Tag Archives: 2016 election

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My gut is rumbling: Trump just might survive this mess

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I hate it when my gut starts to rumble. I get this queasy feeling down deep about certain matters occurring.

One of them is forcing a serious gut-churn way down yonder. Donald Trump, my innards are telling me, just might survive all this mess he has created. He appears likely at this moment to be able to avoid conviction in the U.S. Senate, if it is handed articles of impeachment from the U.S. House of Representatives; but even impeachment isn’t a lead-pipe cinch, even though the entire Democratic House majority is on board with an impeachment inquiry and potentially with actual impeachment.

Donald Trump has proven to be the master of evasion and, no, I am not referring to young Donald “evading” military service during the Vietnam War. Think for a moment about all the incidents during the 2016 presidential campaign that would have shattered a candidate’s dreams of winning the White House.

He said the late John McCain was a Vietnam War hero “only because he was captured”; he mocked a Gold Star family that criticized him at the Democratic National Convention; he mimicked and ridiculed a New York Times reporter afflicted with a crippling physical disability; Trump then admitted on that “Access Hollywood” recording to grabbing women by their pu*** because his “celebrity” status allowed him to do whatever he wants.

Imagine another politician, Democrat or Republican, getting away with that hideous campaign behavior. It boggles my mind.

So, now he’s president. He has acknowledged asking a foreign government for re-election help. He has admitted to asking an overseas power for help in digging up dirt on a potential 2020 opponent. He is on record telling Ukrainian officials that they can have help to fight the Russian-backed rebels if they did him a “favor, though,” meaning they had to do the favor before he would release the military assistance.

What does the current strife mean for the president? It means, to me, that his slipperiness has been able to deliver him from what should have been certain political doom.

Has this guy’s luck run out?

I hope it has. I fear he might find a way to avoid catastrophe.

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Thank you for the concern, but … it’s going to be all right

I have been getting some interesting responses to my announced plans to attend a Donald Trump “MAGA Rally” at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

Some of my social media contacts — and a member of my family — have expressed some concern for my safety. They are afraid of the president’s followers, believing that they’re going to sniff me out — as someone who, um, is not a follower — and perhaps rough me up. They’ve been known to do that during campaign rallies, right?

Well, I feel the need to explain my plan while attending this event, which is set for Oct. 17.

I have wanted to see a Donald Trump rally up close ever since he entered political life in June 2015, when he announced his presidential campaign. Trump never brought his campaign to Amarillo, where I lived during his successful campaign for the presidency in 2016; I guess the Texas Panhandle was too much of a sure thing for Trump to “waste” his time and effort.

So, he’s coming to Dallas to have a rally in which he is going to exhort the faithful to help him “Keep America Great.” The Trump campaign, though, is calling it a “MAGA Rally,” which is sort of a takeoff from his 2016 campaign theme.

Hey, I intend to listen quietly while standing on the floor of the AAC. I won’t be cheering, stomping my feet, carrying on. Will that give me away? Will that serve as a clue to the crowd of Trumpsters in the arena that I ain’t one of ’em? 

Beats the devil out of me.

I do know how to behave myself in this context, however. What’s more, I will make sure to exit the building immediately at the first sign of trouble. I want to make that point abundantly clear.

Then I intend to report on all that I see and hear on this blog at the MAGA Rally. I trust you’ll get my drift.

It should be a fun and edifying evening among the Trump faithful.

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Trump: the gift that keeps giving

The Stable Genius who masquerades as president of the United States is leaving a bread-crumb trail that is leading straight toward impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Donald Trump today — in full view of the entire world — called on China and Ukraine to investigate Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter, over business dealings that Trump has characterized as “crooked.”

I need to mention that the elder Biden is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and might face off against Trump next year during the 2020 presidential election.

So, there you have it, loudly and clearly and with no ambiguity.

The president of the United States has solicited another foreign government to help him win re-election. Sound familiar? Well, yes. It does! He got that kind of help from Russia during his winning presidential campaign in 2016 against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Man, on man. This guy is off his rocker.

He is now openly abusing the awesome power of his office for personal political gain. There can be no pretense. There can be no need to put “alleged” or “allegedly” in front of reports that Donald Trump has enlisted the aid of foreign governments.

This is astonishing, incredible, mind-blowing — just name it.

The idea that Trump would seek help from a authoritarian power such as China to investigate a U.S. citizen is utterly and completely beyond the pale.

If there is any doubt that the president deserves to be impeached for abusing his office, I believe he has just emptied the gasoline can over an already raging political wildfire.

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Waiting for Trumpsters to make positive case for POTUS’s re-election

The 2020 presidential election campaign is still in its formative stages. Democrats still are winnowing down a huge field of contenders/pretenders for their party’s nomination. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gearing up as the Republicans’ nominee.

OK, so what might we expect to hear from the Trump Team as it seeks to get its man re-elected?

The economy will be front and center of Trump’s theme. Fine. The numbers have been good. Unemployment is low. Job growth has been brisk. However, there are danger signs lurking. Economists suggest a recession might be in the country’s near future.

