Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Oh Donald…

Yesterday Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled his case against Donald Trump for the events leading to, and following, the January 6th insurrection.

This is pretty big deal and it feels like all the major investigations into Trump and his various activities are coming to a head. He’s got cases in Florida, now in Washington, and it appears he’ll be facing indictments in Georgia as well.

…and yet there are still a vocal minority, perhaps some 30% of the country, that would still vote for this man and at least so far he’s leading the Republican field for the nomination to run for President.

As John Lennon sang… strange days indeed.

It’s all politics, all the time…

Truly I don’t like to write about politics. It feels to me its a subject that unfortunately devolves -often- into an “us versus them” mentality, with each side defending their turf while finding things to insult about the other.

But so much has happened in the last few days it’s hard not to mention politics.

First up, Donald Trump and the E. Jean Carroll case. From CNN.com:

Jury finds Donald Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in E. Jean Carroll case

I obviously was not in the room with the jurors -who took a grand total of two hours- when they made their decision, but it seems to me what sunk Trump was that old Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” bit he was recorded saying… and the fact that Ms. Carroll’s situation sure did seem to follow those words from Trump himself.

Ms. Carroll was awarded some $5 million and, of course, Mr. Trump went quietly into the night…

Yeah right…

So CNN decides to have a “town hall” meeting with Trump and the timing couldn’t have been better/worse. It came yesterday very soon after the jury’s decision and, of course, Trump being Trump he goes off and says a bunch of crap, including again going after Ms. Carroll, who may well be in her rights, should she choose to, to sue Trump yet again.

But that’s not all. Trump again professes the election he clearly lost was somehow “rigged” (he knows better) and again showed himself to have loyalties toward Putin and against Ukraine and…

…sigh…

It really gets to be a little too much after a while, no?

The second big story involves George Santos, freshman in the House of Representative and serial fabricator who was arrested for a host of financial irregularities and fraud (who knew?). From APnews.com:

George Santos pleads not guilty to federal indictment and says he won’t resign

It doesn’t surprise me that he pleaded not guilty and less surprising he says he won’t resign. If nothing else, he has little to no shame at all.

What is depressing, but surely predictable, is the fact that Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, has avoided saying anything about this situation or Trump’s.

McCarthy’s Speakership exists on the very thinnest of margins, and losing Santos would surely create problems for him in terms of trying to legislate.

But it again makes the entire Republican party look… sleazy.

Not that many of them seem to care at this point.

The indictment…

It was, I felt, bound to happen eventually.

Oh, and yeah, POLITICS FOLLOW… BEWARE…!

Donald Trump, former President of the United States, yesterday was indicted by a New York grand jury.

While we don’t know the exact details of the indictment, we do know it revolves around hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, whom Trump supposedly had an affair with and which needed to be covered up during his run up to the previous election. (You can read more details about what is known about the indictment in this article by Devon Kale and presented on CNN.com).

While there are those in Trump’s camp and the Republican party who are today bemoaning this indictment as an abuse of power or some dark attempt at revenge from the “vicious” liberal cabal out there, the reality is that this is the culmination of years of perhaps too careful investigation and deference to Donald Trump.

The roots of this case go back years and Trump’s one-time chief lawyer, Michael Cohen, was found guilty of aiding in this cover up/use of hush money and served time for this crime.

Mr. Cohen would eventually turn on Trump and the irony of this entire situation is that it appears that had Trump paid off Stormy Daniels from a personal account to keep her “quiet” during the presidential election of 2016, none of this would have unfolded as it did.

My understanding of the situation -and I will readily admit to not being a lawyer… or playing one on TV- is that Trump tried to hide the payoff by having Mr. Cohen pay Stormy Daniels then reimbursing said payoff through the presidential campaign funds, which is a no-no.

But I suspect this indictment has more teeth than just this one payoff, if we are to believe the early reports that there may be over 30 alleged crimes listed in the indictment.

Here’s the thing, though: This is very likely only the first of several possible indictments Trump will very likely face in the near future.

Others far more invested in this than I have noted the hush money/Stormy Daniels affair isn’t nearly as “serious” as Trump’s attempts to subvert the election of 2020 or his hand in the January 6th storming of the Capitol or the discovery of Top Secret files at his Mar a Largo residence.

All three of these issues are currently in the hands of various prosecutors and it would not shock me if we start to see more indictments pop up in the coming months… if not earlier.

Which leads us to the upcoming presidential election.

You have Joe Biden already announcing, for all intents and purposes, his desire to seek re-election and, on the Republican side, it appears that Donald Trump is the favorite to be the candidate there.

