My own heart is saddened over White House events this week.
General John Kelly, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, in his desire to help the president make this country great again, is making another decent person, corrupt, yet again.
In a historic speech to Congress on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy outlined an exciting vision for the American space program. He challenged Congress and the nation to “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
The president of the United States is the voice of the American people, chief proponent of our values, and democracy’s best salesman to the world. Donald Trump falls short in each category. He speaks for a shrinking minority of the country; mocks traditional value; and shows a disturbing disregard for pluralism. To Trump, political opponents aren’t alternate voices, they’re enemies to be squashed. Not even the first amendment to the Bill of Rights is immune from this president’s scorn, and frequently unhinged attacks.
Time magazine ran a front-page photo of a saint-like Jared Kushner the week of June 1, 2017, identifying him as “The Good Son.” When it published a cover with Donald Trump Jr., the identifier was “Caught Red Handed,” with a dark, moody, picture that resembled a mobster’s mug shot. The disparate treatment was extreme, though Kushner, so far, is unlikely to bring the Administration down.
Senator Bob Corker, meet Neil Cavuto. You’re in the same company, both conservatives and obviously concerned whether the current President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is fit for office or of sound mind.
Some say one man’s madness is another man’s strategy. Vanity Fair is calling it “Moron-gate,” except the dotard in the cupboard isn’t Donald Trump, it’s Rex Tillerson who takes the dunce cap for his flip, petty, slap at the President, by calling Trump a “moron,” for one thing, or another. If “Moron-in-Chief” becomes as quintessentially defining of President Trump as “Crooked Hillary” is of his nemesis, it’s on Tillerson.
The most famous two time presidential loser in U.S. history, Hillary Clinton, refuses to quietly go away. She remains bitter about losing to political novice Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
It was “a lovely visit, a first, too,” the President said. No doubt, Donald Trump was the first U.S. President to throw rolls of paper towels into a tepid crowd of puzzled people the way a low-rent concert promoter tosses out second act t-shirts. What made it even stranger was that Trump hefted them to victims of drenching hurricanes. Golf towels would’ve been a better choice, especially since Houston got very nice, hot-boxed lunches. Whoever stage-managed this inept trip needs to quit because they ruined another chance for Trump to look good again.
Remember that Liz Minelli powerful song in Cabaret when she sang, with the lights glowing behind her on stage, "Maybe This Time".
That emotional appeal suggesting that the world can suddenly come to a spinning change, whether it be luck, fortune or simply new facts.
The President dedicated a golf trophy on Sunday to the citizens of Texas, Florida, and the lazy, broke, infrastructure-challenged Puerto Ricans who want everyone to do everything for them. Devastated, homeless, foodless, waterless, powerless, and despairing, Donald Trump blamed them for their own woes in the same breath he used to praise himself for helping these American citizens. Would that this were true.
Ever since Friday night's Alabama speech, Donald Trump has had plenty to say about the American Flag, the National Anthem and the NFL disrespecting those great American symbols.
In fact, as of this writing, he has tweeted or retweeted about the issue 19 times. During that same period, not a single tweet about the likes of Puerto Rico which is an American territory and whose citizens are American citizens.
President Donald Trump’s irresistible impulse to take on everyone, and anyone, over anything, consequential or not, is a detriment to Republican values and leads to the inescapable question of whether Trumpism needs Trump, any longer, to advance its mission.
Is Donald going dotard or self-destructive?
Donald Trump against the nutty dictators, John McCain and the world has now become Donald Trump vs. nutty dictators, John McCain, the world plus now--the NFL and the NBA along, of course, with Hollywood?.
The "Ghost of Obamacare Repeal Failures of the Past" is returning, maybe.
Today, the long-respected Republican voice of the US Senate John McCauin of Arizona, has just delivered a significant blow to the latest attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and what might be a slight to his best friend, Lindsey Graham, one of the authors of the Graham Cassidy bill.