Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Steve Bannon: White Supremacist or Smear Victim

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President Elect recently named Steve Bannon, a top executive on his campaign and the former chairman of the Breitbart website to be a senior adviser.  Following this appointment, there was an explosion from the left saying that Bannon was a white supremacist and just like David Duke of the KKK.    bannon

If true, this would be quite serious.  I decided to take a closer look at the charges.  Here is the key article by Media Matters making this accusation.

A White Nationalist Who Hates Jews Will Be Trump’s Right-Hand Man In The White House

Media Matters both that Steve Bannon is a white supremacist and compared him to David Duke.  This is one of the worst if not the worst thing you can say about a person.  To make a charge like this, one should be able to substantiate it.  So let’s look at the evidence in this article.

First, there is not a single direct, verifiable quote from Steve Bannon where he said anything racist or antisemitic.  The closest thing here is that his ex-wife said he doesn’t want his kids to go to school with Jews.  If he said this, it would certainly be an antisemitic comment.  We don’t know, however, that he actually said it.  His ex-wife claimed he said this as part of a divorce.  It is highly common for spouses to slander one another in the heat of a divorce.  I personally know several instances where a spouse said very vicious things about a friend during a divorce that I know not to be true.

Media matters then says that Breitbart.com is white supremacist and antisemitic.  They specifically point to David Horowitz calling someone a renegade Jew.  They don’t mention that David Horowitz is Jewish.  Horowitz says that he has known Bannon for many years and he doesn’t have an antisemitic bone in his body.  Here is a link to Horowitz’s comments on this:

Horowitz: Anti-Bannon Hysteria More Evidence the Left Has Lost Touch with the American People – Breitbart

If Bannon was antisemitic, you would think that there would be antisemitic and anti-Israel articles on the Breitbart site.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  Breitbart has been a champion for Israel and has highlighted the fight against antisemitism.  Here is a link by the head of the Zionist Organization of America describing How Bannon has been a champion for Jews and for Israel.

Bannon and Breitbart: Friends of Israel, not anti-Semites

While Media Matters shows very flimsy evidence about Bannon being antisemitic, it shows no evidence at all on Bannon being anti-black or a white supremacist other than other people calling him that.  Think about it.  Media Matters could have cited any article ever published in the history of the website. Breitbart has probably published tens of thousands of articles.  With all of these articles to choose from, the best they could come up with was one Jew calling another Jew renegade.  They compare Bannon to David Duke.  I bet that googling David Duke would find thousands upon thousands of extremely racist comments.  With Steve Bannon and Breitbart, they could not come up with a single racist comment.

Bannon and the Breitbart website are very right wing.  I would expect my progressive friends would strongly dislike Bannon’s politics.  I would also hope they would also be fair and realize that the white supremacist and David Duke comments are not justified.

Hillary at Halftime

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I remember this classic question from one of my early science classes:  What happens if an irresistible force hits an immovable object?  At just past halftime of the 2016 presidential race, we have a similar question:  if we have two presidential candidates who can’t possibly win running against each other, who will win?HillaryClinton

In an earlier post I stuck my neck out and said that Hillary Clinton will not be the Democratic nominee for president.  My reasoning was that with Hillary Clinton facing a possible indictment, surely the Democrats would have a backup candidate.  I at least was partially wrong as there is no backup candidate.  We still need to see if Hillary will be indicted or if at least the FBI will recommend indictment.  Quite frankly, even if she is indicted I would expect that she will not withdraw.

Hillary laughs at the thought she might be indicted and her defenders all scoff and say there is nothing there.  I would think that the FBI would not devote months and dozens  of investigators if nothing was there.  Right now I don’t want to re-argue the email situation.  This is about so much more than the emails.

There is so much that most people don’t know about Hillary Clinton.  Here is a bit.

The Clinton-Russia Uranium Deal

In early 2015 Peter Schweizer published a book tiled “Clinton Cash”  This book outlined many instances where countries and companies with key requests before Hillary Clinton’s  state department would pay Bill Clinton up to a million dollars in speaking fees and at the same time would donate many millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. The state department would then approve whatever the “donor” wanted.  Prior to his publication, Schweizer shared his research with the New York Times about one of these deals where the Russians gained control over 25% of the United States uranium.  The New York Times published this front page story on April 23, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

Having published this story, the New York Times did not follow up.  Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever asked Hillary Clinton about this or any of the many other instances where the Clinton’s profited despite a strong conflict of interest.  Hardly anybody knows about all of these deals where the Clinton’s traded influence for money.

