Tag Archives: Access Hollywood

Donald Trump, political news

We have dumbed down our standards

1 Comment

You are welcome to conclude whatever you wish about the statement that will follow in this blog … such as that I am the “master of the obvious.”

I don’t mind. Nor do I care.

The trial in New York on the hush money payment POTUS No. 45 made to Stormy Daniels — aka Stephanie Clifford — is revealing in the starkest terms possible how our political climate has dumbed down voters’ concern about character in the candidates who seek public office.

I haven’t been following the trial too closely, but I have gleaned enough from it to realize many things about the support that the one-time Philanderer in Chief is able to claim among the MAGA cultists around the country.

We have learned in graphic detail about Clifford’s assertion over what happened in the hotel room that night in 2006. The future POTUS’s wife had just given birth to his fifth child, yet there he was in the room dressing down to his silk skivvies asking the adult film actress to take a tumble with him.

Do you remember the day — I sure do! — when that kind of conduct was considered a deal-breaker? How about the sickening “Access Hollywood” recording in which the Groper in Chief boasted how he would grab women by their private parts? And that they enjoyed it because he was “famous”?

I do not get any of this! So help me, I do not understand how an individual who once held the office of POTUS, who wants it once again, continues to receive the level of support from American voters who do not now seem to give a sh** about the acknowledged behavior of the man who seeks their vote.

This drama will play out in due course. I am left to wonder: Are we really ready to toss aside the standards we once set for the people from whom we choose to lead this great country?

God help us if we take that perilous path.

national news

Just think, the evangelicals still love this guy

A social media meme showed up on my Facebook news feed. I thought about posting it on my blog, but decided against it.

Why? Because it contains language I don’t like using, even when it comes from other sources.

It comes from the guy who would become the 45th president of the United States. It was recorded in 2005 when he was speaking to an “Access Hollywood” personality.

He talks about wanting to “fu**” a married woman, how he “moved on her like a bitch.” He talked about this person’s “big phony ti**.” He said he could “grab her by the pu**y” because he was a celebrity.

I read that meme time and again. Each time I came away even more astounded at how the evangelical Christian movement can continue to stand by Donald John Trump.

Has this guy changed since he talked so crassly, so callously? I mean, fundamentally changed? No. He is the precisely same individual.

Absolutely astonishing.

national news

Ryan speaks out, draws Trump’s rage; imagine that!

Now you tell us, Mr. Speaker.

The former speaker of the U.S. House, Paul Ryan, has revealed why he left public life. He couldn’t stand working with Donald J. Trump.

Ryan is quoted in a new book about his time as speaker during the Trump Era. He says in Tim Alberta’s book, “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the rise of President Trump,” that he sought to protect the president from his “knee-jerk” policy making instincts.

According to the Washington Post: “We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions.”

Of course, Trump’s reaction was his normal way of responding to such criticism. He flew into a Twitter rage. He called Ryan a “lame duck.” He launched a series of tweets calling Ryan an ineffective speaker who lost Republican control of the House.

Again, as the Post reported: “We’ve gotten so numbed by it all,” Ryan said. “Not in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face.’ Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.”

Yes, that is the kind of individual the nation elected as president. Ryan — a man I do not necessarily support on a policy basis — nonetheless is a man of moral character.

Donald Trump is hardly a “good person,” which I am certain is what rankled Ryan from the outset of the men’s professional relationship.

I guess what makes me angry is that it took Ryan this long to acknowledge what many of us already knew or believed about Trump. He maintained a mostly silent posture while Trump was hurling insults at foes and behaving boorishly on the world’s most public and visible stage.

I’ll give Ryan credit for this, though: He disinvited Trump while the 2016 Republican nominee was campaigning for the presidency in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump revealed how would grab women by their “pu***.”

But then Trump got elected. Ryan had to work with the new president. Oh, but it got to be too much, according to what we have learned.

Trump’s reaction to Ryan’s candor seems to validate the former speaker’s frustrations. Imagine that.

national news

‘She’s not my type’?

OK, Mr. President, here is what I heard you say in response to the allegation from writer E. Jean Carroll that you attacked her some years ago.

She says you raped her. You contend it didn’t happen.

