Posts Tagged ‘RAFAEL “TED” CRUZ’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 6, 2018 at 12:06 am
David Gergen is a longtime Republican who has advised Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. He is now a senior political analyst for CNN.
Summing up Trump’s legacy of hatred, Gergen said:
“Trump unleashed the dogs of hatred in this country from the day he declared he was running for president, and they’ve been snarling and barking at each other ever since. It’s just inevitable there are going to be acts of violence that grow out of that.”
Gergen made that statement on October 24, 2018—the day that pipe bombs were mailed to:
- Former President Barack Obama
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former First Lady and United States Senator Hillary Clinton
- Former Attorney General Eric Holder
- Congresswoman Maxine Waters
- Billionaire George Soros
- Former Vice President Joe Biden
- Actor Robert De Niro
- Former CIA Director John Brennan
- Former Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz
All of these intended victims had one thing in common: All of them had been brutally and repeatedly attacked by President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
Watching coverage of the pipe-bomb mailings on CNN, a viewer might be forgiven for mistaking this thinking this network for Fox News.
One commentator after another said, in effect, “The President doesn’t understand the power of his words—and that they can lead unstable people to violent action.”
On the contrary: Trump thoroughly understands the power of his words.
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks addressed this issue on the May 27, 2016 edition of the PBS Newshour.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it.”
Donald Trump
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
- Former Texas Governor Rick Perry: “Wears glasses to seem smart.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “Low Energy Jeb.”
- Vermont U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders: “Crazy Bernie.”
- Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Mathematically dead and totally desperate.”
Trump fully understands the power of threats—and has made liberal use of them against both Republicans and Democrats.
On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.’”
Two years later, on August 27, 2018, Trump, meeting with Right-wing Christian leaders at the State Dining Room of the White House, warned of “violence” if Democrats won control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections: “There is violence. When you look at Antifa—these are violent people.”
Trump also understands the value of having subordinates make inflammatory statements that serve his purposes.
On July 29, 2016, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant and Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
In short: This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Donald Trump fully understands the constituency that he is trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
He is the ultimate narcissist: “The show is Trump, and it is sold-out performances everywhere,” Trump told Playboy magazine in a 1990 interview.
After the bombing attempts, Trump stated: “In these times we have to unify.” But he is by nature a combative divider, not a conciliator. He is a nihilist, appealing to hatred, offering only destruction.
He’s 72, has often boasted of the joys of getting even, and he’s not going to change now.
As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on November 5, 2018 at 12:18 am
England’s King Henry II became infamous for his quick temper.
It was Henry who screamed, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” And soon afterward, four of his barons rushed to Canterbury Cathedral and murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket.
Becket and Henry had been close friends for years. On the battlefield, Becket had routed Henry’s enemies in France.
And Henry had rewarded Becket’s loyalty by appointing him Chancellor of England.
But then Henry decided to negate the expanding power of the Catholic Church by appointing Becket Archbishop of Canterbury.
It was a mistake. The previously worldly Becket took his new duties seriously—and became the church’s foremost defender in England.
Henry believed it was a betrayal—and never forgave Becket.
Unable to convict the archbishop on trumped-up charges, Henry gave vent to his rage—and Becket died in a hail of sword-thrusts by the King’s barons.
Fast-forward to 2018—and America’s own version of Henry II (or Henry VIII): Donald Trump.
According to the The New York Times, during the 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump aimed nearly 4,000 tweets at 281 different targets.
Donald Trump
His Twitter assaults often dominated entire news cycles for days on end.
As President-elect, he continued these assaults—such as the one on November 18, 2016.
On that evening, Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended a Broadway performance of the hit musical “Hamilton.”
After the curtain call, the actor Brandon Victor Dixon—who played Aaron Burr—respectfully addressed Pence:
“We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our friends, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
Dixon—who is black—was rightly alarmed.
Trump had received the open and enthusiastic support of the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi Party and other white supremacist groups. Since his election, white thugs had assaulted blacks and other non-whites across the country.
Trump’s reaction to Dixon’s plea came in two Twitter rants:
“Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!”
And: “The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”
Trump clearly didn’t care if some of his 55.3 million Twitter followers decided—like Henry’s barons—to “rid” him of “this meddlesome actor.” Or the whole “meddlesome cast” of “Hamilton.”
According to an October 16, 2018 story on CNN: Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has directly insulted, attacked or otherwise maligned more than 100 individuals on Twitter.
On February 17, 2017, Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
On July 2, 2017, Trump tweeted a video showing him punching a man with the CNN logo superimposed on his head during a WWE wrestling match.
And on August 15, 2017, the President retweeted a cartoon photo of a “Trump Train” running over a CNN reporter.
Then there are his “hillbilly Nuremberg rallies,” as comedian Bill Maher put it.
During his 2016 run for the Presidency, Trump said at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell … I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise.”
And on August 9, 2016, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
Thus, Trump encouraged gun fanatics to assassinate Clinton.
On October 18, 2018, appearing at a rally in Missoula, Montana, Trump celebrated Montana United States Senator Greg Gianforte’s 2017 physical assault on a reporter: “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!”
