the local paper.

Towery thinks Donald Trump is considering seriously whether to run for president in 2016. What’s more, Towery is infatuated with the notion of Trump actually becoming president.

Let’s clear the air.

Trump isn’t running. He’ll never run for president. He is talking like this because he likes — no, he loves — the sound of his voice. He loves getting people all worked up over the goofy things he says and he takes himself far too seriously on these matters.

However, the real reason he won’t run is because he has a lucrative TV deal that he cannot surrender. It’s that apprentice show of his on NBC-TV, the one where he tells celebrities “You’re fired.”

He’s going to give that up to earn a paltry 400 grand a year making decisions involving the future of the nation?

Towery took pains in a column published this week in the Globe-News to poke a little fun at President Obama’s experience prior to moving into the White House. He belittled his community organizing experience and noted that Obama served briefly in the Illinois Legislature and then the U.S. Senate before being elected president in 2008.

Meanwhile, Trump keeps bellowing about whether the president is constitutionally qualified to serve in the office he holds. You know, the “born in Kenya” crap. Give me a break.

Towery equates Trump’s “star quality” with Ronald Reagan. Sure. Except that Reagan actually governed a huge state for eight years. Trump’s government experience? None.

And let’s not look askance at the importance of actually working with government.

No, Donald Trump is among the least-suited men possible for this incredibly nuanced and sophisticated job. He should keep his day job “firing” washed-up celebrities.

President Trump? Perish the thought. Forever.

The Donald is back in the political arena

He’s baaaack.

Donald Trump showed up this weekend on the ABC-TV news show “This Week,” and yep, started talking like someone who wants to run for president in 2016.

http://thehill.com/video/campaign/316533-trump-would-spend-whatever-it-takes-to-win-gop-nomination-in-2016

I almost cannot add to the video attached to this blog.

It’s hard to understand why a serious news show would interview someone who is likely to do exactly what he did in 2012: sound like someone who wants to run for the White House but who couldn’t give up his lucrative TV gig, “The Apprentice.”

The Donald is a lot of things: showman, successful businessman, egomaniac … to name just three.

A serious public policy expert he is not.

He said in the interview with ABC that the Republicans have to nominate “the right candidate” to be someone such as Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.

The Donald is not — and never will be — that candidate.