Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news

But … why, RNC?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Republican National Committee is striking back at Donald Trump, who has demanded that Republican politicians cease using his name to promote their candidacies.

The Hill newspaper has reported on the RNC’s response: The letter from RNC chief counsel Justin Riemer says the GOP “has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech, and it will continue to do so in pursuit of these common goals.”

RNC fires back at Trump, says it ‘has every right’ to use his name in fundraising appeals | TheHill

Hmm. I guess my question simply is this: Why would the RNC want to affiliate itself with a twice-impeached and thoroughly disgraced former president?

Just wondering.

Donald Trump, Joe Biden

New POTUS = new style

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s single term as president of the United States seemed as we were living through it like the longest four years of our lives.

Even now, looking back, I cannot get over the prolonged misery of enduring his constant Twitter tirades, his nonsensical encounters with reporters, his endless string of epithets and innuendo.

He’s been away from the White House for 40-something days. It still seems like an eternity, yes?

Which brings me to my point, which is that President Biden’s style remains a refreshing change from the idiocy that Donald Trump brought to the presidency.

Biden lays low. He lets the experts do the talking, such as those with whom he surrounds himself to discuss COVID-related matters. He doesn’t contradict them or, as in one infamous instance, call an expert epidemiologist such as Dr. Anthony Fauci an “idiot” because he said something Donald Trump didn’t want to hear.

It remains a marvel to my eyes and ears to have placed the presidency in the hands of someone who knows the rules of the game and does not seek to shake things and people simply because he can.

We haven’t returned to completely normal behavior. We’re still fighting that pandemic. One aspect of our lives has been restored to what we used to envision, which is that our president is able to behave himself in a manner befitting the high office he occupies.

Donald Trump

Don’t use his name? Sure thing!

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REUTERS/Octavio Jones

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If I were a self-respecting Republican Party politician, I would welcome this bit of news from the thoroughly disgraced ex-president of the United States.

Donald Trump doesn’t want any GOP pol using his name to promote their candidacy. Imagine that, eh?

Trump demands three Republican groups stop raising money off his name (yahoo.com)

He doesn’t want anyone else to trade on his name. He wants to keep that privilege only for himself and his businesses.

Well …

An actual Republican politician should feel fine with disassociating himself or herself from a twice-impeached, twice-tried, possibly soon-to-be indicted individual who disgraced the high office he occupied for four years.

national news

Trump still commands attention

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Jack and I go back a long way, more than 50 years.

He is a friend of longstanding. He also disagrees with me politically. Jack is a supporter of Donald J. Trump; I am not. So, with that background established, he asked me over social media when I am going to look ahead and stop commenting on Donald Trump’s comings and goings. He wonders when I will start thinking critically of Joe Biden.

I will answer my friend here in this brief response. He reads this blog, so I hope he won’t object to my using this forum in that manner.

My intention is to put Trump away as soon as humanly possible. I desperately want to stop commenting on him through this blog. However, he remains something of a political player. He keeps fomenting terrible lies about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election and those lies keep the “base” of voters he commands stirred up. They have swilled the poison he is dispensing. Thus, they remain a political force with which we must reckon.

As for President Biden, I make no secret of my joy at his election. I have mentioned several times over the past year or so that he wasn’t my first choice to run against Trump, but he survived the Democratic Party primary donnybrook. He was nominated and he ran a successful campaign.

I also have been critical of one of Biden’s key Cabinet choices, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. So it is not as though I am going to give the president a pass on every single thing he does or says. Just this week he referred to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to life the mask mandate a sample of “Neanderthal thinking,” which I believe is a bit harsh; I will have more to say on that later.

As long as Donald Trump continues to be “in the news,” I feel compelled to comment on him. I want him to vanish from the headlines. At least, though, I can declare that he isn’t occupying as much of my time as he formerly did.

That’s progress.

national news

Biden paying for lack of ‘smooth transition’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden deserved to have his executive team fully signed on and ready to get to work the moment he pulled his hand off the Bible at his inauguration.

That hasn’t happened. The culprit, from what I have witnessed, was the refusal by his predecessor, Donald Trump, to guarantee a “smooth and seamless transition” after Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

Oh, no. What we got was obstruction, incessant lying about electoral theft, threats of litigation and, finally, a bloody insurrection on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

The result is that President Biden has part of the Cabinet in office. Many other key offices, including some Cabinet posts and high-level advisory jobs that have Cabinet-level authority, are still vacant.

