Tag Archives: Trump

Trump Voters Thought He Was A Good Businessman?

When Donald Trump chose Orlando, Florida for the kickoff of his 2020 campaign, the city demanded up-front payment of the costs it would incur.

They were smart.

Because this President doesn’t pay his bills–never has. According to multiple media reports, 10 cities are still waiting for Trump’s campaign to pay $841,000 in bills from previous rallies. Some of those bills go back to 2016.

Ironically, Trump often gushes at rallies about police officers and other brave first responders, but his campaign is apparently stiffing police and firefighters across the nation.

“Do we love law enforcement or what?” he asked at a rally in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in October. Apparently, his campaign didn’t love them enough to even bother to respond to a $16,191 bill for city police and other safety costs, according to the report by the nonprofit CPI in conjunction with NBC and CNBC.

According to the Washington Post, 

President Trump’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July is expected to drive up security costs for an annual event that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the nation’s capital.

But the president has still not fully paid the bill for the last time he addressed a massive crowd on the Mall: his 2017 inauguration.

The Trump administration and Congress owe D.C. more than $7 million in expenses from Trump’s inauguration, according to federal and city financial records. The total cost of the four-day celebration, which culminated with a parade and gathering of roughly 600,000 people on the Mall, was $27.3 million.

As a result, the District has been forced to dip into a special fund that covers annual security costs for protecting the city from terrorist threats and hosting other events such as demonstrations, state funerals and the visits of foreign dignitaries. That fund, which for years was adequately replenished by federal dollars, is now on track to enter the red by this fall, records show.

As the article noted (in what may have been a subtle dig), the expenses of the inauguration were “formidable despite the fact that attendance was far more sparse than at Obama’s Inauguration.”

It’s no secret that Trump has been a deadbeat throughout his career. I remember television interviews during the 2016 campaign with vendors he’d stiffed over the years, and reports of the numerous times he’d been sued. (As I recall, the number of lawsuits was in the thousands.)

Evidently, the D.C. liquor board understands that business history. According to The Washington Examiner, a group of Washington, D.C., residents are being permitted to challenge the Trump Hotel’s liquor license on the basis of President Trump’s character. The group is asking to have the hotel’s liquor license revoked, citing a D.C. law that requires license applicants to be of “good character and generally fit for the responsibilities of licensure.”

“Donald Trump, the true and actual owner of the Trump International Hotel, is not a person of good character,” the residents wrote in their complaint, because of “certain lies he has told, his involvement in relevant fraudulent and other activity demonstrating his lack of integrity, and his refusal to abide by the law or to stop associating with known criminals.”

Instead of denying the complaint, the board issued a ruling allowing for the complaint to move to mediation or a hearing before the board.

There’s so much more the group can point to. The multiple bankruptcies. The fraud that was Trump University  (he settled those claims for 25 million). The unwillingness of American banks to do business with him and his subsequent coziness with–and dependence on– Russian oligarchs. His use of the office of President to line his and his children’s pockets, arguably in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. Etc.

Some “businessman.” No wonder he doesn’t want to disclose his tax records; according to knowledgable observers, they will show (among other things) that he has grossly inflated his net worth.

It all begs the question: how did this crude and classless deadbeat come to occupy the Oval Office? And is there anything–other than White Nationalism, fragile masculinity and misogyny–that can explain why anyone would still support him?

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“No Brainer” Trump…

Several media outlets have reported on Trump’s enthusiastic embrace of a measure to outlaw flag burning. Congresscritters repeatedly introduce these bills, despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled years ago that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment.

Ed Brayton commented on Trump’s history with the issue.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump said that anyone who burns an American flag — you know, all four of them in the entire country over the last few decades– should be stripped of their citizenship and be put in jail. Now two Republicans have proposed yet another bill to make flag burning illegal and he’s endorsing it on — where else — Twitter:

All in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an Amendment for a strong BAN on burning our American Flag. A no brainer!

Coincidentally, No Brainer is the Secret Service’s code name for him.

You would think that an administration’s Press Secretary would try to intercede to protect freedom of expression, since all media–even rightwing outlets–rely on First Amendment protections to do their jobs. But of course, this is the Trump Administration, which has hired spectacularly dishonest specimens to fill that post. (My favorite description of departing Sarah Huckabee Sanders was penned by Bret Stephens of the New York Times, who wrote that Sanders “combined the sincerity of Elmer Gantry with the moral outlook of Raskolnikov.”)

Since no one currently serving in this administration seems to “get it,” let me see if I can explain the way free speech jurisprudence works in language that thinking people  (a category that rather clearly excludes the current occupant of the White House) can understand.

The Free Speech clause of the First Amendment protects the exchange of ideas against government censorship. All ideas. Even awful ideas. Ideas that piss people off. Government doesn’t get to decide which ideas get transmitted, period. (Your mother, on the other hand, can censor you. So can your boss. The Bill of Rights only restrains government.)