From the outset of his campaign for President, Trump gave his opponents—Republican and Democrat—a series of disparaging nicknames. Among these:
- “Crooked Hillary” Clinton
- “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz
- “Psycho Joe” Scarborough
Besides inciting violence against his critics and opponents, Trump has repeatedly attacked their integrity and patriotism.
Trump mocked the wife of United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz. He claimed that Cruz’s father had been a party to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Throughout his run for President, Trump’s followers aimed the chant, “Lock her up!” at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Yet Clinton has never been tried for a crime, let alone convicted of one.
At his rallies as President, Trump still encourages his followers to shout this chant.
Summing up Trump’s legacy of hatred, longtime Republican Presidential adviser David Gergen said:
“Trump unleashed the dogs of hatred in this country from the day he declared he was running for president, and they’ve been snarling and barking at each other ever since. It’s just inevitable there are going to be acts of violence that grow out of that.”
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In Bureaucracy, Entertainment, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 24, 2018 at 12:12 am
Those who have seen the classic 1960 movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” will remember its pivotal moment.
That’s when Burt Lancaster, as Ernst Janning, the once distinguished German judge, confesses his guilt and that of Nazi Germany in a controlled, yet emotional, outburst.
Addressing the court—presided over by Chief Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy)—Janning explains the forces that led to the triumph of evil.
It’s not hard to imagine, in the future, an equally conscience-stricken member of the Donald Trump administration, standing before the bar of justice, making a similar statement:
“My counsel would have you believe we were not aware of the ICE concentration camps. Not aware. Where were we?
“Where were we when Trump began shrieking his hate across the country? When Trump called our free press ‘the enemy of the people’?
“Where were we when Trump openly praised Vladimir Putin and attacked those in the FBI, CIA and other Intelligence agencies sworn to protect us?
“Where were we when the victims of Trump’s hatred cried out in the night to us? Were we deaf? Dumb? Blind?
“My counsel says we were not aware of Trump’s treasonous collusion with Vladimir Putin—and his intention to betray American freedoms in exchange for the Presidency. He would give you the excuse we were misled by the lying rhetoric coming out of the White House.
“Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn’t know the details, but if we didn’t know, it was because we didn’t want to know.”
Consider Trump’s effect on:
Race relations:
- Since Trump’s election, attacks on non-whites by Right-wing—and white—Trump supporters have increased. According to The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), there has been a rapid increase in youth bullying during and since the 2016 campaign:
- “The bullying effects of the Trump presidency—dubbed the Trump effect—are devastating, particularly when it comes to bullying of minority groups, especially those who are easily identifiable and/or who are singled out by the president’s statements or actions.”
- On August 11-12, 2017, white supremacists from across the country gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally. On August 13, a Nazi sympathizer rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other demonstrators.
- Refusing to condemn the Fascistic demonstrators, Trump said: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
Donald Trump
The rule of law:
- On May 9, 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, who was conducting an FBI investigation into well-documented contacts between Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign and Russian Intelligence agents.
- Trump has repeatedly and publicly attacked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the above-mentioned investigation. (Sessions did so because of his own documented ties with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.)
- Trump has repeatedly attacked the integrity of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, who has continued the FBI’s probe into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign.
- Trump has called on Sessions to investigate “all of the corruption” of Trump’s critics and those investigating him, including Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
- In short: He wants to use the FBI as his private secret police against anyone who has ever criticized, investigated or run against him.
Trump as liar:
- From 2011 to 2016, Trump falsely accused Barack Obama as being born in Kenya, not—as evidence proves—Hawaii. This was an effort to de-legitimize Obama as President of the United States.
- During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Trump falsely accused the father of his political rival, Texas United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz, of being a party to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
- After taking office Trump falsely accused former President Obama of illegally wiretapping him at Trump Tower.
- By August 1, 2018, the Washington Post reported that Trump had made 4,229 false or misleading statements since taking office.
Trump as traitor:
- Trump has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, both during his Presidential candidacy and since taking office. In fact, Putin remains the only major public figure that Trump has never criticized.
- On July 22, 2016, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
- Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
- On July 16, 2018, President Trump attended a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. There he sided with Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—for Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election:
- “I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”
Since 1945, historians have brutally condemned the vicious and destructive reign of Adolf Hitler and those who supported him.
Future historians will condemn just as harshly the equally vicious and destructive reign of Donald Trump—and those who now support him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 28, 2017 at 12:15 am
As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- News organizations
- Beauty pageant contestants
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
As President, he has continued to insult virtually everyone, verbally and on Twitter. (One notable exception: Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom many believe has compromising information on Trump.)
His targets have included Democrats, Republicans, the media, foreign leaders (most notably North Korea’s “Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un) and even members of his Cabinet. Among these:
- After NBC News reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron,” Trump told Forbes magazine: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
- Trump repeatedly humiliated his then-chief of staff, Reince Priebus—at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, Priebus resigned.
So it was probably inevitable that, having waged war on virtually everyone, Trump has finally gotten around to waging war on himself.
On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post had leaked a video of then Republican Presidential nominee Trump making sexually predatory comments about women.
The remarks came during a 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, then the host of “Access Hollywood.” The two were traveling on a bus to the set of the soap opera Days of Our Lives, where Trump was to make a cameo appearance.
