Tag Archives: Barron Trump

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Turning the COVID corner? Hah!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

OK, Mr. President, let’s lay it on the table, shall we?

You keep saying we are “turning the corner” on the coronavirus pandemic. That is a lie. Which isn’t a surprise, given your penchant for lying.

Damn near every state in the Union is experiencing an increase in coronavirus infections. Yes, some of those states see a decline in deaths, which of course is good news.

But for criminy sakes, dude, stop lying about “turning the corner.” We aren’t turning anything resembling a corner in this fight.

Joe Biden has built his electoral lead on the back of your consistent denial over the seriousness of the killer disease. Holy cow, man! Didn’t your own infection, or the infections of your wife and son, Barron, teach you anything? Don’t answer that. I know it didn’t.

I’m glad you’re better. I am particularly glad to know that the first lady and young Barron are OK, too. Your cavalier attitude about the coronavirus, though, only proves your unfitness for the office you want to keep.

So, with that I guess I could ask you to keep up the charade.

Many millions of us know better than to buy into the nonsense you seek to peddle.

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Melania takes cheap shot at Person of the Year

It’s understandable that someone would want to defend his or her spouse against criticism — even if the criticism is deserved.

However, for first lady Melania Trump to level a veiled shot against a teenager who was awarded Time magazine’s coveted “Person of the Year” seems to me to be in poor taste.

Donald Trump saw fit to fire off a Twitter message aimed at 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, a climate change activist. He told her to “chill,” that she needs to curb her anger. The president of the United States ought to commit to more constructive pursuits than to insult a girl who won an award that damn near everyone would love to win.

The pushback against Trump was understandable.

Then the first lady weighed in, saying that Greta is an “activist” who “makes speeches.” Therefore, she seems to imply, Greta is fair game.

Good grief, Melania. The point of her criticism of Greta was in response to critics of an impeachment witness who mentioned the Trumps’ 13-year-old son, Barron, during her testimony. Mrs. Trump said Barron “is not an activist who travels the globe” speaking out against climate change.

I suppose Greta Thunberg’s activism does expose her to criticism. But from the president of the United States? Really?

If only POTUS had kept his Twitter device under wraps.

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Now that we’re talking just a bit about Barron Trump …

Barron Trump, the teenage son of Donald and Melania Trump, has been thrust into the news, if only for a little while.

Spoiler alert: I am not going to say a single negative thing in this blog post about Barron. Are we clear?

I do want to commend the young man’s parents. They have done a remarkable job of keeping this youngster out of public view. We rarely see Barron in the company of his parents, or his siblings.

Think of all the photo opportunities that prior first families took to make sure we saw the president and first lady in the company of their children. The Obamas were quite adept at showing us their daughters; the same can be said of the Bushes; the Clintons, too, were photographed often with their daughter, Chelsea, who we got to watch grow up before our eyes; the elder Bushes’ kids were grown; so were the Reagans’ children; we also saw a good bit of the Carters’ youngest child, Amy, who lived with them in the White House; I remember when the Fords moved in and their youngest child, Susan, became a de facto first lady, standing in at official functions when her mom was hospitalized with breast cancer.

Barron Trump is the youngest child of the president. He resides far outside the public’s prying eyes. He attends school and does whatever he does when he goes home.

I think his parents should be commended for the shield they have thrown around him, protecting him from the paparazzi who likely would go to any length to snap pictures of the youngster.

All of this is my way of saying that the ruckus caused by the professor who tossed Barron’s name out there during the impeachment hearing was made all the more remarkable by the fact that we have seen or heard so little about the young man since his father took office nearly three years ago.

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She was wrong to mention Barron, but then again …

I won’t back away from my belief that Professor Pamela Karlan erred in mentioning Barron Trump, the president’s youngest child, in her testimony this week before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

She sought to make a quip about how the Constitution doesn’t allow presidents to create nobility among citizens, saying that even though he could name his son “Barron,” he couldn’t make him a “baron.” Critics jumped all over Karlan, who later apologized for her remark.

I want to add that she said nothing critical about the boy. There was no snarky intent directed at the teenager.

I also want to point out that previous first sons and daughters haven’t escaped the public’s barbs. Indeed, those children of presidents have absorbed plenty of hurtful punishment from cruel Americans.

Do you remember snide remarks made about, oh, Amy Carter, or Chelsea Clinton, or Barbara and Jenna Bush, or Malia and Sasha Obama? For that matter, do you remember, too, how critics of President Obama questioned his birth, his faith?

