Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news

He did ‘the opposite’?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I didn’t hear it in real time when Donald Trump said it, but I have just heard it and I am still utterly astonished.

Trump told Fox News the other day that he deliberately “did the opposite” of what Dr. Anthony Fauci recommended he do to reduce the infection rate and death rate from the coronavirus.

The president of the United States, from what I have just heard, has admitted to ignoring the advice of the nation’s preeminent epidemiologist. It can be argued that Fauci is the top infectious disease expert on the entire planet.

So there we have it. Donald Trump ignored his advice. He did the opposite of what Fauci advised him.

Hmm. What’s been the cost of such ignorance? Oh, only the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans who might still be alive today had the president/commander in chief/head of state had followed the advice of the men and women he enlisted to help him ostensibly with the nation’s pandemic response.

Can there be anything more astonishing than to realize that millions of Americans actually want this imbecile to run for president again?

Donald John Trump should be prosecuted for homicidal negligence.

Joe Biden

Run, Joe, run … already?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s re-election campaign — if it happens — has become a talking point among the political class.

A reporter asked Biden at his press conference the other day whether he plans to seek a second term — and whether he expects to run against Donald Trump in 2024.

Sheesh, man! Joe Biden is 78 years old. He is the oldest man ever elected to the presidency. He said in response to the reporter’s question that he believes strongly in “fate,” which I think might be his way of acknowledging his own mortality. I do not wish that for the president, but, well … you know it might go.

Biden’s plan for reelection freezes Democratic field | TheHill

The chatter now involves what a Biden re-election bid does to the Democratic and Republican primary fields.

Let’s see. Donald Trump announced on his first day in office he would seek re-election. Democrats poured onto the primary field in massive numbers; the total hit, what, 22 before they started dropping out. The Hill newspaper thinks a Biden re-election effort could stifle the GOP primary field in 2024, unless the Biden presidency craters between now and then.

I am not going to spend a lot of time wondering or worrying about President Biden’s political future. The political present — a pandemic, immigration, climate change, voting rights — is enough of a challenge for any president.

DC riot, national news

Mulvaney calls it correctly

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump’s delusion continues even as he tees it up at his posh South Florida resort.

The ex-president told Fox News that the Jan. 6 insurrection from the riotous mob of terrorists posed “zero threat.”

That brought a sharp rebuke from one of Trump’s chief defenders/enablers, former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who told CNN that Trump’s remarks are “manifestly false.”

“I was surprised to hear the president say that … Clearly, there were people who were behaving themselves and then there were people who absolutely were not,” Mulvaney told CNN.

Mulvaney calls Trump’s comments on Capitol riot ‘manifestly false’ | TheHill

No. They were not behaving themselves.

And yet Donald Trump continues to lie incessantly.

The riot’s aim was to stop Congress from doing its constitutional duty on Jan. 6, which was to certify the results of the presidential election. It was a violent attempted insurrection. It was an act of sedition. It was profoundly violent and dangerous!

I am no fan of Mick Mulvaney. However, I am glad to hear him speak the truth about the delusion that rumbles around in the head of his former boss.

local news, political news

Trump is no one’s POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Take a gander at this picture.

I don’t know precisely where it was taken. It showed up on my Facebook news feed with a caption that it implies it’s in Dallas.

Eek!

Then someone else posted a note that said Donald Trump 2024 shirts are on sale somewhere in Amarillo. Now that doesn’t entirely surprise me, given the Texas Panhandle’s extreme right-wing tendencies. President Biden carried Dallas County by a handsome margin in 2020. Donald Trump rolled over Biden in Randall and Potter counties — which Amarillo straddles — also by handsome margins.

But … here’s the deal. Donald Trump lost the election. He would lose again were he to run a second time, in my view. I do not believe he is going to run for president again.

Trump has some legal and financial issues with which to contend. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., and Manhattan, N.Y., are breathing down his neck. He has $400 million in debt that is coming due. It’s possible that he will remain blocked from social media platforms on the basis of the Big Lie he keeps spreading about so-called vote fraud in the 2020 election.