A “hot” microphone picked up their conversation—which proved damning for Trump:
Donald Trump: You know and I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married.
Trump: No, no, Nancy. No this was—and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture….
I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.
[At that point, they spotted Adrianne Zucker, the starring actress in Days of Our Lives.]
Donald Trump, Adrianne Zucker and Billy Bush
Bush: Sheesh, your girl’s hot as shit. In the purple. Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man!
Trump: Look at you. You are a pussy. Maybe it’s a different one.
Bush: It better not be the publicist. No, it’s her. It’s—
Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.
Bush: Whatever you want.
Trump: Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.
When the Washington Post broke the story on October 7, the reaction was immediate—and explosive.
Trump quickly released a statement: “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”
So it no doubt comes as a surprise that Trump has told at least one adviser and a sitting United States senator that the tape was false or had been doctored.
According to the New York Times, Trump has suggested this at least twice since January. As with his claims that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, he has not offered any evidence to support his charge.
But if the tape was false or doctored, why did Trump issue an apology a year ago?
One point that Trump has not denied: That, on October 18, 2016, NBC News fired “Today” show host Billy Bush for his role in the “Access Hollywood” tape.
The “doctored tape” claim comes after Trump made clear his support for embattled Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.
At least nine women have accused Moore of making unwanted sexual advances toward them—groping, molesting or pursuing relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.
Trump is reportedly infuriated by the calls for Moore to exit the Alabama race. Supposedly he sees these as similar to the calls for his own exit from the 2016 Presidential campaign after the “Access Hollywood” tape appeared.
At least 16 women publicly accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances toward them. He claimed the women were lying and threatened to sue them for slander (as well as the newspapers for printing their accusations).
But he never sued anyone.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 12, 2017 at 12:09 am
As a Presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly used Twitter to attack hundreds of real and imagined enemies in politics, journalism, TV and films.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
As President, he has continued to insult virtually everyone, verbally and on Twitter. His targets have included Democrats, Republicans, the media, foreign leaders (most notably North Korea’s “Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un) and even members of his Cabinet. For example:
- His press secretary, Sean Spicer, quit on July 21. The reason: He believed—correctly—hat his loyalty to Trump had become a one-way street. Trump kept him in the dark about events Spicer needed to know—such as an interview that Trump arranged with the New York Times—and which ended disastrously.
- Trump has waged a Twitter-laced feud against Jeff Sessions, his Attorney General. Sessions’ “crime”? Recusing himself from any decisions involving investigations into well-established ties between Russian Intelligence agents and members of Trump’s Presidential campaign.
- Trump has publicly said that if he had known Sessions would recuse himself—because of his past contacts with Russian officials—he would have picked someone else for Attorney General.
- Trump fired FBI Director James Comey without warning on May 9. Comey’s “crimes”: Refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump, thus turning the FBI into Trump’s secret police; and refusing to drop the Bureau’s investigation into Russia’s efforts during the 2016 election to elect Trump.
- Trump repeatedly humiliated his then-chief of staff, Reince Priebus—at one point ordering him to kill a fly that was buzzing about. On July 28, Priebus resigned.
- In October, 2016, as a Presidential candidate, Trump attacked Colin Kaepernick, then quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, who had gained notoriety by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
- As President, he told a rally of his faithful in Alabama in September that players should be fired if they knelt during the anthem. He also encouraged people to leave the stadium if players knelt.
- On October 9, at Trump’s instigation, Vice President Mike Pence staged a walk-out during a match between the San Francisco 49ers and the Indianapolis Colts.
- The Trump/Pence stunt cost taxpayers about $242,500 in air fare for Air Force Two, advance personnel and Secret Service protection.
- After NBC News reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron,” Tillerson publicly refused to deny it. Trump then told Forbes magazine: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”
- Asked by reporters if he was undercutting Tillerson with the remark, Trump replied: “I didn’t undercut anybody. I don’t believe in undercutting people.”
As Americans have watched Trump’s behavior with morbid fascination, many of them have asked: “What makes him do the things he does?”
It’s a question asked—and answered—in the 1993 Western, Tombstone. And the answer given in that movie may be just hold the answer to the question so many Americans are now asking about Trump.
Tombstone recounts the legendary blood feud between the Ike Clanton outlaw gang and the Earp brothers—Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil—in the famous gold-mining town in 1880s Arizona.
Wyatt Earp has been challenged to a gunfight by quick-trigger gunman Johnny Ringo. Although he impulsively accepted the challenge, Wyatt now realizes he’s certain to be killed. Thus follows this exchange with his longtime friend, the pistol-packing dentist, John H. “Doc” Holliday:
WYATT EARP: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
JOHN H. “DOC” HOLLIDAY: A man like Ringo….got a great empty hole right through the middle of him. He can never kill enough or steal enough….or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
EARP: What does he need?
HOLLIDAY: Revenge.
EARP: For what?
HOLLIDAY: Bein’ born.
Donald Trump was born into a world of wealth and privilege. He has claimed to be worth a billion dollars.
He has been linked to some of the most beautiful women in the world. He has literally stamped his name on hundreds of buildings. And now he holds the Presidency of the United States, the most powerful office in the Western world.