Government can prohibit actions for a whole host of reasons, but it cannot pick and choose among messages. If there is an ordinance banning outdoor burning in dry weather, for example, or laws criminalizing the theft of a flag belonging to someone else, people violating those laws can be punished, because those measures don’t implicate an exchange of ideas. They are what lawyers call “content neutral.”

The rules are different for actions we call “symbolic speech.” These are actions that are clearly intended to communicate ideas. A silent march by Neo-Nazis–or any group of activists– doesn’t require verbal expression to send its message. We get it.

Flag burning offends us precisely because it sends an unmistakable message of disrespect for the country.

Brayton illuminated another common misunderstanding of what the First Amendment  does and does not protect, in a post about a Tennessee police officer who had advocated killing gay people.

Grayson Fritts, the Tennessee sheriff’s deputy/pastor who gave a sermon calling for LGBT people to be put to death, has been given a buyout and allowed to resign rather than be fired. And his boss says that’s because firing him would violate his First Amendment rights. I’m virtually a free speech absolutist, and I can say without hesitation that he is totally wrong….

If he was just a preacher who said that, I’d excoriate him for it but still support his constitutional right to say it. But as a government employee whose job is to administer justice fairly and equally, it’s a clear violation of his oath of office to think that some of the people he is charged with protecting and serving should be murdered by the state because he doesn’t approve of them. There is no free speech issue there.

A zoning administrator handing out religious tracts on the job is violating the terms of her employment, and a President trying to stifle views with which he disagrees is violating the terms of his. Free speech jurisprudence doesn’t protect them.

When elected officials–from the President on down–are abysmally ignorant of the constitution they swear to uphold, we’re in a world of hurt.

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Time To Take A Stand

The news media and my Facebook feed are full of stories about the horrific mistreatment of families and small children at the border.

Children are dying of disease and neglect. One seven-year-old girl died of dehydration--she wasn’t given enough  water to drink! A four-month old was separated from his family. Hundreds of people are packed into shelters built to hold a fraction of the number crammed in…the horror stories go on and on.

From Lawyers for Good Government, we learn that

The Trump administration argued in court this week that detained migrant children do not require basic hygiene products (like soap and toothbrushes) to be held in “safe and sanitary” conditions. Lawyers who recently interviewed detained children report that kids are living in “traumatic and dangerous” conditions – insufficient food and water, going weeks without bathing, kids as young as 7 years old being told to care for the babies and toddlers.

Our delusional and mentally-ill President has no intention of doing anything to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis he has created. In interviews, he insists Obama began the family separation policy (he didn’t–the only time his administration removed children from their families was when they were believed to be in danger) and simply denies what numerous reports have documented.

Meanwhile, rather than calling on Congress or all those self-proclaimed “Christians” to intervene, conservative apologists attack those who–like AOC–call these facilities what they clearly are: concentration camps.

There is no ambiguity about what is happening. The heartless people who are defending the documented abuse and inhumanity are telling the rest of us who–and what– they are. 

“Fox & Friends”co-host Brian Kilmeade showed his support for President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach to border policy, adding that the migrant children who have been separated from their families“aren’t our kids.”

“Like it or not, these aren’t our kids,” said Kilmeade on Friday’s episode of the Fox News morning show. “Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country and now people are saying that they’re more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well.”

Is this really what America has come to?

Are we really prepared to defend unforgivable and inhumane treatment so long as the objects of that treatment aren’t “our” kids?  Are we content to be like the “good Germans” who wouldn’t personally have taken their Jewish neighbors to the camps, but who were quite willing to close their eyes and pretend not to see the atrocities around them?

This isn’t about immigration policy. Good people can disagree about border security, about the criteria for allowing migrants to cross the border, about the number of refugees America should resettle. Good people do not and cannot excuse callous, barbaric, inhumane treatment of children and families trying to escape desperate conditions–conditions that our country has some measure of responsibility for creating and that our ignoramus President has made worse by cutting off aid that would to some extent ameliorate the conditions they are fleeing.

This humanitarian travesty is being done in our name. And to add insult to injury, private prison companies are profiting from it. Big time.

For me, there is nothing worse than the feeling of powerlessness–the recognition of a great wrong that I feel helpless to address. Surely other people feel the same.

What would it take to organize a national strike? A day when only critically important workers (policing, hospitals, etc.) show up? Those of us for whom morality means caring for our fellow humans rather than fixating on other people’s genital activity need a way to tell our broken, pathetic excuse for a government–in Howard Beale’s famous words– that we’re mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore. That we aren’t going to sit by while an American government perpetuates unforgivable behaviors in our name.

I’m open to other ideas, but we need some vehicle to express our collective outrage, and send a message. We can’t just avert our eyes.

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Not-So-Merry Christmas?

I keep remembering the line Yul Brynner used  whenever he was faced with a conundrum in The King and I?  “It’s a puzzlement.”

As Americans count down to the 2020 elections, those of us who view the Presidential contest as a critical referendum on the American Idea and the rule of law are torn. We want to stop this corrupt and incompetent administration from doing even more harm between now and then, but we also know that preventing the worst consequences of Trump’s madness will work in his favor.

