Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump

Trump fills out clown show cast

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Donald J. Trump continues to fill out his cast of Cabinet-level goofballs, fruitcakes and assorted loyalists … just as he promised he would prior to the 2024 presidential election.

The latest cast member to sign on is Linda McMahon, the former exec with the World Wrestling and Entertainment outfit run by her husband, Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon has been nominated to be our nation’s education secretary.

Her education credentials? The silence you hear is evidence that she doesn’t have anything in her background. No administration experience. Nothing, man!

But … she is a Trump loyalist along with attorney general nominee and one-time DOJ investigative target Matt Gaetz, Fox News blowhard and defense nominee Pete Hegseth, Kennedy political scion and anti-vaxxer health and human services boss RFK Jr., and Russian agent and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard.

I mean, good grief! What the hell is the POTUS-elect seeking to do here?

The only good news I can find is that there appear to be enough Republican senators who are finding their long-squishy backbone to block many of the nuttiest of the nut jobs Trump has gathered around him.

Donald Trump

Mika and Joe make nice with Trump?

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Someone will have to explain to me why the liberal establishment has its shorts in a wad over an interview that two MSNBC hosts had with the next president of the United States.

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, co-hosts of “Morning Joe,” went to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald Trump. They said they remain opposed fundamentally to what he intends to do when he becomes president. They said they want to “restart” the dialogue they once had with the future POTUS.

Someone please explain to me why that is a big … deal among those who continue to loathe the future president. You may count me as a “never Trumper” who wouldn’t vote for Trump if he were the last man standing. However, if I was a practicing daily journalist, I would really embrace the chance to talk frankly with him, trying to pin him down on what he intends to do in office.

Brzezinski and Scarborough are real-life wife and husband. I am utterly certain they talked through many nights trying to decide whether this was the right call, given the angry rhetoric they exchanged with Trump in recent years.

Who knows? This effort to restart communication between them and the next POTUS might backfire. If it does, then the critics can bellow “We told you so!” If not, then they are able to do their jobs as journalists and try to plum what passes for a brain in the skull of the next president.

national news

Loser showed grace; the winner showed … up

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It was a little thing, but the gestures spoke volumes about the man who won the 2024 presidential election and the woman who lost it.

Vice President Kamala Harris conceded the election the day after they declared  Donald Trump the winner. In her speech, she told the crowd that she had phoned the president-elect to congratulate him on his victory. The response from her supporters gathered before her was understandably muted. But she made the gesture and acknowledged it publicly with grace and class.

How did Trump respond to his stunning victory? He stood before his rally goers … and didn’t say a single word about Kamala Harris.

To be candid, I found his snubbing of his opponent to be worthy of scorn.

I’ve listened to many winning candidates over many years watching elections and listened to the voice they used to accept victory. To a man, they have always recognized the concession call that came from the loser. To varying degrees, they also managed to speak well of the candidate’s losing effort. You’ve heard it, too: “I want to thank my opponent for the tough campaign and for accepting defeat with grace and dignity.”

We didn’t get that kind of magnanimous gesture from Trump. Nope. He chose to refuse to recognize the history that Harris made as the first woman of color ever nominated to run for the presidency. He also refused to recognize the spirited and, yes, hard-charging campaign she ran.

Am I dismayed at Trump’s lack of class in declaring victory? Yes. Am I surprised? Not one single bit!

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Move over, Paul Revere!

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A supporter of this blog has informed many of my critics that I am now traipsing through some mighty tall cotton.

I need offer a quick-and-clean thank you to this fellow, who I have known for nearly 30 years, dating to when I arrived in the Texas Panhandle to take over as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News.

My friend, a former Randall County judge, has been chiding a critic over the tone he takes in chastising my arguments opposing Donald J. Trump’s choices to join his newly elected administration. He told the critic that “John Kanelis is a modern-day Paul Revere,” while berating him as a “disgrace to our country as you aid and abet the unhinged fool known as Donald Trump.”

See what I mean about the tall cotton reference?

I am not going to accept the Paul Revere reference. That is my friend’s opinion, to which he — and my critic — are entitled. However, my friend is a lawyer, which means he knows the language quite well. He’s a smart guy. I do not know my critic beyond what he says frequently while commenting on my blog; I just know him as an ardent Trump supporter … meanwhile, I am not.

There you go. Step aside, Paul Revere. You have company … I suppose.

military news

Defense pick raises eyebrows aplenty

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Well, ladies and gents, we’re likely going to get a taste of just how loyal the Donald Trump MAGA-cultists can be when the time comes for confirmation hearing of Trump’s choice to lead the world’s most powerful military institution.

“Fox and Friends, Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth is Trump’s choice for secretary of defense. Wow! What a pick!

His credentials? He doesn’t have any. Oh, wait! Hegseth served in the Army National Guard, rising to the rank of captain. That rank doesn’t even rise to the level of “field grade officer.” But … here he is, slated to lead an organization with more than 1.5 million men and women in uniform and prepared to go to war when the commander in chief issues the order.

President Biden’s defense boss is Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star Army general. Trump’s first defense secretary was James Mattis, a retired Marine four-star. Both of those men are eminently qualified.

The Hegseth pick reportedly has raised plenty of brows among Republicans and Democrats who are wondering: What the hell is Donald Trump thinking with this selection?

Hegseth says women’s combat roles hinder our military’s preparedness. Never mind that since 2016, when then-Secretary Ash Carter allowed it, women have served in the Army Green Berets and Rangers and as Navy SEAL operatives … and have held their own with their male colleagues.

