Tag: Lindsey Graham

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Wall

CREDIT: Reuters | Lucy Nicholson

A report released this week by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency revealed that in the two-and-a-half years since President Donald Trump came into office, 51 miles of border wall have been built — all of it erected to replace barriers already in place.

You may remember Trump’s signature campaign promise was to build a big, beautiful wall that would run the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, and that Mexico would “pay for it.” Not so much, it turns out. The border wall, like so many things the president talks about, exists only in his mind — and in the minds of those who take his words at face value. But the sad truth is, Trump has managed to build a wall. It’s big, but it’s not beautiful — and we’re paying for it.

Trump has built a wall between those who think that separating refugee children from their families and putting them in cages along the border is an acceptable solution to our immigration problem and those who believe that policy is cruel, inhumane, and unworthy of who we are as Americans.

Trump has built a wall between those who believe in the science of climate change and those who believe our rapidly warming planet is just a natural occurrence and we can’t do anything about it.

Reuters | Lucy Nicholson

U.S.-Mexico border fencing in Santa Teresa, New Mexico

Trump has built a wall between those who think Americans should celebrate our country’s diversity and those who think people whose ancestors are from countries that aren’t white should “go back where they came from” if they criticize the president.

Trump has built a wall between those who believe we should work with and respect our traditional democratic allies and those who believe, like Trump, that those alliances are worthless and that murderous dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un should be fawned over and coddled and emulated.

Trump has built a wall between those who think cheating on your wife with porn stars and other women and paying them to keep quiet about it doesn’t conflict with Christian “family values” and those who think such behavior is despicable.

Trump has built a wall between those who believe the Mueller Report’s findings that Russia interfered with the 2016 election and that the president obstructed justice 10 times and those who think the report simply said “no collusion.” That wall also divides those who think our intelligence agencies serve to protect America and those who think those agencies are part of a “deep state” conspiracy to bring down a president who is innocent of any nefarious activity.

Trump has built a wall between those who think the U.S. Department of Justice should be an independent agency serving the American people and those who think it should exist only to protect the interests of the president.

Trump has even managed to build a wall within the Republican Party — between those who think the president doesn’t reflect the party’s values and those who think he is the party. (He’s also built a wall between Lindsey Graham circa 2016 and Lindsey Graham today, but I digress.)

Trump has built a wall between those who think Fox News is a purveyor of misinformation and a blatant propaganda outlet for the president and those who believe the network is “fair and balanced.”

Trump has built a wall between longtime friends, between brothers and sisters, between parents and their children and grandchildren, between blacks and whites and browns, between gay and straight, between women and men — a wall of anger, distrust, and wounds that won’t easily heal.

Trump has built a wall between his lies and the truth, between those who believe him and those who don’t.

Some day, historians will write about all this — the time when America was riven in two by a man who came into the presidency sowing anger and resentment and divisiveness, who disparaged and ridiculed former presidents, war heroes, political opponents, members of Congress, the disabled — a man who told lie after lie, day after day, tweet after tweet, and built a cult-like “base” of followers who bought into every damn word.

Yes, someday, God willing, this will all be in American history books. And your descendants may rightly wonder as they read this odd and terrifying chapter: Which side of the wall were you on?

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Editorial Opinion

Geniune Vetting of Trump Cabinet Nominees Needed

CREDIT: Senator Jeff Sessions

At his annual “issues meeting” with constituents from his 9th Congressional District on Monday, Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen called the roll of what he saw as unsatisfactory or outright dangerous cabinet officer-designates named by Donald Trump, and Cohen’s list was fairly inclusive of the President-elect’s entire list.

Those singled out by the Congressman included Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions, who, he said, had been wrong on civil rights and civil liberties issues when the Senate rejected him as a potential federal judge in the 1980s and was “no better” now; climate-change rejector Scott Pruitt as director of the Environmental Protection Agency; Betsy DeVos, an advocate of for-profit charter schools, as Secretary of Education; and former Texas Governor Rick “Oops” Perry, who has extensive ties to the oil and gas industries, for Secretary of Energy.

Senator Jeff Sessions

Not mentioned specifically by Cohen but equally suspect, surely, are Secretary of the Treasury-designate Steven Mnuchin, a banker with close ties to financial-industry members who advocate loosening government restrictions on Wall Street; Secretary of Labor-designate Andy Puzder, a disbeliever in the minimum wage; Secretary of Commerce-designate Wilbur Ross, an investor best known as a “turnaround artist”;  Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who publicly confesses knowing nothing about his subject; Secretary of Health and Human Services-designate Tom Price, a former congressman known for his opposition to the Affordable Care Act and public health measures; and Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil oil mogul whose ties with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin are notorious.

Most ominous of all is probably Trump’s choice for National Security Advisory, former Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, whose erratic views caused him to be forced out as Defense Intelligence Agency head and whose son, with apparent paternal approval, has been a public advocate of some of the more monstrous examples of “fake news,” like the canard that Bill and Hillary Clinton were running a child-kidnapping ring out of a Washington D.C., pizza joint.

Unfortunately, the senior Flynn is not subject to Senate confirmation. The other mentioned Trump appointees are, however, and can in theory be rejected in the formal hearings that begin this week. The chances of that happening in a body dominated by Republicans is not great, but Cohen raised at least a modicum of hope when he suggested the names of several Republican senators who might be moderate or open-minded enough to join Senate Democrats in holding up some of the more noxious Trump nominations.

The names were those of Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Cohen added, with what sounded like genuine wistfulness, the names of Tennessee’s own Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander.