Look, children of presidents are off limits. Professor Karlan did not need to invoke Barron Trump’s name while making some sort of silly quip about constitutional limitations on the presidency. Then again, what she said was bland compared to the poisonous rhetoric that’s been thrown at presidential children over many years.

Let us just not go there. Hmm?

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Professor Karlan learns a tough lesson

“Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.”

So said first lady Melania Trump via Twitter in response to a university professor’s unfortunate invoking of Mrs. Trump’s son, Barron, during testimony today before the House Judiciary Committee.

Professor Karlan said that while it is all right for the president to name his son “Barron,” he couldn’t “make him a baron.”

That drew the expected criticism.

Frankly, she deserved to take the hit for the remark, for which she apologized.

Now, this likely won’t quell the critics. It should, but they’ll continue to yammer at her. We have learned in this political climate that apologies often never go far enough to absolve someone from the transgression they commit.

In this instance, Pamela Karlan’s mistake was clearly defined. Politicians’ children should be off limits … always! She crossed a line that was equally defined.

I am heartened to have listened to her apology as she made it. I am guessing Karlan might have known of the consequence of that mistake the moment she uttered it.

The heated debate in Washington is only going to get even hotter as this impeachment matter progresses toward a full vote in the House of Representatives. The president and his key aides have provided all by themselves the world with plenty of grist for which they can be criticized.

The president’s young son is way off limits.

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Professor makes mistake by invoking name of POTUS’s son

Pamela Karlan is one of four constitutional legal scholars who testified today before the House Judiciary Committee.

She was sailing along with her remarks … and then she made a mistake. Professor Karlan said that Donald Trump couldn’t make his son Barron “a baron.”

Bad call, professor.

She drew criticism from Republicans on the committee, who scolded her for invoking the name of the president’s minor son into the debate over whether his father should be impeached by the House.

Karlan deserved the criticism, which also came from first lady Melania Trump, who said the children of politicians are off limits.

Yes, they are.

But then Karlan took a moment at the hearing to apologize for her remarks and to express regret that she made them. I am willing to accept her apology. However, I am not holding out much hope that her critics — and the president’s allies — will do the same.

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Has anyone seen Barron Trump?

I am going to broach a subject that well might expose me to criticism that I am picking on a youngster who doesn’t deserve to be picked on.

Well, I am not going to pick on anyone. I am just curious about something I want to express out loud: Barron Trump, the youngest of the president’s five children, has kept an amazingly low profile while living in the most public of houses.

Do not misunderstand. I am not going to say a single critical thing about the youngster. He is the 13-year-old son of the first couple. He didn’t choose to move into the White House after his father got elected president. He’s there because Mom and Dad are there.

However, as the nation wrestles with the various policies and debates surrounding the Trump administration, I am just struck by the absence of any “optics” involving the president’s young son.

You know what I’m talking about. First couples with young children living with them in the White House often trot the kids out for photo ops. You see pictures of the president being a loving father, playing with the kids, smooching them on the forehead, acting like a dad.

Barack and Michelle Obama lived in the White House with two young daughters. We would see the Obama family on occasion at play.

George and Laura Bush’s twins were more or less grown when W. was elected president, but we saw plenty of the Bush family cavorting and carrying on at the White House.

Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea grew up in the public eye as well and we saw plenty of the three of them during their eight years in the White House.

George and Barbara Bush’s family was grown, too, but the president was proud to show off all five of his children and his many grandchildren.

John F. Kennedy famously was photographed with his two young children — Caroline and John Jr. — during his brief time as president.

I hope you get my point. Barron Trump has four older siblings. Three of them — Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric — have been in the news constantly during Dad’s term in office. A healthy portion of that news coverage has been, oh, less than flattering. Tiffany, the fourth sibling, has kept out of sight, too, but then again, she doesn’t live with the first couple in our house.

As for Barron, well, the young man deserves plenty of privacy. He’s getting it. As a constituent, though, of the president I am left to wonder out loud why we don’t see any evidence of the Trumps acting like a family.

This inquiring mind wants to know.

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Thinking of a particular WH ‘victim’

There’s no getting around these thoughts regarding the first family, the current residents of the White House.

I cannot stop thinking about how Barron Trump is able to cope with the hideous news surrounding his parents — chiefly his father.

