Tag Archives: Trump

national news

Going to wait for nominee

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Running a blog allows me to make command decisions without consulting with another human being … so I have done that very thing.

I have decided to wait until Thursday night to watch the Republican National Convention that will send Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance off to battle against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

The RNC has nothing to offer me until the nominees take the microphone.

Why wait? Well, Trump says he’s rewriting his acceptance speech, crafting a document he says will stress unity.

Hmm. Do you believe him? Well, in truth neither do I.

But I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt simply by waiting to hear what the GOP nominee says when he takes the stage.

I am sure the delegates and many TV viewers will be emotionally charged when they see Trump, injured in that assassination attempt over the weekend. I won’t be caught up in the emotion of the moment, but I will be caught up in the context, tone and tenor of his remarks.

Trump has crafted his political career around rhetoric that seeks to divide Americans. He’s been good at it, too. I’ll give him plenty of credit for the success he has enjoyed.

How does he change gears, shift direction and come at us with a unification speech? Beats the daylights out of me.

I also am dubious on two other points: that he’ll actually deliver a unity speech and on whether he will be faithful to that promise in the rare probability that he does deliver it.

Donald Trump, political news

We have dumbed down our standards

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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

Graham mounts pitiful defense

Lindsey Graham has mounted what only can be called a pitiful defense of the guy he once determined was unfit for public office.

The South Carolina Republican U.S. senator has become a first-degree, top-tier suck-up to Donald J. Trump.

Trump over the weekend used Hitleresque language to describe immigrants, saying they are “poisoning” out nation’s blood. “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker pressed Graham on what Trump said, asking him if the ex-POTUS’s rhetoric caused him concern.

Oh, no. Graham said we should watch his actions, that it doesn’t matter what Trump says. What a line of BS.

Trump’s actions, I need to remind the senator, mirror quite nicely what he has said about many individuals. So, when he says people “poison” our blood, or calls his critics “vermin,” he is charting a path straight down the steps of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Putin and other despots he reportedly admires.

Pathetic.

crime news

Baffled beyond belief

Let me be abundantly clear about the state of play in the upcoming 2024 presidential election campaign.

I cannot understand and never will accept how it is that a former POTUS, twice impeached while he was in office who now stands indicted on allegations that he committed 91 felony crimes remains the favorite among those who subscribe to a major political party.

And that they are poised to nominate him to run for the office he lost in the previous election even if he is convicted of any of the felonies. 

I need someone to explain to me how a voting public can be so ignorant and blind to the reality posed by the consequences of a potential conviction. The man could face a sentence of effectively serving the rest of his life in prison.

Still, he might be nominated by the Republican Party to run for the presidency … yet again!

What the hell is wrong with this picture?

Donald Trump remains the top candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. He won’t show up for presidential debates to face his gaggle of GOP primary foes. His legal team is seeking to stall the start of four criminal trials in which Trump is a criminal defendant.

He said if he’s elected to the presidency, that he will be “the retribution” of those who believe he has been done wrong. He would pardon himself and the 1/6 traitors who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election by launching the assault on our Capitol Building.

Some of Trump’s primary foes say his conduct was abhorrent and wrong … but they’d still support him if he’s the nominee.

Good grief!

I stand behind my belief he won’t be nominated. He might not even be eligible to run for office, given the Constitution’s stipulation that anyone who commits an insurrection or gives “aid and comfort’ to those who do is disqualified.

How in the world, though, have we come to the point where this is even a discussion topic?

crime news

Race to make history?

One of three people appears set to make history by being the first individual ever to indict a former president of the United States.

Who will get there first?

Will it be U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis or Manhattan, N.Y., District Attorney Alvin Bragg?

I won’t lay down a wager. One of ’em appears set to pull the proverbial trigger on Donald J. Trump. That would be DA Bragg, who appears ready to issue an indictment alleging that a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star from Trump wasn’t properly reported by the Trump Organization.

Whoever goes first well might give the other two political cover to act as they should and indict the former POTUS for, oh, let’s see: inciting the 1/6 insurrection, squirreling classified documents from the White House illegally at his glitzy joint in south Florida, seeking to overturn 2020 presidential election results by demanding that Georgia officials “find” enough votes to turn the state’s electoral college tally to Trump’s favor.

All of those allegations appear solid to me. However, it’s no one’s call except for the prosecutors who are examining this stuff.

The ex-POTUS is heading for some very bad news.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Does he deserve a full sendoff?

A member of my family today posed a question I’ve not yet heard anyone else ask out loud.

“Do you think,” my family member asked, “that if Joe Biden is still around whether he would grant Donald Trump a full state funeral in case Trump were to die while Biden is in office?”

I don’t need to ask for a show of hands, but I’d bet real American money that more than one of us has given that question some thought.

I am one American who has thought it … but never said it publicly.

Suppose that the former president is not yet indicted, or tried or convicted of a crime before he keels over. Does he deserve a state funeral, the kind given, for example, to former President George H.W. Bush? If he does, who should show up? Who would pay their respects to the 45th POTUS?

To be sure, I would not be one of them. Trump still seems to command a substantial enough following to attract a large crowd of admirers to whatever funeral is arranged.

Does he lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda? Does the current president order flags lowered to half-staff? Does any dignitary whom Trump hasn’t insulted, vilified or defamed dare speak on his behalf? Do Americans take any salute to Trump seriously?