Pete Hegseth clearly is not qualified to lead the world’s most lethal fighting force.

We’re going to see how loyal the U.S. Senate majority is toward the MAGA cultist in chief. My guess? It won’t be pretty.

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‘Little Marco’ gets nod at State

As the world watches Donald Trump build a presidential administration, it is good to wonder: Who among these senior officials is going to have a lick of influence on the guy who selected them?

I ask as reports today tell us that Sen. “Little Marco” Rubio will get the nod as secretary of state. Rubio once was a ferocious critic of the next president. He ran against him for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination. He drew plenty of fire from Trump, who labeled him “Little Marco” in a successful effort to knock him down to size.

Marco Rubio also used to be a fierce hawk against Russia, against North Korea, China and once called for comprehensive immigration reform.

Hmm. Where is this going? Trump wants to make nice with Russia, likely seeks to resume the romantic correspondence with Kim Jong Un and will have nothing to do with reforming our national immigration policy.

The question of the moment is this: How will Little Marco be able to influence the POTUS on anything? Which one of these Rubio incarnations will show up for work, will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing? For that matter, how will any of the individuals Trump has chosen affect decisions that are coming down the road?

I will say this about Rubio. He is qualified to be secretary of state. He served for many years in the Senate and has shown a level of expertise on foreign policy that the new administration will need.

The question, though, remains the same. Will any of that experience and moxey matter when the new president faces critical mass at decision time?

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Sexual register at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?

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A fellow I have known for many years posed a notion on social media that I want to share.

My friend wrote: Now that Trump is president-elect will 1600 Pennsylvania Ave be listed in the sexual register.

I couple of things jump out at me to make such an appealing idea even possible.

First, none of the matters for which Donald Trump was involved occurred in the District of Columbia. Second, I doubt seriously that any of the jurisdictions where Trump misbehaved have imposed such a label on where he lives, nor do I think that such a designation would be transferrable.

Still, such an idea does sort of get my funny bone to act up.

Americans have elected a convicted criminal to the nation’s highest office. His myriad charges do include such sexual misconduct, the kind that ought to carry some serious repercussions.

Such as attaching a “sexual predator” sign on the door of where he will live for the next four years.

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Moral standards have vanished

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I will go to my grave flummoxed, flabbergasted and frustrated totally over the lack of moral standards we now require of candidates for president of the United States.

We have elected an individual who has admitted to serial philandering, admitted to grabbing women by their private area, been convicted of 34 felony counts associated with his campaign, been convicted of raping a journalist and convicted of paying an adult film actress $130,000 to keep quiet about a one-night stand that the president says never occurred.

That just scratches the top of my itchy head.

It’s OK for a candidate for the highest office in land to do those things, if you believe the horsesh** pushed by Donald Trump’s loyal cult followers.

What is going to happen when a politician from the Democratic Party side of the aisle gets caught committing any one of those things enumerated here? The MAGA crowd will go ballistic. So will the Oval Office occupant. They will engage in selective outrage because their guy got away with it.

It is disgraceful, disgusting and duplicitous conduct at its worst.

Donald Trump

Trump countdown is on

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Some of us out here have commenced the countdown clock to determine when Donald J. Trump is going to commit a profoundly foolish, stupid and potentially illegal act when he assumes the presidency on Jan. 20.

I am not making any bets. I don’t know when it will occur. I do have some notions, though, about what Trump might seek to do when he takes his hand off the holy book on inauguration day.

He could:

  • Pardon the traitors who were jailed for their attack on the government on Jan. 6, 2021.
  • Issue an executive order establishing a sky-high tariff on imported goods, which could trigger an inflation rate we haven’t seen in many decades.
  • Call Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and promise to end any support for Ukraine, which would clear the deck for Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
  • Issue another executive order calling for the mass deportation of 11 million U.S. residents who are here illegally.
  • Call flag officers back to active duty and then order them court-martialed for comments they made about Trump being a fascist. I am researching that idiotic notion to see if it’s legal. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Will he do any of them? Beats the daylights out of me. I’m just speculating, because that’s all I can do sitting here at some distance.

None of this, of course, includes any of the idiotic pronouncements he could make. I am wondering what could be the memorable from his second inaugural speech. The first one gave us “the American carnage ends” immediately. It didn’t.

The second Trump term well could be as chaotic as the first one.

Let’s all hold on with both hands.

national news

Joe Biden: institutionalist

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Joe Biden’s love of tradition and his inherent grace were on full display today as he welcomed his successor to the job he is about to inherit.

President Biden, to put it bluntly, has demonstrated tangibly that he is a far better man than Donald J. Trump ever thought of being.

Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris continues to send tremors throughout the world as leaders seek to assess what all this means for U.S. standing in the world community.

I also need to remind anyone who needs reminding that Joe Biden today offered the very thing that his predecessor, Trump, denied him when Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election: a peaceful transfer of power.

Biden values the tradition associated with the presidency. He vowed today to provide a complete and peaceful transfer of power to the Trump team. I shake my head in amazement that President Biden would be so inclined. But that’s why he was elected POTUS in the first place. Biden represents the very best among us. Trump embodies, well, far less of American culture.

I don’t expect Donald Trump to reflect for a nano-second on what President Biden has pledged. He isn’t wired to reflect on anything other than how he can benefit. Still, I just want Joe Biden to know that his magnanimity has not gone unnoticed.

Well done, Mr. President.