Last Wednesday was an amazing day. Three revelations, each of which would have destroyed the presidency of anyone that has held that office in American history, came out about Donald Trump and his administration. And yet, none of them seem to have affected his followers in the least.
I won’t even deal with the testimony of a whistleblower who told investigators that he was instructed by “White House sources” to drop any investigation into Trump’s dealings with the Russians.
First, we’ll deal with the revelation that Trump admitted to Bob Woodward in 18 interviews that he knew how deadly the virus was even as he was telling the American people that it was nothing and he had it under control. Then he continued in the vein, playing down the danger, especially to children even when he knew it wasn’t true just so he could sound reasonable, as he demanded we open schools that weren’t close to being safe. We had everything we needed to beat this virus but Trump stopped it all from working just because he was afraid it might hurt his chances of getting re-elected.
But that wasn’t enough. In January of 2020, shortly after we heard about Trump’s personal attack on the health of the American people, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien warned Trump that the pandemic would be the biggest threat he would face in his presidency. Obviously Trump ignored him as testified to in his interviews with Woodward.
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This week CBS Sunday Morning did a charming segment on presidential portraits and the tradition of inviting an ex-president back to the White House for the unveiling of his portrait by his successor. Of course Donald Trump has never had the manners, the intelligence or the cool to understand his responsibility to the man that served before him. Trump has neither the class nor the knowledge to carry out his responsibilities to the American public’s health or security so why should we expect him to understand the responsibilities that come with tradition or anything else?
I would have to assume that Barak Obama would rather have the next president host the unveiling ceremony anyway, rather than the crass, ill-mannered dolt, currently occupying the White House. It’s a small thing but it’s just one more indication of what we don’t have in the presidency.
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Stephen and Jason Miller, both of the Trump inner-circle, have come to be accepted as just two more sleaze balls that exhibit nothing but lying, underhanded behavior in their representation of the President. It was showcased this Sunday on This Week when Jason ran roughshod over the gutless George Stephanopoulos. He lied about Trump’s accomplishments in dealing with the pandemic, he lied about what Joe Biden has said and done in his whole life and he lied about where we are in the search for a vaccine. This is not surprising for Jason Miller; actually it’s exactly where he normally exists. Unfortunately his host also maintained his normal, pathetically weak posture of groveling before his lying guests. So when Miller realized this, he went on to lie about campaign spending and mail-in voting.
But why didn’t the Democrats have someone like Miller standing by to refute him? They didn’t. Instead they sent Symone Sanders, who is probably very charming at a cocktail party but lacked the punch for this kind of fight. She allowed the spineless Stephanopoulos to interrupt and correct her, whereas Miller never gave him the opening. Having truth on your side isn’t enough. To be fair, George gave each an equal chance to make their points but what he never did was elucidate any difference between the truth and the lies being spewed out by his guests. That is a failure to do his job. It’s time for him to go.
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Recent polls show that Donald Trump has retained a significant number of Hispanic voters. How can this be possible? If there is one block of voters in this country that should hate Trump it’s Hispanics. He has maligned them, fought against letting them into the country and treated them like animals. His racist jibes have often been aimed directly at Hispanics so why is there even a smidgen of Hispanic voting for Trump?
Well, first we have to realize that Hispanic voting is not monolithic. Hispanics from different countries come with all sorts of different and contrasting opinions. A more liberal Arizona Hispanic from Mexico will probably have a far different opinion of Trump than an older, conservative Cuban exile will in Florida.
The job facing the Democrats who must deal with the diverse Latino voting blocks is to get campaign workers into each group. It’s the only way to influence tightly knit immigrant bred communities.
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So Trump lied to the American people about the virus and this week he actually admitted his lie to a rally of his followers … and they cheered him for it. What the hell is wrong with these people? They should have stoned him.
And to that end, Ronna McDaniel chairman of RNC was on Meet the Press this weekend, where she babbled about Trump being calm and controlled in his reaction to criticism. When has Trump ever been calm and controlled about anything? Why is it that this woman doesn’t understand the difference between lying to the public and giving them a calm, controlled, informative estimate of what was really going on?
Then McDaniel tried to sell the BS that Trump has tried to work with all the governors. Really? Where the hell was she when he was railing that he wouldn’t help any Democratic governors because they didn’t speak well of him? When Chuck Todd didn’t buy that, she tried to sell the idea that Trump had done a good job of organizing the distribution of supplies and that he was the reason that hospitals were able to deal with the shortages. Welcome to the lie about a lie. Finally desperate to have Todd accept anything she was saying, she went over the cliff with the statement that we are now on the downslope of the virus.
Isn’t there anyone on the Trump team that knows how to tell the truth about anything?
McDaniel’s and the Retrumplican’s have settled on the nonsense that Trump didn’t want to panic the American public by telling them about this dangerous virus. That is just pure unadulterated bullshit. Did FDR tell the American people that the Japanese had just flown a couple of reconnaissance flights over Hawaii? Did George Bush tell the American people that we had just had a couple of near misses at some building in NYC? Of course not! They told the people what had actually happened and then they told them what we were going to do about it. The American people accepted it and went on to deal with it. Trump lied and now almost 200,000 people are dead because of his lies. That’s the bottom line and if there is anyone out there too stupid to understand or too politically prejudiced to buy it, they really have no business voting. The Retrumplican’s are all over the place trying to sell the idea that Trump is the good guy who won’t shout fire in a theatre because he doesn’t want to panic the audience. What they don’t want to understand is that his theatre is really on fire.