Category Archives: Trump Chronicles

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 172: The Rules Don’t Apply To Me

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President Trump’s opposition to mail in voting has been nothing if not consistent. Last August he vowed to ban it and he calls it mail in cheating. Of course he’s never shown any evidence of voter fraud (though I have: see my last post).

Interestingly enough he’s registered to vote in Florida where he lists his primary residence as Mar A Lago. This past week there was a special election to fill a congressional seat and he voted…by (you guessed it) mail. When asked he claimed it was because he is the president and is busy. So we need to ignore the fact that he had been in Florida the previous weekend and could have voted in person.

But his claim that he was too busy to vote in person belies his belief that he is more important than the rest of us. Many a time I’ve voted on days when I’ve worked. It normally meant I had to wake up earlier and I’ve been blessed that polling places here in California open at 7AM. A democracy depends on the belief that everyone’s vote is important and holds the same weight. If mail in voting is cheating (and it’s not) it’s cheating for him too.

Finally I can’t help but point out that the victor in that congressional election was a Democrat: Emily Gregory and she is Trump’s representative in the House of Representatives. I wonder if he’ll write his congresswoman.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 171: We Still Don’t Know How Low He Will Go

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President Trump is famous for his insults and he gives us tremendous insight into his fears by who he goes after. He’s famously intimidated by strong women: Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. And smart people: James Comey and Chris Christie.

He also mocks people who live well with disabilities: reporter Serge Kovaleski who lives with a muscular disease called Arthrogryposis was mocked in 2015 after asking an uncomfortable question.

Now we learn about Trump’s next target: Dyslexia. California Governor Gavin Newsom has been public about his struggles with dyslexia. It makes reading and writing difficult. People who live with this are often termed dumb as children before diagnosis. Most of us have learned to have respect for the work it takes for dyslexics to do things that come easily to most of us.

Respect for others, alas, eludes our president. Trump suggested that since Governor Newsom is dyslexic he’s a brain dead moron.

Trump famously calls himself a genius and brags about passing a cognitive test that he claimed was an IQ test. It wasn’t. These tests are given to people who may not be able to care for themselves to see if they need help. I’ve seen these tests given to people who may be in early stages of dementia. Anyone else wonder why they gave this test to the president?

In the meantime I have a new respect for Governor Newsome.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 170: If You Voted For Trump Because Of His Promises On The Economy, Fasten Your Seatbelt (And Tighten Your Belt)

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In the run up to the 2024 elections Trump famously promised to fix the economy. Since returning to the White House he has blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for any bad news.

Each passing day diminishes his ability to sell this and he has bragged about lower gas prices which has steered much of the good news about overall inflation.

Many of us believed his claim of prosperity was ultimately unsustainable but with his recent invasion of Iran it’s going to be much, much harder. It’s been less than a week since the war began and already crude oil prices have risen dramatically and a barrel is now over $90.00. Oil prices are famously volatile but since the war is in the Middle East it’s hard to imagine a scenario where prices will return.

Additionally today we learned that the US economy lost 92,000 jobs last month after predictions of gains. This number may be adjusted but it’s hard to imagine it will get much better.

Over the past year consumers have noticed that grocery prices have increased and Trump has famously denied its truth. It’s a little like the guy whose wife catches him with another woman and he responded: “Who are going to believe: me or your lying eyes?”

Eyes don’t lie

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 169: More Sewage From The President

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On January 19th security cameras noticed that a sewage pipe began leaking raw sewage into the Potomac River. These spills are always a mess and since it’s on a river that separates Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia the clean up will require coordination among several agencies. President Trump, never one to pass an opportunity to blame others has shoehorned himself into the event to criticize everyone he can think of. He posted on social media this phrase: “If they [Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia] can’t do the job they have to call me and ask, politely, to get it fixed.”

Yes, America, you heard this right. They have to ask for help in a way that massages this man’s ego. I’ve said it before and will keep saying it: good leaders command respect and poor leaders crave approval. His words belie a profound lack of concern for the health and safety of the people near the spill and focus only on how people are supposed to treat him. For everyone who voted for him: I hope you’re happy.

By the way there is an excellent post from the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority. The pipe that is leading is 72 inches (6 feet) in diameter and was built in the 1960s. Drinking water is not affected as the intake for drinking water is upstream from the spill.