To be sure, there have been a hiccup or two among the selections Biden has made. Neera Tanden withdrew her name from consideration as director of the Office of Management and Budget; too many U.S. senators said they couldn’t support her because of some of the mean tweets she published that were critical of Republicans. So, rather than continue the fight, Tanden backed away.

That’s one pick that Biden needs to do over.

As for the others, the Senate has been dragging its feet on some of them. Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland only this week received an endorsement from the Senate Judiciary Committee. He is arguably the key individual who should have been on the job already, but has been held up by partisan politicking. Then we have the Health and Human Services secretary-designate, Xavier Becerra, who needs to take charge of an agency charged with managing the fight against that pandemic.

The Senate has confirmed 10 of 15 Cabinet appointments.

Donald Trump could have greased the proverbial skids for his successor simply by accepting the election results when it became clear to the rest of the world that he had lost to Joe Biden. He didn’t do that. He chose instead to fight. The transition was not “peaceful.” It was violent and it was utterly beyond the pale.

I am heartened to know, though, that President Biden’s years of legislative experience have held him in good stead even as he plods forward trying to fill his executive branch ranks. Imagine the chaos had he entered the presidency with Donald Trump’s blank sheet of government experience or knowledge of how government works.

medical news

Getting a vaccine … is a secret?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

How does one process this bit of news?

Donald and Melania Trump, the nation’s former president and first lady, received a COVID-19 vaccine in January, being among the first Americans to get the shot. But they kept it secret! They did it under the cover of secrecy!

Compare that with the public display by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the current POTUS and VPOTUS, who along with their spouses got their shots in front of cameras.

President Biden and Vice President Harris wanted to make a public show of them getting vaccinated against the killer virus. They chose to lead by example, as opposed to the modus operandi followed by Trump, who continued to give the notion of vaccination the short shrift.

I am scratching my head. Not in disbelief, mind you. I am baffled by the idiocy of the protocol followed by the former administration.

This is how you politicize an action that in a more perfect world should be utterly free of politics. Getting a vaccine against a disease that has killed 500,000-plus Americans ought to be something to be hailed, for government leaders to pronounce loudly.

The news about Donald and Melania Trump, along with Mike and Karen Pence, getting the vaccine in January has just been made public. I am wondering whether the ex-president and ex-VP ever intended to say whether they got the vaccine.

The politics of this news tracks the same way as MAGA followers and others on the far right have sought to denigrate mask-wearing as a deterrent against the virus. They disparage those who wear masks, preferring to congregate closely among themselves, shouting loudly and proudly their approval of rhetoric they endorse.

This past week’s meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., could provide some evidence of the folly of those who continue to disrespect the notion of masks and social distancing. The crowds that gathered in the meeting hall comprised individuals who shunned the masks. Will there then be an uptick, or even a serious spike, in infection rates among those who attended the CPAC gabfest?

Time well could reveal much about the wisdom of politicizing vaccinations and taking measures to prevent illness or even death.

Donald Trump’s secret is now known. He got the vaccine. How might that bit of news play among those who (a) follow Trump’s rhetoric over the cliff and (b) denigrate the very action their hero took to keep himself safe.

Hmm …

national news

Just a hunch about Trump

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hunches usually aren’t very reliable barometers of political trends and Lord knows my own hunches have let me down a time or three.

However, I am going to toss one out there for you to ponder. It is that Donald John Trump will not run for president in 2024.

He stood before the Conservative Political Action Conference crowd over the weekend and said he won’t form a third political party. Trump wants to remain active in GOP politics. They took a straw poll of CPAC attendees and Trump finished first with 55 percent of those attending who said they wanted him to be the Republican Party presidential nominee in ’24.

The ex-president no doubt took all of that to heart. He might run again for the office he lost bigly after a single term to Joe Biden.

But … why? How? To what end?

Trump is facing multiple crises unrelated to politics. They are totally related to whether he will face criminal charges regarding his business “empire.” How in the name of rational thought does someone run for president if he is indicted by a grand jury for, let’s see, campaign finance violations? Or income tax fraud?

How does even someone as slippery as Donald Trump do that?

