Tag: Trump’s tweets

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

It’s Trump … All the Way Down

By the time you read this, Mohammed bin Salman may have given President Trump orders to attack Iran. If so, throw this paper away (or click to another website — if there are any websites after a nuclear conflagration) and consider this column out of date.

Actually, you can consider almost any column I write about this president out of date by the time you read it. We’re averaging, what, six outrageous things a news cycle now? More than that, actually.

In such a news climate, is it possible that we can remain outraged for more than 24 hours by a president who teases potential war in the Mideast like it’s a Bruce Willis movie? I’m talking about this tweet:

“Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!”

So now, the “Kingdom,” led by Mohammed bin Salman, the man who authorized a vivisection/butchery of a Washington Post journalist and from whose country 11 of the 9/11 hijackers came — this guy! — is going to let us know under “what terms we would proceed” to war in the Mideast?

This tweet came on the heels of one from Trump about a proposed meeting with the Taliban at Camp David on the eve of 9/11. Opposition to that meeting apparently cost National Security Advisor John Bolton his job. Trump said Bolton was fired. Bolton says he resigned. Like so many things that have happened during this chaotic administration, it’s one person’s word against the president’s. But it’s extra ironic because Bolton would be loving this week’s action. War! Locked and loaded! Yeehaw! His mustache would be erect.

But seriously, when do we admit that we are all being held captive by someone who is the polar opposite of a “stable genius”?

Consider: I just scrolled through 24 hours of the president’s tweets from Sunday and Monday. There were 38 of them, covering such subjects as Brett Kavanaugh (He should sue for liable [sic].), Joy Reed (Doesn’t have the it factor for show biz.), the Deep State (It’s after him.), columnist Kathleen Parker (Good!), Saudi Arabia again (Maybe war! Maybe not!), General Motors (Make a deal with the UAW!), Lou Dobbs and Joe DiGenova (Good!), the House Judiciary Committee (Crooked!), investigating President Obama’s book deal (Do it!), the judges he’s appointed (I’m a great president!), China (They’re losing the trade war!), the Federal Reserve (They don’t have a clue!), the Democrats (They might TAKE YOUR GUNS!), the Mueller Report (Fail!), his hotels (I don’t make a profit. I’m too rich.); the Democrats (They are watching “Obama Netflix.”), Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera (I’m presenting him the Presidential Medal of Honor!).

That’s not even half of them.

Dreamstime | Alexstar

It is undeniable to anyone looking at this situation even half-objectively that these are the ramblings of someone who is mentally ill. The emperor not only has no clothes; the emperor has the attention span of a goldfish on Adderall.

I’m old enough to remember when this president spent six days obsessing about a muffed hurricane prediction that finally resulted in his having a cabinet member order the NOAA to back him up. The media can’t possibly keep up with this frenetic pace of “policy” statements followed by insults to media personalities followed by threats of war followed by references to Obama Netflix — whatever the hell that is. The American presidency is in the hands of a genuinely disturbed individual.

There’s no foreign policy strategy. There are no strategies of any kind that I can discern. Trump regularly contradicts his own secretary of state, his own vice president, his own spokespeople. Most department heads are temporary appointees. There aren’t even press briefings anymore, because they became pointless. This administration — this Republican Party — is just Trump and his id and his impulses, all the way down.

It’s a pinball machine presidency, and Trump has all the quarters. The president’s not “owning the libs.” He’s not playing three-dimensional chess. The truth is, he’s not playing with a full deck. And he’s got the fate of the world in his hands.

And this column is probably already out of date.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Trump’s Lost Weekend

CREDIT: Eva Rinaldi

Imagine being the head of Fox News and realizing every day when you wake up that you, Rupert Murdoch, are the most powerful man on earth, that you set the agenda for the world’s greatest super-power — the United States of America. Oh sure, President Trump is the titular head of the country, but it’s patently obvious that Fox News is where Trump gets his policy ideas. And it’s Fox News that literally shapes his world-view.