Then you said, “She’s not my type.”

Is that some sort of an admission, Mr. President, that if E. Jean Carroll was your “type” that you might have, oh, sought to have your way with her? I mean, you admitted to such boorish behavior in that “Access Hollywood” interview you did in 2005 with Billy Bush, correct? That was you on the recording who said you could grab women by their “pu***,” because you’re such a “celebrity.” Wasn’t it?

Of course, no one can corroborate what she accused you of doing, although a couple of individuals she allegedly told at the time have confirmed that she did tell them “in the moment” that you did what she alleged. Oh, and your statement about having never “met” her has been more or less debunked by that picture of the two of you yukking it up; I believe your first wife Ivana is present in the picture, too. Hey, maybe we ought to ask her. Don’t you think?

This “not my type” denial, Mr. President, is your typically crass response to these serious allegations.

It just goes to show — at least it does to me — what a sickening individual you are.

national news

Here we go again, another sexual assault allegation against POTUS

Oh, brother. It never seems to stop.

I believe the number of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault has risen to 15. The latest accusation comes from a journalist who said the future president of the United States attacked her in 1995 in a dressing room.

The woman’s name is E. Jean Carroll, who was writing for Elle magazine at the time. Trump was married to the second of his three wives when the incident allegedly occurred.

Trump, quite naturally, denies the event occurred. He denies even meeting Carroll. Except that the accuser has produced a picture showing her with her husband at the time meeting Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, around 1987.

I must point out that Carroll is a Democrat. She voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She has given money to Emily’s List, a group formed to promote female candidates for public office.

Still, this accusation is troubling in the extreme. What I find so amazing about it is that Carroll’s story mirrors what Trump said in 2006, that he was able to grab women by their genitals because of his “celebrity” status. Yep, the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording lays out what Trump has acknowledged being able to do.

Now we have a woman who has come forward. She says Trump actually raped her. And, oh yes, she still has the clothing she was wearing at the time of the alleged attack … and she says she’s never washed it!

Well now. Where do you suppose this story might go?

national news

U.S. has set a new standard for morality

Call me old-fashioned. Maybe even a bit of a prude — when we’re talking about officials who hold high public office.

Thus, when I hear the former director of the FBI declare that the president of the United States is “morally unfit” to hold the office, I nod my head in agreement.

James Comey delivered a blistering attack on Donald Trump, saying that the president’s moral character doesn’t measure up to the office he won in the 2016 election.

Comey — whom Trump fired a year ago because of what he called “the Russia thing” — cited a couple of key examples: Trump’s willingness to place “moral equivalency” between KKK’men, Nazis and white supremacists and those who protested their march in Charlottesville, Va.; and the president’s history of treating women “like meat.”

To be honest, Comey is far from the first American to declare that Trump is “morally unfit” to be president. Many millions of others of us have been said that before he ever won the election.

And that brings me to the critical point: Americans have redefined morality and have exhibited a clear and present tolerance for the kind of behavior that would have disqualified a presidential candidate.

Let’s get real for a moment, OK?

Trump admitted on that “Access Hollywood” recording how he is able to grab women by their “pu***”; he has admitted publicly cheating on his first and second wives; Trump has stated out loud how he was able to walk into beauty pageant contestants’ dressing rooms while they were half-dressed.

We hear now that Trump’s lawyer paid $130,000 to a porn queen to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she and Trump allegedly had a year after he married Wife No. 3. The president denies the tryst occurred, but … the lawyer paid the money!

Trump has lived an existence filled with excess and moral depravity.

And yet …

He won enough Electoral College votes in November 2016 to enable him to slip into the Oval Office and take the reins of government.

This is the height — or the nadir — of political confusion.

Trump’s base, which comprises a huge chunk of the evangelical Christian movement, gives this clown a pass on his litany of debauchery and infidelity. Why? Because he promises to appoint conservatives to the federal judiciary; and those judges will rule against issues that evangelicals find repugnant: gay marriage, abortion and the prohibition on preaching Scripture lessons in public schools.

James Comey is as correct as he can possibly be in assessing Donald Trump’s moral unfitness for the presidency.