Which must be making Republicans really nervous.

If more indictments pop up, at what point will Trump’s candidacy be viewed as fatally damaged? So far, the only candidate that seems to get any press outside of Donald Trump is Florida’s current governor Ron DeSantis and, though it hurts to admit I’m a Floridian, I feel like his fan base is very shallow and limited.

He may do reasonably well in my home state (another painful admission) but I wonder if his appeal extends anywhere past the state’s borders. Recent polls seem to attest to that…

Fox poll shows Trump’s lead over DeSantis growing

According to the above article:

Trump was the top pick for 54 percent of respondents, who were asked to choose from a list of potential 2024 Republican presidential nominees. DeSantis — who has yet to declare his candidacy, though he is widely expected to — came in as a distant second pick, with 24 percent of the vote. It’s a slight drop in support for the Florida governor, who nabbed 28 percent to Trump’s 43 percent in a Fox poll conducted late last month.

We’re still very early in the whole process but I’m old enough to remember other Governors who seemed strong possibilities to represent either the Democratic or Republican parties and their campaigns fizzled when they moved outside the borders of their state.

So too it might be with DeSantis.

I will say this much: If Trump does once again become the Republican candidate, I envision Biden beating him and likely more handily than before. If DeSantis becomes the candidate, I suspect it will be the same.

Why?

Perhaps I’m very off but it feels like the Republican “brand” has become very bruised -if not outright poisoned- by the events of the last near decade. We’ve lived through Trump’s candidacy and presidency, the events of January 6th, the conservative Supreme Court and its striking of Roe v Wade, the lack of any serious policy that people seem to stand by (notice how the term “woke” has become a catch all phrase to signify… what exactly?!), and figures -especially in the House of Representatives- that are either silly or scary or inept in equal measures.

We see in the Republicans a party that seems to not offer much except near constant hate and division. There are those that feed off those emotions but for others, it becomes nothing less than a drag.

So here we stand, with Trump perhaps finally facing what he’s avoided all his life: Responsibility for his words and actions.

What will come of it?

Stay tuned.

How the mighty have fallen…

There was a time lawyer Michael Avenatti was a regular fixture on certain news shows.

He was brash, charismatic, and represented Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Donald Trump and payments he made to her to keep quiet about an affair he had with her and the non-disclosure agreement (you can read about what happened here).

Michael Avenatti and Stormy Daniels

During this time, Mr. Avenatti wasn’t afraid to call out the Donald Trump on a very public forum and, on the left side of the political aisle, he became something of a celebrity for doing just that.

Welp, if you’ve read the article linked to above, things came crashing down on Avenatti and hard.

Brash talk, charismatic presence… it didn’t matter. Mr. Avenatti was, it turned out, was taking money from his clients even as he presented an avenging angel image. How he could keep such a high profile and appear on news programs as he did and then, behind the scenes, think he could get away with stealing from his clients…

…it’s just unbelievable.

Anyway, he has now been sentenced for his criminal acts to 14 years in prison.

Incredible downfall for someone who looked like he literally had everything going for him!

This ‘N That…

Regarding yesterday’s Super Bowl LV. between Tampa Bay and Kansas City…

…that’s why I don’t make any sports bets. Here are my original predictions regarding the game (this is the original post from the Friday before Sunday’s game)…

While its very tough to bet against Tom Brady, a man who may well be viewed -unless Mahomes or someone else proves better in time- the best Quarterback ever, the fact is that the Bucs are a more flawed team, IMHO, than Mahomes and the Chiefs. It just seems like the Chiefs have more playmakers versus the Bucs.

So my prediction is that the Chiefs will again win (they won last year’s SuperBowl), barring some kind of weirdness.

That’s not to say that I’m rock steady in my prediction.

Whew… thank goodness I was so wishy washy there at the end about my prediction! 😉

Seriously though, I feel I was right about one thing: I said Kansas City would win… barring some kind of weirdness.

I know I’m going to sound like some kind of sore loser (to be very clear: I have no preference to either team) I think there was some really squirrely stuff going on in the first half of the game.

The refs (I know, I know… blame it on the refs!) seemed to be really tough on Kansas City’s defense, like extraordinarily tough. There were some really -again IMHO!- weird/borderline calls and they helped Tampa Bay score and, eventually, run away with the thing. Also, its my understanding one of their better offensive linemen was out due to Covid-19 protocol.