Trump often seemingly watches Fox News from morning to night, live-tweeting statements made by its hosts and guests within minutes of their being broadcast. Last weekend, the president went on a 50-tweet bender — 20 tweets on Saturday; 30 on Sunday — much of it directly lifted from Fox talking heads in real time.

Eva Rinaldi

Rupert Murdoch

He began his Saturday by tweeting clips of Lou “Natic” Dobbs, who called Trump’s veto of Congress’ vote to stop his “national emergency” declaration “stirring.” He then tweeted Fox News hosts’ statements bashing his own Justice Department; he ranted about Hillary Clinton; he tweeted about a Fox story on a Massachusetts sheriff who praised him.

Then he got into some mild criticism of his media mind-melders, going after Fox for canning “Judge” Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s wacko late-night cheerleader. “Bring back @JudgeJeaninePirro,” the president demanded, adding, “The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country.”

Quite a morning. But Trump was just warming up. Former Watergate prosecutor Ken Starr appeared on Fox and claimed that the late Senator John McCain had a “dark stain” on his career because he released the Steele Dossier to U.S. intelligence services. On cue, minutes later, Trump tweeted that “dark stain” quote, adding that “last in his class” McCain had “far worse stains.”

Nevermind that McCain wasn’t last in his class or that, after being given such a document, turning it over to intelligence services was the right thing to do — or that he was a wounded combat pilot and war hero who died of cancer six months ago. Nevermind decency, common sense, graciousness, or any semblance of mature adult behavior. We’re way past any of that with this president.

Trump finished his Saturday by threatening to sic the FCC on Saturday Night Live for making fun of him. It’s unclear if the president knew it was a rerun.

Sunday, it was more of the same — raw, unhinged id. The president rage-tweeted about the Democrats trying to steal the 2016 election “at the ballot box.” Then he spouted some more Hillary bashing, and ranted some more about the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. He ended the day in a frenzy, retweeting 15 supportive tweets from sources that included a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist, a QAnon cult believer, and a guy who claimed the New Zealand mosque massacre was a false-flag operation to limit gun rights.

This is not normal. These are the ravings of a mentally unstable man. If your grandfather spent his weekend doing what the president of the United States just did, you’d get him help. Or maybe try to move him into assisted living.

The leader of the free world, who has a country to run, after all, spent all his waking hours for two days watching television and tweeting about it. The mind boggles. How does it happen? Is he all alone in his room? Does no one think to go in and interrupt him or divert him or tell him he’s being foolish? Where’s his wife? His daughter? His chief of staff? The president of the United States is bouncing off walls, locked in a television trance, spewing nonsense and conspiracy theories like a crazy man, and nobody does anything about it? In his last days as president, a drunken Richard Nixon went around the White House talking to presidential portraits. That was bad. This is next-level stuff.

Unfortunately, it looks like we are stuck with this madness for the foreseeable future. The president’s cabinet is filled with unqualified hacks, lobbyists, and grifters. The vice president is a mewling sycophant. Republican leaders seem committed to remaining inalterably linked to the president, no matter how loony he gets. His base has become a cult, supporting their hero no matter what he does or says.

At this point, our only hope for getting out of this appears to be Robert Mueller. Or maybe Rupert Murdoch.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

A Disturbance in the Force

So, after 35 days, the longest government shutdown in history ended with a whimper, not a bang. But it was at least a long, whiny, rambling, repetitive whimper, featuring the president’s greatest build-the-wall hits — including his weird kidnapping-and-bondage fetish fantasy, his bizarre “make a left turn or a right turn at the border” riff, and his fanciful statements that the wall is “already being built.” And so we need to build it more!

And, oh, we — not Mexico — will pay for it, by god, or else the president will schedule a national emergency in three weeks. Pelosi is shaking in her boots. Or, more likely, high-fiving Schumer over the prospect of Trump wanting to reenact his recent ignominious defeat.

In the president’s speech announcing the government’s reopening, there was no mention of the pain and suffering government employees and contractors and air travelers and others endured by going without pay or government services for more than a month. That was apparently of no concern. The president ended his speech by threatening to use whatever methods were at his disposal to build the wall, if a deal wasn’t made in three weeks. Because that worked so well last time.