Yet he remains filled with a poisonous hatred that encompasses almost everyone.
Since taking office, he has offered nothing positive in his agenda. Instead, he has focused on what rights he can take from others. At the top of his list: The Affordable Care Act, providing access to medical care for millions who previously could not obtain it.
As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, ABC NEWS, ALICIA MACHADO, AMERICAN CAESAR, BARACK OBAMA, BIRTHERISM, BLACKS, BOB CORKER, CBS NEWS, CNN, COLIN KAEPERNICK, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, FACEBOOK, FBI, FOX NEWS, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, INDIANAPOLIS COLTS, JAMES COMEY, JEFF SESSIONS, KIM JONG-UN, LEBRON JAMES, LESTER HOLT, MARCO RUBIO, MIKE PENCE, MISS UNIVERSE, NBC NEWS, NFL, POLITICO, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, REINCE PRIEBUS, REX TILLERSON, SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS, SEAN HANNITY, TAXPAYERS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE O'REILLY FACTOR, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, USA TODAY, WILLIAM MANCHESTER, WOMEN
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 11, 2017 at 1:08 am
“He appeared to need enemies the way other men need friends, and his conduct assured that he would always have plenty of them.”
So wrote William Manchester about General Douglas MacArthur in his monumental 1978 biography, American Caesar. But he could have written just as accurately about Donald Trump, both as Presidential candidate and President.
Donald Trump
What some pundits have called “the worst week in Presidential campaigning history” started–or Trump—on September 26. That was when he finally squared off against Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the first of three debates.
Through a series of bare-knuckled debates, Trump had bullied his way to the Republican nomination. He had mocked his opponents (“Little Marco” Rubio, “Lyin Ted” Cruz) and attacked former Texas Governor Jeb Bush as the brother of the President he blamed for 9/11.
So it was widely expected that he would run over Clinton like a tank going over a rabbit.
Events proved otherwise.
Moderator Lester Holt—who anchors the weekday edition of NBC Nightly News—gave Trump more airtime than Clinton. But Clinton showed a greater command of foreign and domestic issues.
Hillary Clinton
Trump repeatedly sniffled throughout the debate, causing some viewers to wonder if he had a cocaine problem. And he often reached for his water glass, causing other viewers to mock him on Twitter (“Does anyone remember how badly Trump made fun of Marco Rubio for drinking water? Hmm..”).
For Trump—who had attacked Clinton’s health after she fainted on September 11 at a New York 9/11 commemoration ceremony—it was a disaster. Clinton seemed to be in better shape than he was.
When Clinton charged that he paid “nothing in Federal taxes,” Trump in effect admitted it: “That makes me smart.”
Clinton then cornered him on his claim that he had opposed the 2003 Iraq war. Trump replied that he had told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he opposed it. He asked the media to contact Hannity.
Clinton then attacked Trump as “a man who has called women pigs, slobs, and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers.”
From there she segued into his attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado: “And he called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”
Alicia Machado as Miss Universe
This may have proved the worst part of the debate for Trump, because he later felt he had to respond to it—on TV and Twitter.
By the end of the debate, 62% of CNN viewers voted Clinton as the winner, with only 27% voting it was Trump.
The next day—September 27—Trump felt the need to renew his attack on Machado, courtesy of a telephone interview he gave to Fox News: “She was the worst [Miss Universe contestant] we ever had. The absolute worst. She was impossible….
“She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and we had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude, and we had a real problem with her.”
On September 28, Trump appeared on Fox News‘ “The O’Reilly Factor.” There he continued his attack on Machado: “It is a beauty contest. They know what they are getting into.”
He claimed that “I saved her job” because the pageant wanted “to fire her” for gaining so much weight.
On September 29, Trump added one more enemy to the list: The FBI.
Addressing a crowd in Bedford, New Hampshire, Trump falsely accused the agency of giving “immunity” to Hillary Clinton:
“They [the FBI] gave so much immunity there was nobody left to talk to. There was nobody left–except Hillary. They probably gave her immunity, too. Do you think Hillary got immunity? Yeah, she had the immunity.”
FBI headquarters
Also on September 29, Trump once again attacked a longtime target: President Barack Obama.
Thirteen days earlier, Trump had renounced “birtherism”—the slander that Obama was not an American citizen. It was a slander that Trump himself had created and vigorously promoted since 2011.
The reason for his renouncing it: His dismal standing among blacks in political polls.
At a press conference on September 16 to promote his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump said: “Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
After falsely blaming Clinton for starting the birther lie, Trump seemed content to finally drop the slander campaign.
But on September 29—a mere 13 days later—Trump told a New Hampshire reporter that he was “very proud” of his “birther” campaign:
“I’m the one who got him to put up his birth certificate”—which clearly proved that Obama had been born in Hawaii, not Kenya, as Trump had claimed.
“[Hillary Clinton] tried [to get Obama to release his birth certificate] and she was unable to do it and I tried and I was able to do it so I’m very proud of that.”