He’s already been revealed as a lying fraud. Just maybe lightning will strike, hell will freeze over and the sun will rise in the west one day, and that the Trumpkin Corps of believers will see that their guy is a first-class phony.

national news

Sen. Romney earns salute

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Someone with whom I am casually acquainted over social media objected this weekend to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum granting its annual Profile in Courage award to Sen. Mitt Romney.

Romney, a Utah Republican got the award for voting in early 2020 to convict Donald J. Trump of abuse of power during Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Senate. I applaud the honor that Romney will receive later this year.

This acquaintance disagrees. He wrote: This is just plain sad. No doubt the foundation decided this was a worthy act as a way to encourage those of faint heart and limp spine to stand up to political bullies. But really, what did Romney risk? There’s not much evidence that he might lose his seat over it, but even if he did, he’s still a very wealthy man near the end of his career. The fact that so many of his colleagues lacked the willingness to do the obvious for the good of the nation they swore to defend doesn’t make Romney’s vote particularly courageous. It makes the others abject cowards.

I responded with this: I will disagree. Romney’s vote has exposed him to ridicule and shaming from many within the GOP. I agree that they aren’t “legitimate” Rs who stand on policy or principle, but rather are beholden to the carnival barker who sold ’em the snake oil. I applaud the JFK Library for recognizing the courage Romney exhibited by being the first senator to vote to convict a president of his own party. Yep … well earned.

I just felt the need to share this with you here.

Sen. Romney will receive the award this summer. I believe JFK would be proud.

Donald Trump, national news

C’mon back, Donald!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald John Trump’s expected return to Republican Party political involvement just might be a good tonic for the nation, if not the GOP.

Why? Because the ex-president will be able to expose himself even more to the kind of self-centered narcissism that became one of the hallmarks of his time as president.

Trump reportedly is planning to get more involved in GOP primary activities, siding with candidates who oppose incumbents who weren’t sufficiently loyal to him.

As The Hill reports, though, many mainstream Republicans are none too happy to see The Donald step back into the arena after being beaten soundly by President Biden. They blame Trump for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats flipping from Republican to Democrat in the January runoff election. They are angry that Trump keeps repeating The Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him.

Trump ramps up activities, asserts power within GOP | TheHill

As an ardent critic of Donald Trump, I am going to stop worrying about whether he plans to launch a return to political life. I see many hideous storm clouds on the horizon awaiting Trump. Prosecutors in New York and Georgia are looking for potential criminal culpability involving Trump. His once-fabled business “empire” is looking shakier all the time. Trump is facing hundreds of millions of dollars in debt that are coming due. All of that will become fodder for whoever wants to challenge The Donald.

To be sure, my sincerest hope of all is for Trump to vanish. I want him gone. His 15 minutes of political fame are up. He had his time on center stage … and blew it all apart.

I will watch with somewhat muted interest in this individual’s attempt at trying to cling to the power he possesses over a political party he grabbed by the throat and turned it into a cult of personality.

media news

Biden gets unfair criticism on this point

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The criticism from right-wing media that President Biden isn’t talking as freely to reporters as his presidential predecessor is unfair to the point of being outrageous.

Donald Trump became (in)famous for spouting off to the media whenever someone showed up with a notebook, a microphone and a TV camera. He would ramble on and on, saying virtually nothing of substance and often would spout a lie or three while yapping to the media.

It was all a show, given that he labeled the media “the enemy of the people” and the purveyor of “fake news.”

Joe Biden prefers to let the White House press secretary, Jan Psaki, do the talking. I am all right with that as long as Psaki tells us the truth. I get that she has been needled for muttering too many “I’ll have to circle back” responses to questions she cannot answer directly.

President Biden is going to stage his first full-blown presidential news conference later this week. It’ll be something of a show, replete with a bit of presidential pomp and panache. Now that I think about it, we might see a bit of a return to the way President Kennedy would demonstrate his legendary quick wit, turning his press briefings into media events.

It’s all OK with me. Just make sure, Mr. POTUS, that your press flack tells us the truth when the media push her for answers.

national news

What happened to 11th Commandment?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ronald W. Reagan would be an angry man today.