Some of us out here in Voter Land still want officials elected to high public office to represent the best in us. Donald Trump represents damn near the very worst in us.

The man is a disgrace.

national news, political news, religious news

Is Rev. Graham for real? Has he lost his mind?

Warning: The element I have posted with this item contains highly offensive language. It comes from the mouth of the man who would become president of the United States of America.

I apologize for displaying it here, but it is critical to a point I want to make.

The second tweet comes from that 2005 recording of Donald Trump yukking it up with “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush.

The first one comes from the Rev. Franklin Graham, who salutes the president for standing up for “the Christian faith.”

This cuts straight at a point I keep seeking to understand: How in the name of God’s holy word do evangelists such as Rev. Graham stand by this individual?

Sickening.

national news

Yep, Donald J. Trump said it

That didn’t take long.

Just days after reports surfaced that Donald J. Trump sought to slither his way out of remarks he made a dozen years ago to a TV entertainment reporter, we find out that the man who would be president made the hideous remarks.

Billy Bush, the disgraced “Access Hollywood” host to whom Trump bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, has written a New York Times essay that shoots down the assertions that Trump has made in private.

Trump reportedly told associates in the White House that the audio recording heard around the world in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign were made up. The voice wasn’t his, he said.

It makes me wonder: Who in the world does the president think he’s kidding with that ridiculous assertion?

Bush writes in the Times: Of course he said it. And we laughed along, without a single doubt that this was hypothetical hot air from America’s highest-rated bloviator. Along with Donald Trump and me, there were seven other guys present on the bus at the time, and every single one of us assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.

It damn sure was real, man.

Read the rest of the Times essay here.

The revelation that Trump made those remarks in 2005 and Bush’s reaction to it in the moment cost the host his gig as a co-host of “Today.” He was let go by NBC and was thoroughly disgraced.

So it appeared that Trump sought to persuade White House aides that Bush was canned for no reason.

Ridiculous … in the extreme.

Mr. President, you are not president of a nation inhabited by 300 million-plus rubes.

entertainment news, national news

Trump seeks to play us as fools

Donald J. Trump was caught blabbing to an entertainment host about how he treats women. He treats them badly, according to the recording.

Trump then acknowledged when the recording became known that it was “locker room talk.” He blew it off.

Oh, but now the president says in private the “Access Hollywood” audio is fake. It’s not his voice.

The president’s penchant for delusion is stunning. He also seems to believe that the public that knows what it heard is willing to accept this lout’s denial that he said what we heard him say.

I’ll add here that Billy Bush, the TV host caught laughing and carrying on when Trump talked in the 2005 recording about grabbing women by their private parts lost his job over his role in the hideous recording.

So now the president is suggesting that Bush got fired … for nothing? Is that what the groper in chief is telling us?

Someone has to explain this

And then there’s this: The president reportedly has reopened that idiotic “birther” controversy involving former President Obama. Trump has been at the forefront of the lie that Obama was not born in this country and, thus, was not eligible to run for the presidency.

Weird.

entertainment news

Trump now says ‘Access Hollywood’ tape is fake … eh?

My head is about to explode.

Donald John “Groper in Chief” Trump Sr. now suggests that the audio recording that almost covered him up in some serious political doo-doo might be a fake.

I’m talking about that 2005 recording of Trump boasting about how he could grab women by their private parts because he’s such a star, a celebrity. That status, he boasted to “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush, gave him license to do terrible things to women.

It’s Trump’s voice on the recording. Of that, anyone who’s heard it can say with supreme confidence.

If the recording is not Trump, that it’s a fake as he reportedly told a U.S. senator, then who is it? Did someone impersonate the man who would become president of the United States?

Read Newsweek story here.

And while I wouldn’t call Trump’s response to the criticism of the recording when it became known in October 2016 an actual apology, he did have an “explanation” of it in real time. Trump called it “locker room talk,” which I guess was his way of acknowledging that he did say those hideous things.

Now he’s trying to, um, take it all back. He’s suggesting the recording is inauthentic.

This won’t surprise readers of High Plains Blogger, but I … do … not … believe the president’s apparent denial. 

The prevaricator in chief, though, seems intent on denying the obvious. Hey, wasn’t he just “telling it like it is”?