I thought specifically about Barron this morning when I heard that the president’s personal lawyer paid that porn queen $130,000 in supposed “hush money.” Stephen Cohen’s payment came from his personal account, according to media reports. It’s not yet known whether Donald Trump knew of the payment in real time, or has just learned about it along with the rest of the world.

The president denies an alleged affair took place with the porn queen. That begs the obvious question: What’s with the six-figure payment?

We’ve heard already that first lady Melania Trump reportedly is furious over these revelations. But … what about the son? How is the boy’s mother handling that in the family’s private moments?

Barron is the sole innocent victim in all of this, as near as I can figure.

Melania Trump’s reported outrage is real, as it should be. The so-called affair took place in 2006, just after Barron’s birth and only about a year after Donald and Melania Trump were married.

Melania was all grown up when she and Donald got hitched. So she’s not an entirely innocent victim here. She knew of her then-new husband’s previous marital infidelity. I mean — damn! — he bragged about it at the time!

Barron, though, is in an entirely different place altogether. He is now nearly 12 years of age. He is coming of age before our eyes. To be candid, Barron is not the first White House child to be subjected to this sort of tawdry gossip. Chelsea Clinton went through much of it herself while her father was being impeached in connection with an “inappropriate relationship” he had with a White House intern.

At this moment, though, I am saying a prayer for Barron Trump.

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Leave the boy alone!

If I had a message to deliver today to my friends and former media colleagues, it would be this: Quit sniping at Barron Trump!

A conservative writer decided to chide the first son, who’s 11 years of age, by the way, for the way he was dressed during a recent public appearance.

“The youngest Trump doesn’t have any responsibilities as the president’s son, but the least he could do is dress the part when he steps out in public,” entertainment reporter Ford Springer wrote in the story published Monday by the Daily Caller, a conservative news publication.

In rushed none other than Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Chelsea wrote in a tweet: It’s high time the media & everyone leave Barron Trump alone & let him have the private childhood he deserves.

You go, Chelsea!

Clinton’s comment drew a word of thanks from Barron’s mother, first lady Melania Trump, who thanked the former first daughter publicly with a tweet of her own.

Living in the fish bowl known as the White House is tough enough. Indeed, young Barron is going to be hearing a lot of harsh criticism leveled at his dad. Having to endure that criticism of his father is difficult all by itself — even if Dad has it coming!

The same can be said of Barron’s fully grown siblings: Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric. They’re in the public arena, getting involved with policy matters that affect all Americans.

The boy, though, is off limits!

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Chelsea stands tall in defense of Barron

Barron Trump has joined a club that is almost as exclusive as the one his parents have joined.

He becomes one of the kids who will grow up in the White House. Thus, he has become — to the shame of many — an easy target of ridicule.

Barron doesn’t deserve such treatment any more than one of his predecessors did. And she has come to Barron’s defense. Barron? Meet Chelsea Clinton … if you haven’t met her already.

Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky sent out a tweet over the weekend urging the public to let Barron, who’s 10 years of age, to “be a kid.” If only the Internet trolls out there would back off.

His parents, Donald and Melania Trump, have assumed the highest profile possible as president and first lady of the United States. With that responsibility, though, a lot of attention gets riveted on their son.

It’s good to see Chelsea Clinton come to the youngster’s defense. She knows better than most White House kids about the hurtful things that foes of her parents can sling — not just at them, but at her as well.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/chelsea-clinton%e2%80%99s-years-in-the-spotlight-%e2%80%94-from-first-daughter-to-mother-of-two/ar-AAm93OJ?li=BBnbfcL

Indeed, I was privy once to a hideous comment from a local clergyman in Amarillo about Chelsea. I called him on it later in a note I wrote to him. He apologized to me several weeks later.

This social media craze has erupted over the past decade. Barron’s mother has made cyber bullying her main cause as first lady. Barron’s father has used Twitter to insult his opponents and assorted critics during the past year and a half. Clearly there needs to be some serious introspection within the Trump household as it relates to the use of certain social media — and as the first lady starts to ramp up her efforts to end this cyber scourge.

As for the youngster — and I won’t repeat some of the crap I’ve heard said about him — he doesn’t deserve any of the kind of abuse that’s being flung in his direction.

He is a boy, for crying out loud! As for Chelsea, she’s grown into a successful woman — who happens to be a friend of Barron’s half-sister Ivanka, who grew from a child of privilege into a woman who’s carved out her own successful life.

I now will doff my proverbial hat to Chelsea Clinton for speaking out nicely on behalf of a youngster who’s now faced with growing up under the brightest glare imaginable.