President Reagan once coined a phrase that became known as the 11th Commandment, which stated that “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans.” The Republican Party of President Reagan’s era wasn’t always faithful to that “commandment.”

Today it is so far removed from that dictum that the party bears virtually no resemblance to the conservative political organization that Reagan helped reconstruct in the 1980s.

Instead, the nation is watching a party being retooled yet again by the latest GOP president, who is launching a nationwide campaign against any Republican who dared stand against him while he committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the U.S. of A.

Donald Trump is now targeting, for example, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, who had the temerity to resist the Big Lie that Trump keeps telling that the Georgia presidential election was “stolen” from Trump and given to President Biden. The ex-president is backing a GOP primary opponent against Raffensperger, whose only “sin” was to, um, follow the damn law!

Trump looks to take down Raffensperger in Georgia – POLITICO

Trump has taking aim as well across the nation, seeking to destroy GOP politicians who just couldn’t bring themselves to practice blind fealty to the disgraced former president.

If only President Reagan were around today to take the former Numbskull in Chief to the proverbial “woodshed.”

national news

Indictment coming? Hmm?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The immediate past president of the United States reportedly is plotting his political future while he spends time at his posh resort in South Florida.

Hold on a minute, Donald Trump.

The ex-president’s political future might be decided by at least two prosecutors up and down the East Coast. One of them, District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in Manhattan, N.Y., reportedly is assembling a mountain of evidence related to assorted tax, campaign finance and related matters associated with Trump. He keeps calling back a former Trump lawyer/fixer/convicted felon for more information on what Trump did before he was elected president. Vance also has summoned the help of racketeering investigators who reportedly are pretty adept at rooting our corruption.

Meanwhile, down yonder in Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis is looking into whether Trump broke state laws by pressuring a Georgia secretary of state into “finding” enough votes to flip that state’s presidential election total; President Biden won that state’s electoral votes, but Trump reportedly wanted officials to dig up enough votes to give Trump the electoral victory.

I haven’t a clue as to either of these probes will produce indictments. However, I have heard reports from prosecutors experienced in these matters who suggest that Cyrus Vance Jr. is closing in on a near-certain indictment of the former president on an array of campaign finance violation and/or tax violations. He was able to secure those elusive tax returns that Trump has fought so hard to keep from public view.

So, does Donald Trump have a political future, such as a potential return to the presidential campaign trail in 2024? I’ll venture a wild guess and suggest that any future that awaits Donald Trump likely won’t include raw politics.

At least that is my sincere hope.

national news

He won’t run again?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Under normal circumstances, I might not place too much stock in what a university professor predicts for our nation’s political future.

Then again, any prediction involving Donald John Trump ought to get our attention. It gets mine for sure.

Allan Lichtman has predicted the winner of every presidential election seemingly since The Flood. He now says that Trump won’t run for the Republican Party presidential nomination nor will he run as a third-party candidate in 2024. He also says President Biden likely will run for re-election next time despite the fact that he will be 82 years of age were he to take office for a second term.

Lichtman is an American University political historian. He said Trump would win in 2016 despite every pundits’ prediction that Hillary Clinton would win in a breeze. Then the bottom fell out of Trump’s term and Biden won handily, which Lichtman saw coming as well.

As for the ex-president’s future, Lichtman doesn’t see it bearing much political fruit. And as for Biden’s future, that remains to be seen as well, given all that can go wrong between now and, say, the end of the 2022 midterm election.

Still, I am going to cling to the hope that Professor Lichtman’s prognostication skills hold up and that Trump really and truly is gone forever from the nation’s political scene.

Trump well might be indicted for campaign finance fraud and for coercing Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn a statewide election that went to Joe Biden in 2020.

As the Miami Herald reports: Worse for Trump is that, “He’s got $400 million-plus in loans coming due. His brand is failing. His businesses are failing. He has a huge IRS audit. He doesn’t hold office anymore. He’s lost his Twitter feed,” Lichtman told me. That’s a lot of baggage for somebody to run for president, he added.

Professor who’s predicted presidential winners since ’80s says Trump won’t be a candidate in 2024. He’s probably right | Opinion (yahoo.com)

Here’s hoping Trump’s fortunes continue to crater.