Thus, the goodwill of black voters he sought on September 16 he cast aside on the 29th.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, ABC NEWS, ALICIA MACHADO, AMERICAN CAESAR, BARACK OBAMA, BIRTHERISM, BLACKS, CBS NEWS, CNN, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, FACEBOOK, FBI, FOX NEWS, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, LEBRON JAMES, LESTER HOLT, MARCO RUBIO, MISS UNIVERSE, NBC NEWS, POLITICO, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, SEAN HANNITY, TAXPAYERS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE O'REILLY FACTOR, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, USA TODAY, WILLIAM MANCHESTER, WOMEN
In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 7, 2016 at 12:47 am
Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump has only one opponent in his race for the White House: Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
But after his September 26 debate with Clinton, he seemed more at war with another woman: Former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.
Clinton had briefly mentioned her in the first of her three debates with Trump: “And he called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”
Trump didn’t deny making such comments. Instead, he claimed that Clinton had “spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many which are absolutely untrue.
“They’re untrue and they’re misrepresentations. And I will tell you this, Lester [Holt, the debate moderator], it’s not nice and I don’t, I don’t deserve that.”
On September 27, Trump attacked Machado via a phone-in interview on Fox News. Then the next day, he attacked her again on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”
And at 2:14 a.m. on September 30, Trump launched yet a third assault on her character–this time through a series of tweets on Twitter:
“Wow, Crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an ‘angel’ without checking her past, which is terrible!”
“Using Alicia M in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that Crooked Hillary suffers from BAD JUDGEMENT! Hillary was set up by a con.”
“Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”
Subsequent media investigations found no evidence that Machado had starred in a pornographic film.
Republican leaders were dismayed. They wanted Trump to concentrate his fire at Clinton. And here he was, aiming yet another tirade against a woman wholly unimportant to his race for the White House.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media quickly reacted to Trump’s latest rant–and its verdict was overwhelmingly negative.
According to NBC News: “Still reeling from Monday’s widely panned debate performance, the Republican nominee has found refuge in a fringe media environment where his victory is assured, his setbacks are the result of shadowy plots, and his critics are humiliated by sordid revelations.
“The alleged Machado ‘sex tape’ Trump cited appeared to be a hoax widely promoted in fringe pro-Trump outlets like Infowars. Other sites like Drudge Report have spread grainy stills of a love scene from a reality show Machado starred in.
“Radio host Rush Limbaugh called Machado ‘the porn-star Miss Piggy’ this week. And Trump, desperate for encouragement after his debate, is huffing these sycophantic fumes like never before.”
And POLITICO offered this judgment: “TRUMP JUMPS INTO THE GUTTER.”
The story’s sub-headline read: “The Republican nominee loses all impulse control, and unleashes a violent Twitter rant against his Miss Universe nemesis.”
Trump–never one to admit error–responded, typically enough, on Twitter: “For those few people knocking me for tweeting at three o’clock in the morning, at least you know I will be there, awake, to answer the call!”
Furthermore, POLITICO noted, Trump’s inability to restrain himself has played “right into the Democratic nominee’s argument that Trump lacks the temperament and impulse control to be commander in chief.”
Nor was Clinton silent on the matter: “What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?” she posted on Twitter.
And she followed up: “Trump obsessively bullies Rosie O’Donnell–an accomplished actor. he insulted Kim Kardashian for her weight–when she was pregnant. Pathetic.”
On the same day as his Twitter rant against Alicia Machado, Trump demanded that President Barack Obama promise not to pardon Clinton. Since Clinton has not been charged with or convicted of a crime, such a promise would be wholly unnecessary.
President Barack Obama
On September 30, Trump called The New York Times and said of Clinton: “She’s nasty, but I can be nastier than she ever can be.”
With that, he opened a new line of attack on his Presidential rival: Her marriage.
“Hillary Clinton was married to the single greatest abuser of women in the history of politics.
“Hillary was an enabler, and she attacked the women who Bill Clinton mistreated afterward. I think it’s a serious problem for them, and it’s something that I’m considering talking about more in the near future.”
Trump said that his own marital history did not disqualify him from making such an attack.
He has been married three times and divorced twice.
While still married to his first wife, Ivana, he became involved with Marla Maples.
Ivana divorced him in 1991, and he married Maples in 1993. They were divorced in 1999.
He married his current wife, Melania, in 2005.
Asked about his affair with Maples while he was married to Ivana, Trump said: “I don’t talk about it. I wasn’t president of the United States. I don’t talk about it.”
Thus, in one week, Trump managed to infuriate
- Taxpayers
- Women
- NBC News
- Blacks
- Democrats
- The Wall Street Journal [which endorsed Clinton]
- The Arizona Republic *
- USA Today *
- President Obama
- POLITICO
- Hispanics
- The FBI
- LeBron James (a hero in the key state of Ohio endorsed Clinton).
Political campaigns are about winning voters, not alienating them. Trump appears to believe it’s the other way around.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, ABC NEWS, ALICIA MACHADO, AMERICAN CAESAR, BARACK OBAMA, BIRTHERISM, BLACKS, CBS NEWS, CNN, DEMOCRATS, DONALD TRUMP, DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, FACEBOOK, FBI, FOX NEWS, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, LEBRON JAMES, LESTER HOLT, MARCO RUBIO, MISS UNIVERSE, NBC NEWS, POLITICO, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, SEAN HANNITY, TAXPAYERS, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE O'REILLY FACTOR, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TWITTER, USA TODAY, WILLIAM MANCHESTER, WOMEN
In History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 6, 2016 at 12:09 am
“He appeared to need enemies the way other men need friends, and his conduct assured that he would always have plenty of them.”