Trump once boasted that he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” A lot of us laughed when he said it in 2016. His acquittal in the Senate trial of inciting an insurrection wiped that smile off my face.

None of that means he will be able to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. Yeah, he’s got that faithful base. Is it sufficient to carry him to victory in the primary with the potential crises exploding all around him?

That hunch of mine says, um, “no.”

I just hope it doesn’t let me down again.

national news

Die, Big Lie … just die!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Some lies take on lives of their own.

The Big Lie from the 2020 presidential election is one of them. It won’t die. It can’t die. It lives in what passes for the hearts and minds of millions of Americans who are willing to swill the poisonous notion that Donald Trump actually won that election despite the numbers that tell us he lost it … bigly!

President Joe Biden beat Trump soundly. Trump, though, keeps feeding the Big Lie to those who are willing to swallow it. He did it again at the Conservative Political Action Conference this past weekend.

Trump repeats false claim he won 2020 election, teases potential future White House bid during CP… – YouTube

He recited the Big Lie. The faithful cheered him on. He kept it up. They cheered some more.

The Big Lie lives on for as long as there are people among us who believe it.

national news

Trump talks to CPAC

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now … that was no surprise. Or was it? Nah. Not even close.

Donald Trump strode to the stage in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference and tore into President Biden and his critics within the Republican Party.

As The Hill reported: “We all knew that the Biden administration was going to be bad, but none of us even imagined just how bad they would be and how far left they would go,” Trump told a crowd of enthusiastic supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Fla.

Sigh …

Trump tears into Biden, GOP critics in first post-presidency speech | TheHill

The ex-president also let it be known that he won’t form a third political party and that he plans to remain active in Republican Party matters well into the future.

I think I’ll just sigh again.

The twice-impeached, the defendant in multiple lawsuits alleging sexual misconduct and the target of potential criminal indictments vows to be a GOP player.

What is undoubtedly most astonishing to me and others is that the GOP faithful appear to be lining up behind this clown. Good luck with that.

My favorite line from Trump’s speech? “If Republicans do not stick together, the RINOs that we’re surrounded with will destroy the Republican Party,” he added. Yep, he called his critics RINOs, Republicans In Name Only.

Wow, man!

I won’t predict it, but I have difficulty understanding how someone so deeply flawed at every level possible can be a factor on the American political stage. It surely must speak to the nature of the modern Republican Party, which is that it is totally without any moral compass.

That fits Donald Trump to the letter. Don’t you think?

national news

Let’s talk about existential threats … OK?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Among the reasons I have welcomed the presidency of Joe Biden is  the return of frank and open discussion by our head of state of existential threats to our nation and to Planet Earth.

Donald Trump called climate change a “hoax”; he said the same thing about the pandemic. He chose to ignore those subjects whenever he appeared in public, which was quite often given his penchant for self-aggrandizement.

President Biden has turned our attention toward issues that really matter. They present serious  threats to all of us.

Climate change? Biden is all in on efforts to combat the change in our worldwide climate. Do not tell me that the bitter cold wave that recently swept in over much of the nation, including Texas, puts the lie to the notion that our climate is changing.

President Biden at least is talking about developing cleaner energy sources, which will — make no mistake about it — produce jobs that could be lost from the fossil fuel industry.

The major beneficiary will be the planet. That’s a bad thing? I think not.

The pandemic? We are welcoming a third vaccine, from Johnson & Johnson. It’s a single-shot dose. It joins Pfizer and Moderna as vaccines that are inoculating millions of Americans each week. Again, Trump chose to downplay the sickness, misery and death that afflicted the nation. Joe Biden is talking openly about it, reminding us to not let up in taking safety measures to prevent infection. Did his predecessor issue such warnings? I cannot remember hearing those warnings fly out of Trump’s blow hole.

Human rights? Donald Trump wouldn’t dare talk about human rights abroad while proclaiming he and North Korea tyrant/despot/killer Kim Jong Un had fallen “in love.” At the very least we are hearing President Biden give needed lip service to the quest for human rights in places where human beings are enslaved, starved, abused by those in power.

Domestic terror? It exists in the form of white supremacists who, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, pose the greatest existential threat of all to Americans. President Biden vows to attack it head-on and is saying so loudly.

These threats have been all but ignored for the past four years. They require laser focus from the president of the United States. I happen to believe President Biden is devoting the attention to all of them that they deserve.