The Five

The next morning, Trump began his day by tweeting that another caravan was on the way! This one had 8,000 people(!) he said, much bigger than the ones that disappeared last fall, the day after the election. The president followed that “news” by tweeting reactively in real time from commentary that was happening on a Fox morning show, presumably as he watched — including a bizarre tweet to institute state Bible studies, in response to a guest who proposed the idea. (I wish some reporter would ask Trump to name his favorite Bible verse.) Fox guests and hosts were literally creating national policy pronouncements in front of our eyes.

Honestly, if your aging father were behaving this irrationally and erratically, you’d probably gather the family to discuss assisted-living arrangements. Instead, the media dutifully report and discuss the president’s impulsive outbursts as though they are policy statements worthy of Winston Churchill’s finest hour. We have normalized this stuff to an astonishing degree. Historians of the future will be reading Trump quotes out loud to each other in disbelief.

Trump’s approval rating is 35 percent as I write this. But in truth, it’s almost always 35 to 40 percent. There is a core group of Americans that will support the president even if he does shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue — even if he shoots one of them, in which case, I have no doubt the wounded MAGA warrior would jump up, limp to the sidewalk, and shout, “Lock her up!”

But that abysmal presidential approval rating has created something of a disturbance in the force, a vacuum that is sucking lots of dust bunnies from under the bed. Democratic candidates are lining up in droves to get a shot at beating Mr. 35 Percent. As many as 24 Democrats have made noises about running in 2020, reviving memories of the 2016 GOP fustercluck of 17 candidates that gave us the current Idiot-in-Chief. At the first Democratic debate, will each candidate get a 14-second opening statement? Who knows?

Adding to the madness was the announcement this week by Starbucks CEO Howard “Venti” Schultz that he was considering running as an “independent centrist,” which raised fears that he would be a hyper-caffeinated Jill Stein and split the anti-Trump vote, which would help the president get re-elected.

Trump, playing his usual three-dimensional chess, quickly insulted Schultz via tweet, and shortly afterward claimed he did so to provoke Schultz to run. Strategery!

All of this political maneuvering could, of course, be short-circuited in the coming weeks by the long-awaited Mueller report. If evidence continues to emerge that all (or most) of the president’s men were engaging with Russian assets and agents to tip the 2016 elections, all bets — and well-laid campaign plans — are off. We can only hope.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Smock Gets in Your Eyes

The week that was …

I don’t know about you, but I find that I notice the passing of time mostly by my mundane weekly rituals. As in, hey, it’s Tuesday: Gotta write a column. Wednesday: Time to prep for the morning staff meeting. Thursday: Go on the radio with Drake. Saturday: Buy pet food, hit the grocery store. Sunday: Ooh, Ray Donovan is on. Aaannd, it’s Tuesday again.

My life is much richer than those weekly markers might indicate, but the repetitive events are what remind me that time goes by in a flash, that weeks pile up into years pretty quickly.

On Monday, I drove over to the central library to appear on Willie Bearden’s Dialogue show for the library channel. It’s a simple format: You sit for an hour and get interviewed about your life and career and whatever else comes up. It was an interesting exercise, and it evoked some stories, memories, and experiences I hadn’t thought about for a while.

Willie’s final question was, “How do you want to be remembered?” To which my first thought was: That’s not a question you ask a young person. Yikes. Like the commercials say: Life comes at you fast.

Likewise, I imagine the weeks are going by pretty quickly for the Memphis City Council — now down to 10 members — who are going to have to figure out how to compromise at some point to get a full quorum and get the city’s business done. The drama will no doubt resume this week. In a guest column in The Commercial Appeal, Councilman Worth Morgan called the situation, “an embarrassingly intractable instance of failed governance,” which is on the money, if a bit wordy. So fix it, y’all.

Other events of note this week: LeBron James and the Lakers came to town and stomped the home team. The Gannett Company is again making noises about staff cuts at its newspapers (which isn’t even news, anymore). Jackson Baker and Michael Donahue sang karaoke together at the Flyer holiday party. And iconic local chef and all-around good guy, Gary Williams, died unexpectedly. R.I.P.