Hillary’s Persecution of Bill Clinton’s Women

Most people also don’t know how Hillary Clinton led the “bimbo” squad, a team designed to make the life of any woman who accused Bill Clinton of sexual improprieties a living hell.  Here is a New York Times story on this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/us/politics/90s-scandals-threaten-to-erode-hillary-clintons-strength-with-women.html

Hillary then had the audacity during this campaign to tweet the following “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”

In this post Bill Cosby era, many who support Hillary as a champion of women will be disgusted by Hillary’s persecution of her husband’s victims.

Clinton vs. Trump

Currently 65% of those polled have a negative opinion of Donald Trump and 55% have a negative opinion of Hillary Clinton.  Over 70% of women have a negative opinion of Trump.  With high negatives like these, Trump shouldn’t have a chance of winning the presidency.  Against Hillary Clinton, however, he may have a chance.

There are many people who, to quote Bernie Sanders,  “don’t give a damn” about Hillary’s emails.  They couldn’t care if it was revealed that the nuclear launch codes were in her email.  They don’t care what happened in Benghazi.  They don’t care if she is caught in lie after lie.  They support her because they like her politics and they want a woman in the White House.

These supporters believe she is a champion of the poor.  They don’t know that the Clintons have amassed a fortune of, according to Fortune Magazine, over $100 million.  As Hillary said they were broke when they left the White House, much of this can be traced to her influence peddling.  They believe she fights for women.  They don’t know how she abused women who spoke out against her husband.  They support her because they don’t know.

Donald Trump has proven himself to be an exceptionally good attack dog.  He will attack “Crooked Hillary”, to use his new term for her.  He will attack her relentlessly.  People will learn about Hillary’s scandals that they do care about.   If Trump can drive Clinton’s negatives to be even higher than his, he might just win.

Hillary Clinton might be the only candidate that Donald Trump can beat.  If Clinton were to be indicted and withdraw and were to be replaced by Joe Biden or almost any other less tainted Democrat, his negatives would most likely stop him from winning.   Possibly the best thing that could happen for the Democrats would be for Clinton to be indicted and withdraw.   As I said though, even if she is indicted, I doubt she would withdraw.

I am not saying that Donald Trump will beat Hillary Clinton.  I am saying that those who think that he doesn’t have a chance don’t have any idea what will be coming.

 

 

Election 2016 – Halftime Notes on the Republicans

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The 2016 presidential election is now basically at half-time with only the Wisconsin primary during a four week period.  Here are some basic thoughts on the Republican candidates and the Republican race in general.  I will have another post on the Democrats

Donald Trump

In my last post I wrote on the good and the bad of Donald Trump.  I stated some things I liked and some things I didn’t like.  In summary, I said that whenever I started to think he might be a good choice, he would say something that made me cringe and drove me away.

Up through the March 15 Super Tuesday 2 primaries, one could maktrump goode an argument that his attention-gathering statements were political brilliance.  If he had been ordinary, he would never have been taken seriously.  His blunt, non politically-correct statements drove him to prominence and to be the GOP front-runner.  Mission accomplished.  He was on the path to cruise to the nomination.  He said he could act very presidential.  It was the time to be presidential, the time to work on uniting the party around him and to reduce his negatives with a thought towards the general election.

Instead, he needlessly made abusive, divisive statements and has shown both a lack of thought on key issues and a total lack of self-control.  The post March 15 barrage started with another needless tweet out of the blue attacking Megyn Kelly.  He tweeted an awful picture of Heidi Cruz.  With polls saying 70% of women have a negative impression of him, how could he possibly think that these tweets would help him become the next president?

His statement saying women should be punished for abortions managed to alienate everybody, both pro-choice and pro-life.  It is obvious why the pro-choice would be alienated.  The pro-life movement has consistently stated it is not out to hurt the women.  Trump’s statement will be used against them for years.  Trump acted like someone who was not really pro-life, needed to act pro-life to get the nomination, and was spouting off what he thought was the pro-life position without understanding it.  He then went on to make a series of jumbled and thoughtless positions on foreign policy.

In fairness, many of the attacks on Trump say he is racist and sexist.  He is not racist or sexist.  He has taken controversial stands but there are reasons for his stands.  In his entire career, he has given major opportunities to minorities and women.  In the eighties, he put a woman in charge of constructing Trump Tower.  At that time very few women were prominent in construction.  No he is not racist or sexist.  He is just crude and offensive in general.