Though it is axiomatic these days that no Republican will admit to being “moderate” or anything quite so sissified-sounding to GOP ears, Corker and Alexander do, like Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, enjoy a reputation for relatively fair-mindedness. We join Cohen in hoping that our two senators can rise to the occasion in applying a genuine acid test to the nominees of President-elect Trump.

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Editorial Opinion

Onward into Trumpland!

Well, here it is: 2017. And anybody entering this new year who is optimistic about the state of things in America and around the world is by definition a Trump voter. The rest of us have forebodings out the kazoo — no few of them having to do with the man whose two most famous resolutions are to build a wall and to make American great again.

The outlines of the wall are already evident. The problem is that the one Trump has already begun to construct is not the one he promised to build between the U. S. and Mexico. That one, we suspect, will remain within the boundaries of myth. We doubt that the GOP barons of privilege who rule Congress will sacrifice the revenues needed to finance that boondoggle — unless they can conjure up a way to siphon tax dollars to various well-connected construction companies. No, the real wall is the barrier the soon-to-be-president of all of us has erected between the separate parts of this nation. When Time magazine gave the Huckster-in-Chief his due, naming him Person of the Year, it referred to him on the cover as “President-elect of the Divided States of America.”

That’s about right. And the division is not just the one exposed in the widening electoral rift between the blue states of the two coasts and the red states of the hinterland, but between those of us who trust in some form of verifiable reality and those for whom such a regard is beside the point. Like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Though the Looking Glass, the Donald  can say “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” And said twice as many more.

Can Trump really believe, apropos his loss of the popular vote by the grand total of nearly 3 million voters, that that formidable gap consisted entirely of “illegal” voters? Does he have any evidence to support that, or his famous claim that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese? Or, most recently and notoriously, that the entire intelligence-gathering apparatus of the government he is about to head is mistaken in its painstaking conclusion that the Russian government engaged during the election in internet hacking on his behalf?

It is this last assertion, along with Trump’s dangerous and foolhardy reliance on the good faith of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, that exposes the sheer presumption of his campaign slogan about making America “great” again. There is nothing great or even tolerable about the concept of hitching our nation’s future to the whims of a despot who even now is bringing death and destruction to innocent civilians in Syria, undermining the independence of his neighbor nations, and doing his best to undermine the historic shield of NATO.

There is a silver lining, and it goes by the name of bipartisanship. Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are now touring the threatened nations of Eastern Europe in an effort to reassure the worried populations and governments there that America will not forsake them. There are glimmers of hope, too, that there are enough concerned Republicans in Congress to join with Democrats in thwarting the more reckless domestic plans of the new president.

The statement was often made, after our nation had passed through the ordeal of Watergate, that “the system works.” We suspect it’s in for another test now — a big one. Happy New Year, and buckle your seat belts.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Blind Trust

CREDIT: Reuters | Yuri Gripas

As Thanksgiving approaches, the country is still feeling the fallout from our recent national election. Around 25 percent of the country’s eligible voters are displeased with the results of the presidential race, while 25 percent are pleased. The other 50 percent of the voting pool declined to participate. Thanks, idiots.

For the second time in 16 years, the candidate who won the presidential popular vote lost the election, meaning the country as a whole is now as gerrymandered as most states are.

It isn’t going to change soon, not when the winning party has all the levers of power. There’s going to be a President Trump, for better or for worse, and we’re going to have to adjust to what promises to be a very challenging near-future.

As he demonstrated during his campaign, Trump has little regard for traditional political behavior. With this president-elect, everything is personal, and his skin is remarkably thin. We can only pray that his handlers — and Congress — can find the courage to restrain his more impulsive behavior.

The past two weeks have not been encouraging. Trump has complained relentlessly via Twitter about Saturday Night Live, the cast of Hamilton, and The New York Times all being “unfair.” He called in the top brass and on-air talent of all the major networks to Trump Tower, Monday, for an off-the-record meeting at which he called CNN “liars” and chastised NBC News for using an unflattering picture of him that Trump said made him appear as if he had multiple chins. Trump hasn’t held a press conference since July.

Meanwhile, in the federally owned Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C., Richard Spencer, the head of a white supremacist group calling itself the National Policy Institute, gave a speech in which he shouted, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail our victory!” (You know how to say “hail” in German, right?) He went on to call the media “lügenpresse,” the nazi name for press critics, and added several anti-Semitic comments. The speech ended with the audience applauding wildly and giving Spencer the one-armed Hitler salute. In a federal building.

Spencer calls his group “alt-right.” As a critic said this week, that’s like calling a pool of vomit “alt-brunch.” They are nazis, and, like the KKK, they feel it’s now safe to come into the light because of Trump’s victory.

Also problematical for Trump — and the Constitution — is his vast network of businesses around the globe, which present unprecedented risks of conflicts of interest for the new president, who will be dealing with many national leaders from countries where he has operations. In the past, presidents have put their financial interests in a blind trust, so as to avoid any possible appearance of self-interest while serving the country. Trump, on the other hand, has said he will leave the control of his business empire to his children, but he’s also made it clear his children will be involved in his administration, so we will have to blindly trust that he and his children will never discuss the family business. Sure.

It’s one thing to flout the traditional rules of campaigning — revealing your tax returns, for example — and quite another to flout the constitutional rules that restrain a president from accepting favors from a foreign government, which is classified as treason by the Constitution. The bottom line is that we will need to rely on what statesmen remain in the GOP to stand up for what’s right, arguably a thin reed to lean upon.

Still, at your Thanksgiving table, it might be prudent to say a little prayer for Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain and any other lawmakers who might find the courage to do the right thing when called upon. It’s either that or blind trust.

I miss the “war on Christmas” already.