Again, and I can’t say this enough, local public servants are hard at work on this. They deserve our thanks and respect.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 168: No, You Can’t Nationalize The Elections

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It’s no secret that President Trump obsesses over elections and vote counts, and for good reason. He lost the popular vote in the 2016 election and lost both the electoral and popular votes in 2020. Like any bully he refuses to admit defeat and continues to claim he really won but was cheated. In the last few days he’s floated the idea of the federal government take over running elections. He has claimed, all along without any evidence, that “everyone knows” these elections were corrupt. So what’s the problem with this? Why doesn’t the federal government run elections?

Well, there are a few problems. Let’s start with the Constitution: Article 1, Section 4 states that the “Times, places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state.” It doesn’t get much clearer. States run the elections and this can only be changed by amending the Constitution. Not by Congress passing a law. Not by the President issuing an order. And because the states run elections it’s much more difficult to cheat. No one person, no one group, no one state controls all the ballots and no one group can create or eliminate enough ballots to change the result of an election.

This matters more than ever because it’s clear that that’s exactly what Trump wants to do. In 2020 when Georgia voters chose Joe Biden, Trump famously called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021 to demand that he find 11,000 votes and give Georgia to Trump. Had Trump been in charge the election he certainly could have done that. Only the Constitution prevented this by having the states run elections.

Joseph Stalin famously said that the people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything (I found that quote here). I hope nobody misses the irony that Trump claims the only way to avoid election corruption is to give him all the power.

We will go to the polls in 9 months to choose our legislators and Trump knows his only path to keeping the House (and perhaps the Senate) is to cheat and we cannot allow him to do that.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 167: Our Racist In Chief

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We’ve known for along time that Trump is racist, despite his continual denials. Well, he’s done it again. February is Black History Month and we take this month to reflect not only on the history of slaver and Jim Crow (in the hopes that we’ve learned and won’t keep doing it) but also contributions the black population has given us. Think Katherine Johnson’s work with calculating trajectories in the early space program and George Washington Carver’s work as an agricultural chemist.

But Trump, who famously referred to Haiti and African countries as shithole countries whose people should not be allowed to come to the United States, is at it again. Yesterday he posted on his social media account a video that depicted former President Obama and his wife Michelle as apes. No, I’m not going to post a link and I hope you don’t either.

As you can imagine the reaction was swift. Even Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is black, condemned it and hoped it was fake. At first Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to ridicule the outrage calling it “fake outrage.” The post was eventually taken down and Trump blamed a staffer for posting it, even though it was posted in the middle of the night when Trump often posts and most people who work for him are asleep.

He just doesn’t get it. But then neither do his supporters who don’t believe he’s racist.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 166: Must It Always Be About You Don?

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This week many of us have followed the horrific news that Nancy Guthrie, mother of NBC journalist Savannah Guthrie, has gone missing and has likely been kidnapped. When asked, President Trump offered his support and said: “It’s a terrible thing. I always get along well with Savannah. Very unusual situation, but we’re going to find out.”

Even in his words of support he still has to make it about himself. It reminded me of his words when NPR journalist Cokie Roberts died in 2019. Cokie was a pioneering journalist and inspired countless girls and women to follow in her footsteps. Trumps response: “I never met her. She never treated me nicely.” Nothing about her work or her place.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who tires of Trump making everything about himself.

The Election 2024 Chronicles, Volume 12; The Trump Chronicles, Volume 165: April Update

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It’s obvious that I haven’t been attending to this blog. I haven’t posted since January. It’s not for lack of thinking; it’s just that the news these days is hard to read. As I write this Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the presumptive nominees and one of them will be elected President in November. Virtually every election is known as “the most important of your generation/lifetime/country’s history” but this one may well be.

There’s a lot I don’t need to write about (e.g. Trump’s dozens of indictments) but my fears boil down to this: whichever way the election goes the Trump camp will do their best to end our democracy and usher in a new era of fascism.

I’ve been suggesting that as the legal nooses continue to constrict around his neck Trump will not face justice. He will instead flee to Russia and ask Putin for asylum. This would explain Trump’s continuing craving of Putin’s approval. Unfortunately Trump has been successful in delaying justice through a long, strange series of inane legal arguments. I fear that none of his trials will conclude before the election.

So here’s my fear:

Scenario 1: Trump wins the election. This may sound crazy but he did win in 2016 after I had spent months saying this was impossible. We’re too far away from the election to be able to make a prediction. If he returns to office he has already promised to use the Justice Department to seek revenge against his enemies. See this article in the Texas Tribune. Ironically this is what he charges the Biden administration of doing: weaponizing the Justice Department against him. He also spends a great deal of time talking about the border with Mexico. He clearly can’t close the border as Mexico is much too important a trading partner. But his threats of mass deportation and increased enforcement will discourage some of this and will be bad for the economy. Most importantly he promises to dismantle the executive branch so that loyalty isn’t to the American people but to him. He perpetuates the lie of the existence of a “deep state” of government employees who wish to take down the government by liberal policies; ironically he will attempt to take down the government through his fascist policies. Trump recognized that many of his goals weren’t achieved because he chose people served the American people over him. He won’t make that mistake again.