However, even though he denigrates his immediate predecessor’s record over two terms as president, Trump did inherit an economy that was in far better shape than the one that dropped onto President Barack Obama’s lap in January 2009.

Beyond that, I want to hear from Trump’s allies why this man who has masqueraded as president deserves to be re-elected. I want them to make a positive case for him.

I’ll be clear that there’s nothing they can tell me that will change my mind. In my view, Trump is unfit for office. Name any category you wish — previous experience, business acumen, morality, ideology, presidential behavior — in my view he fails every test you can imagine.

I am willing to listen to those who are willing to make the case.

Who will stand up, grab a microphone and tell us that Donald Trump possesses all the essential qualities we expect in a president. Who will say he is compassionate? Or that he listens to Americans? Or that he studies the issues before acting on them? Or that he grasps the complexities of his office, or the massive federal government?

Trump’s own strategy likely will be steeped in innuendo, just as it was in 2016 when he surprised the political world by defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton. He won’t proclaim his own virtues, other than those he fabricates: his intelligence and his memory.

Trump’s campaign team will have to craft a message that echoes the boss’s own penchant for tearing down the opposition, just as it did when he won the previous presidential election.

Is that enough to send this guy back to the Oval Office for another four years? No. It damn sure isn’t.

However, I am awaiting something that resembles a positive message. To be candid, I likely won’t know how to react if I hear one.

Maybe I will just laugh out loud.

International news

Going for two in a row, yes, Mr. President?

Donald Trump accepted help from Russian goons in 2016 who decided to hack into our nation’s electoral system to help him win that presidential election.

Now the president appears to be looking toward a Russian neighbor, Ukraine, in digging up dirt on the son of a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2020.

The target this time is Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden. The allegation is that Hunter Biden is doing business with a Ukrainian oligarch who also happens to own an energy company.

Trump is pushing back on reporting that he is looking for dirt on Hunter Biden. He denies it … of course! Naturally, he is totally believable in his denial, right? Well, no. He isn’t.

He is blaming the “Democrat Party” and the “Fake News Media” for concocting the story.

Actually, I happen to believe there’s a gun under all that smoke. It’s just me, perhaps. Then again, the president already has proven to be a pathological liar who cannot tell the truth under any circumstance.

Let’s all remember that former special counsel Robert Mueller determined that Russians interfered in our election in 2016. He joined other intelligence experts in making that determination. Trump, as his style, denigrated Mueller and all the other trained spooks who work for this country.

How does anyone believe anything the president ever says?

I cannot.

political news

Just who can slug it out with Donald Trump?

It is now a given. Donald J. Trump will conduct a mean, unorthodox and vile campaign for re-election as president of the United States.

The question facing Democrats as they look over their still quite large field of presidential candidates is: Who among them is willing and able to stand up to the onslaught that Trump will hurl at them?

I have my doubts about all of ’em.

I believe it is becoming clearer by the week, if not daily, that this campaign is going to rest between Trump and one of four, maybe five, Democratic contenders.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie (gulp!) Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and (maybe) Beto O’Rourke stand at the top of candidates who I think will stay the course beyond the first caucuses and primaries. If only Kamala Harris could shake the race up just a bit more.

It might be that someone will emerge as the gut fighter the Democrats will need if they have a chance of defeating the carnival barker in chief. Remember when former first lady Michelle Obama implored Democrats to “go high” when Republicans “go low”? We can kiss that mantra good bye, or so it appears to me at this moment.

Trump is a street fighter. The hideousness he displayed while beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 might resemble a hen party by the time he gets ramped up against whomever the Democratic Party nominates next summer to run against him.

I will lay this out right now, as if it’s a big surprise … which it isn’t. Any of the Democrats now in the field — with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders — would have my vote against Trump in November 2020. Why not possibly Bernie? Because his mantra about wealth inequality is becoming like a one-note samba.

Donald Trump never should have gotten elected in 2016. The Democrats’ major error was in nominating someone who had at least as many negatives going for her as Trump. I know what you might be thinking: Sure, you can say that now, even though you were predicting a big win for Hillary the last time. Well, I wasn’t alone.

I guess the task now for the field of Democratic challengers is for someone among them to emerge as the toughest of the bunch to handle the nastiness that is sure to come from the president.

I just wish someone could stake that claim.

political news

GOP ‘canceling’ elections in effort to ‘rig’ POTUS’s re-election?

I am sure you remember when Republican Party presidential nominee Donald J. Trump accused Democrats of trying to “rig” the 2016 party nomination process to favor of Hillary Clinton.

He never really offered any scenario on how that would be done, but he kept yammering and yapping about it.

Well, the GOP now has a strategy to “rig” its nominating process to favor Trump’s effort to be nominated by his party in 2020. They’re planning to cancel primary elections in various states in an effort to protect a weakened incumbent.

Trump faces possibly three party challengers, former U.S. Reps. Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh and former Gov. William Weld. States party organizations are seeking ways to cancel the primary elections because they fear a possible Trump loss in any upcoming GOP primary.