Mind you and having said all that, Tampa Bay’s defense was ferocious and that, perhaps even more than Tom Brady’s usual great quarterbacking, was the key to their win. It’s hard to win a football game -even if you’re a Tom Brady or a Patrick Mahomes- if each play you run has you running for your life. I’ve personally witnessed several times the mighty Tom Brady have some really bad games against my Dolphins (a weird stat is that as great as Tom Brady is against the league in general and as terrible as my Dolphins have been for most of his time while in New England, during his run with the Patriots Brady had a losing record against the Dolphins when playing against them in Miami…7-10!) because they were able to get to him to the point where he was too hurried. At that point, his effectiveness, like Mahomes in yesterday’s game, dropped.

Anyway, congrats and until next year.

******

The second impeachment trial of one Donald J. Trump begins this week. It’s also the start of Joe Biden’s third week in office.

It’s fascinating to see the trajectory of either man.

I feel like opinions regarding Trump continue to deteriorate, at least among the general population versus those who feel themselves to be strong Republicans. That doesn’t mean the impeachment trail with somehow succeed in convicting Trump of the offenses he so clearly was impeached for -the base is strong and it seems Republican politicians are loath to go against them, witness the way they have censured the very few of their representatives for daring to agree with the idea that Donald Trump is indeed guilty.

Having said that, I feel the general public is very much against the more fanatical elements who are so protective of Trump. I further feel like more people have no desire to continue in the QAnon path that some of the Republicans seem to feel is the way to go.

This will play out in time.

Here’s a prediction, though: if indeed the Covid-19 virus is under control by Summer via vaccinations and general governmental competence under Joe Biden, and if people do realize the difference between how Trump handled things and Biden has, and if they realize how incompetent the previous administration was…

Could they somehow come to realize that perhaps -maybe!- the current crop of Republicans are simply not up to the task of taking care of business like the Democrats.

Further, if the economy roars back because of successful Covid-19 treatment, what could the Republican party possibly have to show to voters to get them to vote for them outside of QAnon nonsense?

It could be the start of a very cold winter for the party.

******

Anyway, its Monday, the start of another week,

Let’s make it a good one!

Deep Insecurity…

So the other day, “President” Donald Trump was briefed about the projected path of Hurricane Dorian. Here’s a photograph of that projection and our illustrious leader looking at the graphic. This was the original graphic by the way…

Trump Dorian briefing 2

Here’s a close up of the actual graphic:

Hurricane Dorian

Pretty clear, no?

Welp, “President” Donald Trump goes on to state that, among other states in potential danger is… Alabama. Very promptly, NOAA issues a statement saying Alabama is NOT in danger from this storm. And later on “President” Trump shows up with this chart to PROVE that Alabama was indeed in danger…

U.S. President Donald Trump looks at a tracking forecast map on Hurricane Dorian as he receives a status report on the storm in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 4, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Can’t make it out? Here’s a close up:

Image result for trump weather map

See that black line at the end of the projected path, the one that bulges out and has Alabama now in its…

…sigh…

I just don’t know anymore. Look, Donald, you made a freaking mistake. Nothing big. Hell, if one were to take the original not-childishly-altered chart and project the movement of the storm forward, you could argue that Alabama might be in danger and, hell, a true adult would say so and say its good that Alabama isn’t in the path after all and, hey, no biggie.

Subsequent projections showed the storm didn’t take the path illustrated here after all, and that is what these things are: Projections which can be proven wrong in time (this is why, by the way, the final few projections in these charts are presented without the solid white background. They are far more theoretical at that point).

But no, childish Donald just had to prove when he said Alabama was in danger he was right, dammit, and the evidence he submits to prove it is this outrageously and obviously altered projection map with a (control your laughter) marker line added in to show/justify Donald’s statement that Alabama was in some kind of danger after all.

This is the United States today, folks.

I repeat: Sigh.

Wow… just… wow.

Yesterday it was revealed that President Trump, while delivering a speech for Turning Point USA, a college Republican group, a doctored Presidential Seal appeared behind him…

For those who can’t see the Seal very well and are unfamiliar as to how the real one, here ya go. The fake seal is on the left:

Image result for presidential seal altered

A closer look at the fake:

President seal fake.jpg

Among the things to note: The two-headed bird at the center of the fake seal is a Russian Imperial symbol. The bird holds golf clubs (!) in its left claw while grasping money in the other. “45 es un titere” is Spanish and, translated, states “45 is a puppet”.

You can read more in this article by Hayley Miller and published at Huffingtonpost.com…

Trump stood in front of Presidential Seal doctored with Russian symbol, golf clubs

At first Turning Point USA tried to brush this off by saying that someone simply made an error and took a picture off the internet and didn’t realize it was a fake and slapped it on the screen behind Trump.