Scenario 2: Trump loses the election. Even if Biden wins Trump will (again) refuse to accept the results. When this happened in 2021 he tried to block the peaceful transition of power on January 6th. It was a chaotic day filled with mistakes that he won’t make again.

Trump famously predicted that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose support. I didn’t believe him at the time but I do now. His support base is strong and deep and they have lots of guns. I don’t say this lightly but our only real chance of remaining a democracy lies in some outside factor. Polls show that if Trump is convicted in one of his trials he will lose support but I don’t believe that. He’s gotten too much mileage claiming he’s being persecuted. I do believe he’s running in part to avoid jail time; he has already raised the possibility of pardoning himself.

I can’t promise I’ll get any better at posting to this blog but I’ll try.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 164: Another Day In Court

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Yesterday former President Trump and his legal team were in court yesterday, specifically US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It stems from a criminal case linked to his January 6, 2021 attempt to overthrow the government and remain in power. Trump’s team filed a brief arguing that he is immune from prosecution because he was acting in his role as President. There is reason to argue that a sitting President cannot be charged with a crime but Trump wishes us to believe that he can never be prosecuted, unless his crime causes him to be impeached and removed from office by Congress.

I subscribe to an excellent podcast called Prosecuting Donald Trump and yesterday they gave me access to the recording of the hearing. I listened to it so you don’t have to. Here’s what I learned:

Trump’s legal team argues that if a President breaks the law he cannot be prosecuted, even after he leaves office, unless he was impeached by the House of Representatives and removed from office by the Senate. They argued that without this protection Presidents would always have to “look over his shoulder” when making decisions and worry that after they leave office they will be prosecuted. The President needs this protection to govern effectively.

Jack Smith is prosecuting the Trump case and his team responded that this is not sufficient. For example, if a President breaks the law he can then resign and provide no avenue for him to answer to his actions. Additionally they reminded the court that after Trump was impeached for his actions on January 6th several Senators advised against voting to convict. They argued that once Trump left office he would be subject to criminal charges and since he was leaving office on January 20, 2021 there was no point. Now the Trump wants to have it both ways.

It’s no surprise that I disagree with Trump but I just can’t get past the idea that the President can break the law with no fear of consequences. Trump argues that if a President can be prosecuted for actions in office it would open floodgates. One of their examples was President George W. Bush lying to Congress to get their agreement to invade Iraq. There are two problems with this: President Bush honestly believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (because his Vice President and Secretary of Defense told him so). Additionally, it’s not illegal to lie to Congress unless you’re under oath. He never was. President Trump claims he honestly believed the 2020 election was stolen from him but we have tape of him admitting he lost. This just doesn’t work.

The US Court of Appeals will likely render their decision in the next few weeks and it will almost certainly go to the Supreme Court. I can only hope the court rules against Trump.

The Trump Chronicles, Volume 163: Looking at January 6th, Three Years Later

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On the morning of January 6, 2021 I didn’t expect the date to be important. But newly defeated President Trump did. He knew that the Senate would convene that day to accept the electoral votes of the 2020 election and preventing that was his last chance to stay in office. He proclaimed, then and now, that he won the election but it was stolen from him by corruption and voter fraud.

Trump was far from the first president to be defeated in his quest for re-election; that goes all the way back to John Adams. But he was the first who fomented violence to keep his job. On December 19, 2020 he tweeted this: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

On that morning he held a rally near the White House and told his followers to march to the Capitol to “take back our country.” In fairness he expected to join the crowd but his Secret Service team refused his request and took him back to the White House.

What happened next shouldn’t have surprised anyone. The crowd marched to the Capitol, broke windows, climbed over barriers, assaulted law enforcement and attempted to prevent Congress from certifying the vote. At first even Republicans saw this for the terrorist act it was. But it didn’t take long for that to change.

Even those who were in harm’s way have now claimed this wasn’t an attempt to overthrow the government but a peaceful protest. Trump now refers to those convicted of crimes related to this are hostages. You can read an excellent article: here.

We can’t let Trump and his minions rewrite history. Our future depends on it.