So wrote William Manchester about General Douglas MacArthur in his monumental 1978 biography, American Caesar. But he could have written just as accurately about Donald Trump, the businessman-turned-Republican-Presidential-nominee.
Donald Trump
What some pundits have called “the worst week in Presidential campaigning history” started–for Trump–on September 26. That was when he finally squared off against Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the first of three debates.
Through a series of bare-knuckled debates, Trump had bullied his way to the Republican nomination. He had mocked his opponents (“Little Marco” Rubio, “Lyin Ted” Cruz) and attacked former Texas Governor Jeb Bush as the brother of the President he blamed for 9/11.
So it was widely expected that he would run over Clinton like a tank going over a rabbit.
Events proved otherwise.
Moderator Lester Holt–who anchors the weekday edition of NBC Nightly News–gave Trump more airtime than Clinton. But Clinton showed a greater command of foreign and domestic issues.
Hillary Clinton
Trump repeatedly sniffled throughout the debate, causing some viewers to wonder if he had a cocaine problem. And he often reached for his water glass, causing other viewers to mock him on Twitter (“Does anyone remember how badly Trump made fun of Marco Rubio for drinking water? Hmm..”).
For Trump–who had attacked Clinton’s health after she fainted on September 11 at a New York 9/11 commemoration ceremony–it was a disaster. Clinton seemed to be in better shape than he was.
When Clinton charged that he paid “nothing in Federal taxes,” Trump in effect admitted it: “That makes me smart.”
Clinton then cornered him on his claim that he had opposed the 2003 Iraq war. Trump replied that he had told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he opposed it. He asked the media to contact Hannity.
Clinton then attacked Trump as “a man who has called women pigs, slobs, and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers.”
From there she segued into his attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado: “And he called this woman Miss Piggy. Then he called her Miss Housekeeping because she was Latina.”
Alicia Machado as Miss Universe
This may have proved the worst part of the debate for Trump, because he later felt he had to respond to it–on TV and Twitter.
By the end of the debate, 62% of CNN viewers voted Clinton as the winner, with only 27% voting it was Trump.
The next day–September 27–Trump felt the need to renew his attack on Machado, courtesy of a telephone interview he gave to Fox News: “She was the worst [Miss Universe contestant] we ever had. The absolute worst. She was impossible….
“She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight, and we had a real problem. Not only that, her attitude, and we had a real problem with her.”
On September 28, Trump appeared on Fox News‘ “The O’Reilly Factor.” There he continued his attack on Machado: “It is a beauty contest. They know what they are getting into.”
He claimed that “I saved her job” because the pageant wanted “to fire her” for gaining so much weight.
On September 29, Trump added one more enemy to the list: The FBI.
Addressing a crowd in Bedford, New Hampshire, Trump falsely accused the agency of giving “immunity” to Hillary Clinton:
“They [the FBI] gave so much immunity there was nobody left to talk to. There was nobody left–except Hillary. They probably gave her immunity, too. Do you think Hillary got immunity? Yeah, she had the immunity.”
FBI headquarters
Also on September 29, Trump once again attacked a longtime target: President Barack Obama.
Thirteen days earlier, Trump had renounced “birtherism”–the slander that Obama was not an American citizen. It was a slander that Trump himself had created and vigorously promoted since 2011.
The reason for his renouncing it: His dismal standing among blacks in political polls.
At a press conference on September 16 to promote his new upscale hotel in Washington, D.C., Trump said: “Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy.
“I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
After falsely blaming Clinton for starting the birther lie, Trump seemed content to finally drop the slander campaign.
But on September 29–a mere 13 days later–Trump told a New Hampshire reporter that he was “very proud” of his “birther” campaign:
“I’m the one who got him to put up his birth certificate”–which clearly proved that Obama had been born in Hawaii, not Kenya, as Trump had claimed.
“[Hillary Clinton] tried [to get Obama to release his birth certificate] and she was unable to do it and I tried and I was able to do it so I’m very proud of that.”
Thus, the goodwill of black voters he sought on September 16 he cast aside on the 29th.
2008 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, 9/11, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, ANDERSON COOPER, ANTI-COMMUNISM, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, BIRTHERS, CBS NEWS, CITIZENSHIP, CNN, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, JOSEPH ARPAIO, LAURENCE TRIBE, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NAZI GERMANY, NAZI PARTY, NBC NEWS, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICANS, SS, THE BOSTON GLOBE, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, TREASON, TWITTER, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, USA TODAY
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 16, 2016 at 12:42 am
“All revolutions,” said Ernst Rohem, leader of Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirted thugs, the S.A., “devour their own children.”
Ernst Rohem
Fittingly, he said this as he sat inside a prison cell awaiting his own execution.