Is it “rigged”?

I know this isn’t exactly unprecedented. Democrats have done the same thing in recent election cycles, such as what happened in South Carolina in 2012 when President Obama sought re-election; the South Carolina Democratic Party canceled that state’s primary eight years ago. One thing, though: No Democrats rose to challenge the president.

This one seems a bit different, given the expressed interest among three Republican politicians in challenging an incumbent GOP president.

Yep. It looks like they’re “rigging” the outcome.

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Where are the GOP challengers with ‘heft’?

Joe Walsh has joined William Weld and Mark Sanford as actual and potential challengers to Donald Trump in the president’s quest for nomination by the Republican Party for another term in office.

A friend of mine wonders where the GOP challengers with “heft” are hiding. He believes Trump will “swat” any of the three challengers being discussed “like flies.” I fear he is right.

Who, then, are the hefty GOP heavyweights who might stand a chance of giving the president the primary campaign scare he so richly deserves?

I am having difficulty coming with names.

Former Secretary of State/Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell more or less comes to mind. He won’t walk onto the field. He had his chance leading up to the 1996 election when Bill Clinton was running for re-election. Gen. Powell begged off, citing the lack of support from his wife, Alma. I doubt Mrs. Powell has changed her mind. Besides, Powell’s time has passed.

I think also — are you reading for this? — of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. Naww. He won’t do it, either.

I fear the GOP is left with three men who don’t stand a serious chance of inflicting any meaningful damage on Trump, who is raising many millions of dollars toward his re-election effort.

Mark Sanford is grievously damaged already. He once was South Carolina’s governor who messed around with a woman other than his wife; he skulked off to South America for a fling, while telling his staff to lie to the media about his whereabouts, instructing them to say he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail.” No good, Mark.

William Weld ran for vice president in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket headed by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. Weld does have political experience, having served two terms as Massachusetts governor. But he ain’t gonna make the grade, either.

Joe Walsh served for a term as a congressman from Illinois. He’s a firebrand, a TEA Party advocate. He is ultraconservative. He also cannot stand the idea of Trump serving as president. He says things about Trump that many of us have said to each other at dinner tables and living rooms around the country.

I fear the GOP pool of challengers is thin, given the state of politics in the country at this moment. History shows that intraparty challenges against presidential incumbents have proven politically fatal to the incumbent. Sure, Trump is likely to have someone run against him, but he has rewritten the playbook and installed strategies that few “traditional” politicians can recognize, let alone emulate.

The GOP primary campaign will contain plenty of fiery rhetoric. Of that I am sure. Will it matter? I am thinking it won’t.

We’ll have to await the main event to commence sometime in the late summer of 2020 when Democrats nominate their candidate and Republicans swallow hard and send Donald Trump back into battle.

Oh … boy!

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Give it a rest, Mr. POTUS … you won the ’16 election!

Donald Trump is not the first president to win the office by virtue of the Electoral College while losing what’s called the “popular vote.”

He is the first president, though, to keep yapping, yammering and blathering about the popular vote “loss.” He won’t give it a rest.

Uh, Mr. President? You won the damn election in 2016. The U.S. Constitution allows candidates to score enough Electoral College votes to win the election even if they fail to garner enough of the people’s actual votes to make it a clean sweep.

He won’t let go of the idiocy he keeps repeating that “illegal immigrants” cast votes for Hillary Clinton.

Good grief, dude. President Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 to then-Vice President Al Gore. It boiled down to counting those ballots in Florida. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled eventually that the ballot counting needed to stop. When it did end, Bush had 537 more votes than Gore had in Florida. He won the state’s electoral votes and, thus, Bush was elected president. It was done according to what the Constitution allows.

Did the 43rd president bitch and moan about losing the popular vote nationally to Al Gore? No! He took office and went to work immediately.

It’s too late for Trump to get to work now that he’s more than halfway through his term. He will keep griping about the alleged voter fraud. He won’t offer any evidence, or provide a shred of proof. He’ll just keep bloviating about it.

Donald Trump only validates the belief of many of us that political career is as fraudulent as his business career.

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Innuendo hurler in chief is at it again

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Donald J. Trump has hurled another innuendo at local election officials, alleging voter fraud without offering a scintilla of evidence to buttress his latest specious complaint.

He said he lost New Hampshire in the 2016 presidential election to Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton because of “voter fraud” in the Granite State.

Does he have any proof? Is there any evidence to support the president? Of course not! It’s not how Donald Trump rolls.

He lost the popular vote nationally to Clinton by nearly 3 million ballots. Trump said the margin came from millions of illegal votes cast by undocumented immigrants in California. Did he ever produce any evidence of that? Nope. None, man! Zilch.

He formed a phony commission to root out voter fraud headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, but then disbanded the commission suddenly. Hmm. Why do you suppose he did that? My guess is that there was nothing to back up the ridiculous notion that Trump has posited.

So now he’s going after New Hampshire officials. He alleges voter fraud. There likely isn’t any.

The Innuendo Hurler in Chief is disgracing his office yet again.