Yeah, right.

Later on it was stated the one responsible for this “error” was fired.

This was no error. No how no way. You have to search quite a bit online to stumble upon this image and, along the way, you’ll find plenty of high quality graphics showing the actual Presidential Seal.

No, this was someone sticking it to Trump in front of a welcoming crowd. It also shows why Trump, IMHO, is in trouble as a candidate: Now people who supposedly are with him are mocking him.

It’s one thing to be feared. It’s quite another to be ridiculed.

Too damn funny… July 4th, 2019 Edition

Last year there was this very funny (IMHO!) bit of news, now sadly forgotten, where right-wing “pundit” and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones stated liberals were going to use the 2018 Independence Day to launch a takeover/Civil War against the good ol’ conservatives. Much hilarity ensued as people wrote hilarious twitter comments about the so-called “second Civil War” (you can read about this here).

In what seems to be becoming an annual tradition …well, if twice in two years portends such things… there was something new which appeared this year which provoked some pretty funny comments.

I refer to Donald Trump’s Independence Day speech wherein he said the following…

Yep, you heard it right. When talking about the Revolutionary War, Donald Trump said:

Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over airports, it did everything it had to do.

Oh boy.

I’ve made my feeling known before regarding Donald Trump: I have absolutely no love at all for him. Whether he stole the election with the help of Putin or not, in his time in office he has proved to be uniquely unqualified to be president. Further, he seems borderline illiterate and certainly uneducated. And that’s ignoring his obvious racism, sexism, and any other number of vindictive you want to give him.

Seeing this clip, he seems almost out of it. As if he’s under some kind of medication and having difficulties seeing/reading the teleprompter. Perhaps its because his reading skills aren’t great or perhaps the rain made it difficult for him to read the damn thing.

Regardless, I suspect he was adding in words here and there and the airport line, one would think, had to be an ad lib, right?

I mean, no one could have been stupid enough to write out that speech and actually put that line in there?!

Because if that line was in the actual written speech, then one can’t help but assume whoever put it there did so in the hopes he would read the line without thinking and make an ass out of himself as he’s done here.

And, continuing on that thought and continuing in the assumption that line was in the written speech, one has to wonder how much his own staff hates Mr. Trump and is willing to make him look absolutely ridiculous in a high profile speech!

Well, it didn’t take long for several smart asses to react to Mr. Trump’s latest verbal faux pas. Over on Huffington Post, Mary Papenfuss offers an article which examines how…

Trump Dive-Bombed in Tweets After Claiming Army Seized Revolutionary War Airports

There are some very funny tweets mentioned in the article above and I urge you to check them out. One of my favorites was this one by Jack W. Bower:

My Dearest Rose,

I’m afraid I must be the bearer of bad news. My flight has already been delayed a fortnight, and I fear it will be longer. The army has shut down the airport and the airplane will not be invented for 6 score and 7 years from now.#RevolutionaryWarAirportStories

Oh boy…

Beware: POLITICS.

Turn away, turn away…

We live in interesting *ahem* times.

After years of hearing outrage regarding morality -and, to them, the lack thereof- of people within the Democratic Party, we’re at a time when someone like Donald Trump, a man whose own morality is just about as low as it can be, engenders in these same people a bizarre disconnect where they look the other way while applauding actions which, at best, can only be described as abhorrent.

Bill Clinton got a blow job by an intern in the White House, lied about the affair, and the outraged Republicans tried like hell to impeach and throw him out of office.  Yet we have a person in the office today who has at best only the barest grasp of reality who huffs and puffs and pays off porn stars to hide his affairs while his children -and he!- make big money while using the office and there’s compelling evidence to suggest his campaign was in cahoots with the Russians (the RUSSIANS!) to win the election and now is separating children from their parents at the border…

…and the silence is deafening.

I know there are many different types of people in the world and I know there are some very smart people whose politics are diametrically opposite of my own.

But how in the world does one react to something like this?

Corey Lewandowski was one of Donald Trump’s more controversial campaign workers during the election and, to be fair, he supposedly is no longer involved in Trump’s White House.

Yet the blase dismissal/mockery on display here is… staggering.

There was a time not so very long ago when a group of people were portrayed as below human and the government that did this went down a particularly dark road which resulted in the deaths of many millions of people.

It has been said that when one is in an argument and invokes the shadow of Nazi Germany, the argument has clearly gone off the rails and into absurdity.