Nationally, the silly debate about “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” continued to rage. The song came on the speakers when I was in Fresh Market on Saturday. Customers began throwing arugula on the floor in protest and a small fire was ignited in the deli section. As customers stomped out in protest, the staff was attempting to put out the blaze with bottles of San Pellegrino. Sad!

None of that is true. Nobody listens to background music about sexual harassment. Or consensual flirting. Or whatever the hell you choose to think that song is about.

One guy who had a very bad week was President Trump, who has gone from denying he even knew Porny, er, Stormy Daniels, to admitting he paid her (and another former paramour) to keep quiet about their illicit affair(s). According to Trump, it was all okay because it was paid with personal funds and was a “private matter.” Good luck with that argument, Mr. Trump. Or should I say, “Individual 1.” Trump’s ALL CAPS tweeting percentage has been on the rise, as more and more of his former associates become besties with Robert Mueller.

I continue to read that a sitting president can’t be indicted. I don’t know how legit that legal opinion is or whether it will be tested at some point. But there’s a real problem with that thinking: If a president can’t be indicted, then what’s to prevent any future candidate from breaking all kinds of laws to get himself elected, knowing that once he’s in office, he’s immune from prosecution? That would seem to encourage and reward law-breaking.
And does that mean the president really can shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue? That can’t be what the Founding Fathers had in mind. But then again, the Founding Fathers probably never anticipated a Congressional majority that would be complicit in such a matter.

In other news, my New Year’s resolution is to quit smocking, and I am going to insist that Flyer staffers now call me “Individual 1.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

I Am Not Your Enemy

“The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick.” — President Donald J. Trump

I’ve purposely avoided writing about Donald Trump in recent weeks, choosing instead to focus on local issues. But enough is enough. The president of the United States is melting down, becoming increasingly unhinged. None of us can afford to ignore this stuff.

In the past week, via tweet, Trump has declared war on the free press; compared his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to Al Capone; told his attorney general to stop the Mueller investigation; claimed the California wildfires are being caused by letting rivers run to the sea; launched a personal attack on LeBron James(!); and threw his own son under the bus by proclaiming that Junior — and other members of the president’s campaign team — knowingly met to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russian operatives but that it was “totally legal.”
This, even though Trump’s own lawyers have admitted the president dictated a cover letter claiming the meeting was to discuss Russian adoption issues. And the undeniable fact that the meeting was anything but “totally legal,” even though in the right-wing-o-sphere, “collusion is fine” is the new “no collusion!”

It’s hard to keep up, I know. It’s lie upon lie upon lie. It’s day after day. It’s mind-numbing. But the collusion — or conspiracy or treason or whatever name you give it — is right out in the open now, easy to see for anyone who’s paying attention.

And how do we pay attention? We watch the news. We read newspapers and magazines and news websites. And with the notable exception of America’s Pravda — Fox News — those media outlets are reporting things that make it clear the president’s campaign — and likely, the president himself — was thoroughly and completely entangled in the Russian meddling in our 2016 electoral process. And probably in money laundering before that.

This is why Trump’s last, best shot is to convince as many Americans as possible that they shouldn’t believe what they’re reading and seeing in the news and should instead just believe Fearless Leader. Trump knows the truth will not set him free. The truth will destroy him.

The scariest part of all this is not the president’s behavior, though his mendacity, crassness, and xenophobia are certainly beyond the historical pale. No, the scariest part is that so many Republicans who know the truth — who know this is wrong — are remaining silent. The best-case scenario you can make for them is that they fear alienating Trump’s base. The worst-case scenario is that they — like the NRA — have dirtied their hands with Russian money. The coming months will test the republic.

Meanwhile, Trump’s impulsive and reflexive tariffs are backfiring on manufacturers and farmers in the heartland (including Tennessee). Gas prices are rising. And Trump’s foreign policy skills make Sasha Baron Cohen look like Kissinger: Little Rocket Man got concessions then went back to building nuclear weapons; Iran’s leaders are basically calling him an empty suit; and Putin works him like a Dollar Store yo-yo.