Take the damage being done to the economy by his ham-handed imposition of tariffs.

As an article in the Washington Post recently put it,

There’s a case to be made that Trump has the upper hand in these trade disputes because the United States buys more from China and Mexico than those countries buy from the United States. To put it another way, China and Mexico need Trump economically more than he needs them.

But that’s just the raw economic calculation. Trump is also facing a campaign for reelection in 2020, and he’s banking on a strong economy to propel him to victory. There are already signs that Trump’s trade policies are making the markets and economy jittery, and the pain is likely to escalate if he doesn’t make some deals by September.

People who actually understand economics and trade policy (a category that clearly excludes Donald Trump) are warning that America’s economy is losing steam. Despite Trump’s fantasies, coal is dying, factories aren’t coming back and companies that are still here are pocketing their tax windfalls, not creating new jobs.

Tariffs are taxes on the American people. So far, those costs have been modest. As Trump and top White House officials frequently point out, inflation (a good gauge of price increases across the economy) has remained low, which helps explain why there hasn’t been widespread public revolt over the tariffs, except among farmers and some manufacturers who have been hit the hardest.

Experts who follow economic trends warn that the costs of Trump’s delusional “dealmaking” are likely to ramp up in August and September. That’s because he appears intent upon announcing new rounds of tariffs– thus dramatically increasing the costs Americans will have to pay for goods, and making it probable that people will notice that they, not China, are paying the tab for Trump’s version of trade policy.

August and September are when U.S. retailers import goods for the holiday shopping period. Retailers warn that If Trump’s tariffs are still in place then, “it will be nearly impossible not to pass some — if not all — costs on to consumers for holiday season 2019.”

Consider the numbers. At the start of the year Trump’s tariffs cost the typical family of four about $480 a year, according to calculations by the right leaning Tax Foundation and The Washington Post. Last month Trump increased tariffs on China, which lifted the cost for a typical family of four to $860 a year…If Trump moves forward with his other threat to put tariffs on all Chinese imports by the end of the summer, the cost would jump even higher — to more than $2,000 for a family of four.

And it’s not just higher costs. Retailing–and retail employment– is already on the ropes. As one columnist recently noted,

Last week, 661 firms — including major players such as Costco, Target and Hallmark — signed a letter pleading with the administration not to use tariffs as a cudgel in its efforts to address China’s trade abuses. The USTR has also received more than 1,600 written comments thus far, overwhelmingly negative.

These, like the USTR public hearings, echo what big retailers had already been warning investors and customers: Sweeping tariffs will stress already-thin profit margins and lead to layoffs. They will also raise prices for U.S. households by hundreds or thousands of dollars, wiping out the value of Trump’s tax cuts.

My only quibble with that letter is with the notion that the tax cuts had value…

So here’s the conundrum: Consumer spending is the backbone of the U.S. economy. If Trump continues with his “Tariff Man” antics, the economy will suffer, and the working poor, as usual, will bear the brunt of the pain.

On the other hand, other than appeals to racism, Obama’s economy is pretty much the only thing Trump has going for him.

Should good Americans root for a downturn that would be likely to ensure Trump’s defeat, even though it would cause pain for so many people? Or should we hope that sane policymakers can keep him from tanking the economy–  thereby improving his election prospects?

It’s a puzzlement.

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Thank Heavens For Ineptitude

I have mentioned before my fondness for Juanita Jean, The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Shop. It’s the blog Molly Ivins would have authored had she lived into the blog era.

I want to share a recent post in its entirety. It’s amusing–but like most of Juanita Jean’s observations, it’s also pretty profound.

Remember back last summer when Trump took away John Brennan’s security clearance?  Brennan says he hasn’t heard from anybody about anything officially notifying him that his pass had been revoked, so maybe …

Yep.  Trump never did it. Brenna still has a full clearance because …

But the White House never followed through with the complex bureaucratic work it would have taken to strip the clearance, according to a person familiar with the process.

Okay, you get to pick: lazy or stupid.

I’m going with the hybrid – too dumb to find out how but also too lazy to follow through even if they did find out how.

Trump doesn’t care about accomplishing anything. He just wants headlines.

Anyone who has followed this administration can attest to the accuracy of this observation. For most of us, the first impulse is to bemoan the fact that we have a President with a very limited intellect who clearly knows nothing about the job he was accidentally elected to do.

I have a different reaction: relief.

I’ve noted before that when Trump is sued for doing something that violates the law, or is otherwise stupid or damaging, he almost always loses. This is because he–and the Keystone Kops with whom he has surrounded himself–rarely know what the hell they are doing, and even more rarely follow the rules that govern policy change.

Think about this: Virtually everything the Trump Administration tries to do is wrong, damaging, corrupt, unAmerican and (often) incredibly stupid.

Can you imagine how bad it would be if this crew was competent? (Think of the incredible damage Mitch McConnell has done to American democracy, because he’s both evil and good at what he does.)

Thank God they are–to repeat Juanita Jean’s accurate observation-too dumb to learn and  too lazy to follow through even if they did.

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