Yet what is one to make of a Government whose leader views those attempting to come into our country as nothing more than “rapists” or “drug dealers”?  Is that so very different from the Nazi Party’s views of Jews?

Image result for nazi propaganda

Is it a surprise when this same Government then starts to imprison all of them and separate the children, some infants, and feel this is somehow an appropriate measure?

The only thing that gives me a little bit of hope is the fact that there is outrage in this country and finally, finally, people may be seeing Donald Trump and his hench-men and women for what they are.

Perhaps.

UPDATE, and related:

Just found this article by Hayley Miller and over at TheHuffingtonPost.com:

GOP Strategist Steve Schmidt quits “corrupt” party of “feckless cowards”, will vote for Democrats

If you don’t know who Steve Schmidt is, he ran John McCain’s presidential campaign and has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration.  While I believe he does have some responsibility for where we stand in politics today -he was in charge when John McCain brought Sarah Palin in as his VP candidate- his “defection” is the type of thing that brings me hope that things will change, hopefully for the better.

The November elections can’t come quick enough.

What a weekend…

So much happening, so many things to note… or not.

First off, the Trump-G7 summit… blah.  How surprising Mr. Thin-Skin got all huffy with the other leaders when he arrived late and left early.  And all that crap he -and his sycophantic underlings- heaped on Canadian PM Justin Trudeau?  Really?  (Wanna read more?  Here’s an article by Matt Spetalnick for Reuters and presented on HuffingtonPost.com, Trump blasts NATO Allies, EU, and Canadian PM Trudeau).

Then there was the Tonys which featured one truly beautiful moment in the Parkland students singing Seasons of Love

…and Robert DeNiro giving some… uh… rough shout-outs toward Mr. Trump…

Man… I’m really conflicted about the later.  On the one hand, I’ve been shouting the same in private to my television for quite a while now.  On the other hand, I can’t help but feel that this sort of public insulting is exactly the type of crap that feeds Trump and his supporters and makes those who are against him look terrible.

Ah well.  Given the way that the news cycle is running (at about 5 million RPMs), it’ll probably be forgotten very soon.

Finally, Solo: A Star Wars Story continued to underperform though it looks as if it won’t bomb quite as hard as John Carter or The Lone Ranger did.  Ron Dicker at (again) HuffingtonPost.com writes about director Ron Howard’s twitter reaction to the movie’s box office:

Ron Howard tells fan he “feels badly” about Solo’s Box Office

To be more precise, when asked about his feelings about the movie’s box office, Ron Howard wrote:

I’m proud of and the cast & crew worked hard to give fans a fun new addition. As a director I feel badly when people who I believe (& exit polls show) will very likely enjoy a movie… don’t see it on a big screen w/great sound.

I mean, what else would Mr. Howard write?

You fucking fans blew it!  BLEW IT!  Why won’t you go see my film?!  It’s getting good reviews!  YOU CAN STILL  MAKE IT A SUCCESS!!!!  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GO SEE IT!!!! #AAAARRRRRGGGGHHH!

I kid, of course, but despite his too-polite tweet (the real one, not my phony one) I’m sure Howard must feel considerable frustration.

Yet the reality is the reality: Sometimes you create something that may be good -or, if you search out a variety of reviews, something that is decent or even mediocre-yet-better-than-expected- and despite the fact that it may be at least decent-and-possibly-good, audiences will either come or they won’t.

And its maddening.

How many times has a film come out and it explodes at the box-office… despite the fact that it is at best mediocre?  How many times does a film get released with tons of great reviews and it… does ok?  Or perhaps worse?

Audiences are fickle.

There was a time that westerns were box office gold and audiences couldn’t get enough of them.

Then, one day, people no longer cared for westerns and, with few exceptions, they are hardly made today.

Superhero films are incredibly popular nowadays, but who’s to say they will remain so five years from today?  Or next year, for that matter?

Consider the Transformer films.  Despite getting slaughtered by reviewers and many fans, they nonetheless made tons of money, until the last one did only “ok”.

Solo may be a good film.  It might be a typical Ron Howard film, decent but not terribly extraordinary.

Regardless, audiences weren’t terribly interested in seeing it.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that people are tired of Star Wars films.  Perhaps people were so bothered by The Last Jedi -at least those who hated it- that they wanted to punish Disney.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that people were suspicious of a film with all the baggage this one had (previous directors fired, Ron Howard brought in at the last minute, etc.).  Perhaps people simply didn’t feel the need to see a Han Solo “origin” story… with or without Harrison Ford in the role.

Perhaps it was a combination of all those elements.

Ah well.