You see, these are the kinds of things that rattle around in my noggin these days as I watch the drama play out into whether the Justice Department or local district attorneys are going to indict the ex-POTUS and then put him on trial for multiple crimes.

One of them happens to be inciting an insurrection against the very government he took an oath to “defend and protect.”

Absent an indictment and a conviction, though, Trump is entitled to the legal presumption of innocence, which I suppose determines whether he would get a presidential sendoff that some would say he deserves.

The floor is now open for discussion.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

How does he do it?

How in the world — in the name of political sanity — can one explain Donald J. Trump’s bizarre hold on what remains of the Republican Party?

I keep seeing this polling data that has the the twice-impeached former president, who is headed for criminal indictment in the lead (for the moment) for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2024.

Maybe I should be applauding this idiocy. Maybe I should welcome the fact that Trump, who is severely weakened by his moronic behavior and the acknowledgement among many leading GOP pols that he is doomed to fail, might well steal the nomination next year.

Hey, I am biased to the max against this moron. But you know that already. I want President Biden to win re-election next year. I ought to welcome a Trump candidacy. It would be run the way the first two were conducted: slipshod, chaotic, no-preparation, no-platform.

Hey, dude won in 2016. I get that. He lost in 2020 because he couldn’t formulate a vision for the future and then has continued to promote The Big Lie about voter fraud that did not exist.

So, I am going to relax for just a bit and not worry about Trump’s seeming standing among Republicans, who apparently are so damn gullible that they well might nominate a certifiable idiot.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Now will GOP reassess itself?

Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama in the 2012 presidential election prompted the Republican Party to determine it needed a thorough examination of its future.

The party pledged to search its soul and look for ways to appeal to more Blacks, Hispanics, suburban women and other demographic groups known to be friendlier to Democrats.

I don’t know what the party came up with, but four years later it nominated a certifiable racist, sexual assailant, pathological liar as its presidential candidate. Donald Trump then won the 2016 election. The party since has taken many steps backward from where it was when Romney led the GOP.

I want the Republican Party to reassess its position these days as much as Republicans do … if only for different reasons.

I remain committed (more or less) to Democratic Party principles. I also want a return to honest debate pitting philosophies against each other. Today’s Republican Party is too enamored with The Big Lie, with MAGA demagoguery and with fealty to Donald Trump.

Furthermore, I want to state for the record once again that Trump entered politics in 2016 without spending a moment of his disgusting life working to improve people’s lives. Even after serving a term as president, public service remains an unknown concept to Trump.

I would welcome a return to honest and vigorous debate. I relish a good fight between politicians with serious policy disagreements. We aren’t getting that quality of discourse now. Instead, as we just witnessed, we saw a stable of Republicans defeated because they had earned the anointment of the twice-impeached former POTUS, who backed them because they swilled the Big Lie Kool-Aid.

We can do better than that.

Mitt Romney’s narrow loss a decade ago should have taught Republicans a valuable lesson. It didn’t. Maybe now the GOP will heed the message that voters are telling them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

No surprise that Trump would praise Putin

Does anyone really profess to be surprised or amazed that Donald Trump would heap praise on Vladimir Putin over his attempted takeover of a sovereign nation?

Donald, let us remember, once referred to North Korean Marxist dictator Kim Jong Un as a “smart cookie,” and professed to have “fallen in love” with the guy who starves his people to death while living in luxury and spending lots of money developing nuclear weapons.

He also has lamented how strongmen in other countries get tons of praise from local media, apparently ignoring the obvious fact that the government in those countries control the media; that ain’t the case in the United States of America, where the nation’s founders took great care to ensure that the media are free of government interference.

Now he calls his pal Vlad’s declaring the independence of two breakaway Ukraine provinces “savvy” for making that statement. All Putin did was provoke President Biden into invoking economic sanctions against Russia.

Yeah, Donald loves dictators. He wishes he could become one of them. Indeed, he made an effort at it on 1/6 in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The dipsh** should be heading for prison.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

DC riot, national news

No privilege to invoke

Peter Navarro is the latest Donald Trump adviser to face a subpoena by the 1/6 House select committee, which has summoned him to testify before the panel that is searching for the truth behind what happened when the traitorous mob stormed Capitol Hill.

Navarro served as a trade adviser to Trump. He is now trying to invoke “executive privilege” in resisting the committee’s order for him to talk about what he knew about what happened in the White House while the mob was rioting.

Hmm. OK. He has no right under the law to invoke any privilege. There’s that.

Nor does Donald Trump have any right to invoke such privilege. Why? Because he is no longer the president. Joe Biden, the man who beat him in the 2020 election, has declared categorically that he will not allow any executive privilege for his predecessor. There’s that, too.

I’ll restate once more: The committee is legally constituted. It has the authority to order people to testify. The speaker of the House selected the bipartisan panel and gave the committee its assignment: get the truth behind the riot and seek solutions to prevent it from recurring.

Peter Navarro is an economist who provided Trump with advice on trade policy. He has been called a “lousy economist,” but that’s really beside the point. The real point is that he is close to Trump. He knows a lot of what happened on that terrible day. Navarro has been ordered to testify. He faces criminal indictment by the Justice Department if he refuses.

if this guy has a lick of sense — and that’s debatable, to be sure — he will sit before the select committee, take the oath to tell the truth and then … tell the truth.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com