All Trump has left is to hold increasingly smaller and more desperate rallies, where he can weave tales of his greatness and demonize the bearers of all this fake bad news. But the bad news isn’t fake, and he knows it. And the angry know-nothings in his audience (and your clueless friends on Facebook) can’t save him from the long arm of the law. Or the upcoming mid-terms.

Finally, even though Trump has labeled people like me an “enemy of the people,” I’d like to help him out. There are a couple of errors in the president’s tweet above. Using my skills as a professional editor, I’ve written a more accurate one:

“I call the press the Enemy of the People only because I hate the truth. I am providing a great disservice to the American People by creating division & distrust. I can also cause War! I am very dangerous & sick.”

There. That’s better.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

2017: Hölyshyttz

My wife and I checked out the new IKEA on Monday. Wowsers, that place is huge. We walked for miles, but we scored a sweet Blomma, a couple Mongstads, and a Pjätteryd. I’m also enjoying the jar of Sylt Lingon. We had to park 100 yards away from the entrance, probably because the lot was so full of people from Nashville. I don’t know what the Swedish word for busy is, (I’m guessing “hölyshyttz”) but that place is definitely hopping.

The Flyer staff took a week off between Christmas and New Year’s. I spent part of my time in New Mexico, visiting family. And let me just tell you, this carry-on luggage situation is Out. Of. Hand. People are schlepping so much stuff on planes these days that it takes 20 minutes just to get off after you’ve landed. Here’s a free idea, courtesy of my brother: Everybody who doesn’t have carry-on luggage gets to deplane first, leaving the schleppers to battle it out among themselves. You’re welcome.

While in Las Cruces, my brother and I took a walk in the Rio Grande River. That’s right, in the Rio Grande, which in the wintertime is nothing but a broad stretch of dirt, due its being shut off by an upstream dam. Insert “build a wall” joke here.

Speaking of jokes, our president-elect appeared to spend most of his holiday break (Excuse me, “Christmas break”) tweeting. He reiterated his love for Vladimir Putin, continued disparaging the investigation of the nation’s intelligence networks into Russian hacking, gloated several times about his election victory, and complained that a new CNN book on his campaign used an unflattering picture of him on the cover. I keep wondering when it’s going to hit him that he has the most important job in the world coming up on his agenda in two weeks. Maybe his inauguration will wake him up, though I doubt it.

And even that event has proven problematical, mainly in that no “A List” stars have agreed to perform. The Rockettes were slated to dance, then many of the dancers decided to opt out. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is still on the docket, but now some of those folks are getting cold feet. At this point, the entertainment may be six Rockettes, the Mormon Tabernacle Quartet, and Ted Nugent performing “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang.” Though I hear the Red Army Chorus is available.

Trump’s premier media supplicant, Sean Hannity, interviewed Julian Assange, who conveniently said that the Russians weren’t involved in Wikileaks, thereby moving former conservative media outlet Fox News further into the Soviet camp. In other news, Hannity has also agreed to become Pravda‘s New York correspondent.

It really is mind-boggling, when you think about it. Fox News, the former bastion of right-wing conservatism, has become the most prominent American media booster of Vladimir Putin, a thuggish dictator who shoots down civilian airliners and murders his political opponents. Imagine if someone had suggested this scenario a year ago. You would have thought they were insane.

It’s a topsy-turvy world right now, and 2017 is looking like one for the books, as Trump continues to deflect and postpone questions about how he’ll insulate himself from his business interests while president. Meanwhile, Congress proposed, then backed off — due to public outrage and a critical tweet from Trump — ridding itself of that pesky Office of Congressional Ethics. If there were ever a clearer indication that we’re flirting with becoming a kleptocracy (or a tweetocracy?), I don’t know what it would be.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, First Daughter/Lady Ivanka Trump hustled “Happy New Year” coffee mugs with her daddy’s face on them. I’d buy one, but I got a “Liberal Tears” kaffeekopp at IKEA, and I’ve grown attached to it.

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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.