On June 30, 1934, Hitler had ordered a massive purge of his private army, the S.A., or Stormtroopers. The purge was carried out by Hitler’s elite army-within-an-army, the Schutzstaffel, or Protective Squads, better known as the SS.
The S.A. Brownshirts had been instrumental in securing Hitler’s rise to Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. They had intimidated political opponents and organized mass rallies for the Nazi Party.
But after Hitler reached the pinnacle of power, they became a liability.
Ernst Rohem, their commander, urged Hitler to disband the regular German army, the Reichswehr, and replace it with his own legions as the nation’s defense force.
Frightened by Rohem’s ambitions, the generals of the Reichswehr gave Hitler an ultimatum: Get rid of Rohem–or they would get rid of him.
So Rohem died in a hail of SS bullets–as did several hundred of his longtime S.A. cronies.
SS firing squad
At least one member of the Republican Party has now learned that an apparently useful weapon can become a liability.
Ever since Barack Obama became a Presidential candidate in 2008, Republicans have accused him of being ineligible to hold office.
Without a political scandal (such as Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky) to fasten on, the Republican Party opted for slander: Obama had been born in Kenya–and thus was not an American citizen.
From this there could be only one conclusion: That he would be an illegitimate President–and should be removed from office if elected.
And this smear campaign continued after he won the election. Right-wingers like real estate billionaire Donald Trump insisted that Obama had been born in Kenya, not Honolulu.
During his first two years in office, Obama tried to ignore the charge.
But polls repeatedly showed that large segments of the country believed it. Finally, even Obama’s closest advisers warned him: You must address this and put it to rest.
So, on April 27, 2011, the President released the long-form of his Hawaii birth certificate.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
For the vast majority of Americans, this settled the issue. In 2012, they re-elected Obama to a second, four-year term.
Nevertheless, for many Right-wingers, even the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate meant nothing.
Joseph Arpaio, the Right-wing sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, claimed that his “investigators” were certain that Obama’s birth certificate was fraudulent.
Responding to Arpaio’s claims, Joshua A. Wisch, a special assistant to Hawaii’s attorney general, said: “President Obama was born in Honolulu, and his birth certificate is valid. Regarding the latest allegations from a sheriff in Arizona, they are untrue, misinformed and misconstrue Hawaii law.”
Fast forward to 2015.
Donald Trump, who had threatened to run for President in 2012, announced his candidacy on June 16. He quickly became–and remained–the front-runner for Republican voters.
But then Texas’ United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz entered the race. As radical and ruthless as Trump, he quickly became the billionaire’s most dangerous competitor.
Rafael “Ted” Cruz
What to do?
Then Trump–or someone in his campaign–had an inspiration. Why not use against Cruz the same “he’s-not-an-American” charge that had been used against Obama?
Cruz, born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was not a natural-born American citizen–and was thus ineligible to be President. His mother was an American, but his father was Cuban.
The U.S. Constitution states specifically that “No person except a natural born Citizen …shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
Cruz argued that because his mother was an American, he became an American citizen at birth.
But courts have never ruled on the issue of what constitutes a “natural-born” citizen.
At first, the issue seemed confined to Republican politicians and those likely to vote for them. But then others outside the Right began investigating it.
Mary McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, concluded in an Open Editorial for The Washington Post:
“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.”
Cruz got an even bigger slap in the face from Laurence Tribe, the celebrated professor of Constitutional law at Harvard University. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Tribe stated:
“…The kind of judge Cruz says he admires and would appoint to the Supreme Court is an ‘originalist,’ one who claims to be bound by the narrowly historical meaning of the Constitution’s terms at the time of their adoption.
“To his kind of judge, Cruz ironically wouldn’t be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and ’90s required that someone actually be born on US soil to be a “natural born” citizen.” [Italics added.]
So long as Cruz stayed in the race, Trump continued to use the “birther” charge against him. And it continued to dog him, as it did Obama.
Thus, the evil that politicians do lives after them.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, CBS NEWS, CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, CNN, DAVID BROOKS, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, HOLOCAUST, JOHN KASICH, MARTIN NIEMOELLER, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, PBS NEWSHOUR, RAFAEL "TED" CRUZ, ROBERT PAYNE, SOVIET UNION, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, TWITTER, WORLD WAR 11
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 6, 2016 at 12:05 am
On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it–appropriately enough–“Wolf’s Lair.”
“Wolf’s Lair”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler–who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table.
Then Stauffenberg excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
But the Third Reich didn’t come to an end–because, as if miraculously, Hitler had survived.
Hitler shows off the site of the explosion
What had happened?
First, the conference location had been changed–from a wooden building to a concrete one. The concrete absorbed much of the blast.
Second, owing to the summer’s heat, Hitler had ordered all the windows–about ten–opened to let in a breeze. This allowed much of the force of the blast to be dispersed.
Third, and perhaps most important: Stauffenberg had carefully placed his briefcase near Hitler, who was standing next to a heavy oaken support of the conference table.
But after Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, who stood next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it–to the other side of the heavy oaken support.
When the bomb exploded, Hitler was partially shielded from its full blast. Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.
Not only did Hitler survive, but the plotters failed to seize the key broadcast facilities of the Reich.
This allowed Hitler to make a late-night speech to the nation, revealing the failed plot and assuring Germans that he was alive. And he swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.
Adolf Hitler
Mass arrests quickly followed. Among the first victims discovered and executed was the conspiracy’s leader, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Standing before a makeshift firing squad at midnight, he cried: “Long live our sacred Germany!”
At least 7,000 persons were arrested by the Gestapo–of which 4,980 were executed.
Had the conspiracy succeeded, history would have turned out differently:
Thus, history can be altered by the appearance or disappearance of a single individual.
Which brings us back to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
Since declaring his candidacy for the Presidency on June 16, 2015, Trump has been the first choice among the Republican base.
At first, he was dismissed as a bad joke–by Republican Presidential candidates as well as by Democrats.
Surely voters would reject a bombastic, thrice-married “reality show” host who had filed for corporate bankruptcy four times.
Yet from the outset Trump dominated the field–and a series of Republican debates. The other Republican candidates watched him with envy–and tried to out-do his hate-filled rhetoric and agenda.
But none of them succeeded–and, one after another, they dropped out of the race: Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul.
Eventually, only two were left to deny Trump the Republican nomination–Texas U.S. Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich.
On May 3, 2016, Trump captured 53.3% of the votes in the Indiana primary, compared to 36.7% for Cruz and 7.5% for Kasich.
That night, Cruz bowed out of the race. The next day, so did Kasich–the man who had dared compare Trump to Adolf Hitler.
For conservative columnist David Brooks, a Trump Presidency would be disastrous. On the March 25 edition of the PBS Newshour, he offered this assessment of Trump’s character:
“The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy.
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the “Army bomb plot” conspirators who failed to kill Hitler:
“The conspirators died heroically, but they were not heroes. They bungled the most necessary assassination of their time when it was within their power to do the job well….They were amateurs when professionals were needed.”
There is a very real danger that Donald Trump will assume the Presidency–and all the awesome power that goes with that office.
If that happens, future historians–if there are any–may similarly condemn those Americans who stood by like “good Germans”–and allowed their country to fall into the hands of a ruthless tyrant.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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TRUMP: INCITING VIOLENCE, ESCAPING RESPONSIBILITY: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 6, 2018 at 12:06 amDavid Gergen is a longtime Republican who has advised Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. He is now a senior political analyst for CNN.
Summing up Trump’s legacy of hatred, Gergen said:
“Trump unleashed the dogs of hatred in this country from the day he declared he was running for president, and they’ve been snarling and barking at each other ever since. It’s just inevitable there are going to be acts of violence that grow out of that.”
Gergen made that statement on October 24, 2018—the day that pipe bombs were mailed to:
All of these intended victims had one thing in common: All of them had been brutally and repeatedly attacked by President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
Watching coverage of the pipe-bomb mailings on CNN, a viewer might be forgiven for mistaking this thinking this network for Fox News.
One commentator after another said, in effect, “The President doesn’t understand the power of his words—and that they can lead unstable people to violent action.”
On the contrary: Trump thoroughly understands the power of his words.
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks addressed this issue on the May 27, 2016 edition of the PBS Newshour.
David Brooks and Mark Shields
MARK SHIELDS: “Donald Trump gratuitously slandered Ted Cruz’s wife. He libeled Ted Cruz’s father for being potentially part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of the president of the United States, suggesting that he was somehow a fellow traveler in that.
“This is a libel. You don’t get over it.”
Donald Trump
DAVID BROOKS: “Trump, for all his moral flaws, is a marketing genius. And you look at what he does. He just picks a word and he attaches it to a person. Little Marco [Rubio], Lyin’ Ted [Cruz], Crooked Hillary [Clinton].
“And that’s a word. And that’s how marketing works. It’s a simple, blunt message, but it gets under.
“It sticks, and it diminishes. And so it has been super effective for him, because he knows how to do that. And she [Hillary Clinton] just comes with, ‘Oh, he’s divisive.’”
Hillary Clinton wasn’t the only Presidential candidate who proved unable to cope with Trump’s gift for insult. His targets—and insults—included:
Trump fully understands the power of threats—and has made liberal use of them against both Republicans and Democrats.
On March 16, 2016, he warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen. I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there, shame if something happened to it.’”
Two years later, on August 27, 2018, Trump, meeting with Right-wing Christian leaders at the State Dining Room of the White House, warned of “violence” if Democrats won control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections: “There is violence. When you look at Antifa—these are violent people.”
Trump also understands the value of having subordinates make inflammatory statements that serve his purposes.
On July 29, 2016, Roger Stone, a notorious Right-wing political consultant and Trump strategist, told Breitbart News: “The first thing Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
In short: This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Donald Trump fully understands the constituency that he is trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
He is the ultimate narcissist: “The show is Trump, and it is sold-out performances everywhere,” Trump told Playboy magazine in a 1990 interview.
After the bombing attempts, Trump stated: “In these times we have to unify.” But he is by nature a combative divider, not a conciliator. He is a nihilist, appealing to hatred, offering only destruction.
He’s 72, has often boasted of the joys of getting even, and he’s not going to change now.
As first-mate Starbuck says of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick: “He is a champion of darkness.”
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