In short, in these last few weeks he has made so many cringe-worthy statements that I think he can not recover.

Ted Cruz

ted cruzTed Cruz’s biggest weakness is that he is rigid, uncompromising, refuses to work with others, so his colleagues hate him.  His greatest strength is that he stands staunchly behind his principles and doesn’t cave to pressure so his colleagues hate him.  His biggest strength and his biggest weakness are the same thing.

Perfect is the enemy of better.  In leading the effort to shut down the government to be perfect, he made things worse.  Trying to be perfect isn’t good.   Unless of course, you can achieve it.

I’ve heard people say Cruz is stupid.  Cruz is brilliant.  The well-known liberal Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz told Piers Morgan on CNN in 2013 that Cruz was one of the most intelligent students he ever taught:

One of the sharpest students I had . . . I’ve had 10,000 students over my 50 years at Harvard . . . he has to qualify among the brightest of the students.

Cruz was not my first choice.  I liked Walker.  I liked Fiorina.  I voted for Cruz in the primary.  Right now I think that Cruz, like Obi-wan Kenobi, is our only hope.

 

John Kasich

John Kasich has an outstanding record of accomplishment both in congress and as governor of Ohio.  If experience was the main factor in this campaign, he would easily be the nominee.  Kasich has failed as a candidate for two reasons.  First, he doesn’t inspire the Republican electorate.  Second, he cites many liberal positions,such as blanket amnesty, and he seems to eager to compromise with Democrats at a time when Republicans think we compromise too much.  His statement that he would consider a Democrat as vice president says all that you need to know here.john kasich

Kasich has no chance of winning the nomination and his continued presence in the race takes codes away from Cruz and helps Trump.  Unless Kasich has some secret deal with Trump, there is no reason for Kasich to still be in this race.  If Trump wins the nomination, he might have Kasich to thank.

Marco Rubio

Rubio is out of the race now.  His candidacy collapsed when he decided to make Trump-like comments about Trump.  It reminded me of the old like that you should never mud-wrestle with a pig.  You will just get dirty and the pig will like it.

Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, or anybody else

There has been talk about the Republican establishment hijacking the convention and putting in Romney, Ryan, or another establishment candidate.  If this happened both the Trump and Cruz supporters would be furious.  I think that the Democrats could run Hillary from jail and she would still win.   If the Republican establishment tries to hijack the process, it will be a total disaster.  I really think that, unless Hillary is indicted, that the one Republican hope is to get behind Ted Cruz and help him win the nomination in a fair process.

 

 

 

 

The Good and Bad of Donald Trump

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trump good

I think that every liberal friend and relative who knows I am a Republican has asked me what I think of Donald Trump.  The general implication is that any shred of respect they ever had for my opinions will be gone if I say I like him.  Also, several of my conservative Republican friends absolutely abhor Trump and say they would never vote for him, no matter what.  On the other side, a third group of friends think he is the best hope we have to save the country and they fervently support him.

Personally, I am torn by Donald Trump.  To me, he is like the girl in the nursery rhyme with the curl in the middle of her forehead.  When he is good he is very very good and when he is bad he is horrid.  I’d like to discuss the good and the bad of Donald Trump. I will focus on who he is as a person, not his views trump badon individual issues.  Everybody has different views on issues.  My question here is does he have what it takes to be a good president.  Before I do this, however, I would like to share two insights that I think you are essential to understanding Donald Trump.

Insight 1:  The Art of The Deal

The first insight comes from Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal”.  I read this originally almost thirty years ago when it was first released.  I will confess that I do not remember it clearly, but one thing I do remember is that he says that you need to begin with an outrageous, extreme starting position.  As you negotiate, you will negotiate away the outrageous components and you will end up with what you actually want.  If you start with a reasonable position, then as you negotiate you will need to make real concessions and you will end up with far less than you want.

Therefore Donald Trump starts his approach to immigration saying he will deport every illegal alien in America.  The press and other detractors have ridiculed this position saying that it is impossible and/or impractical.  I believe Donald Trump knows that.  This is his outrageous starting position.  If he gets elected president, he will negotiate down and end up with an immigration policy he never could have achieved if he started with a reasonable position.

Insight 2:  The Board Room

The second insight derives from watching Trump for many years on the Apprentice.  In Trump’s boardroom, if you are attacked, you must counter-attack.  If you don’t counter-attack, you get fired, even if you did a great job.  My personal philosophy is that if I am the project leader, everything that goes wrong is somewhat my fault.  My job is to anticipate and prevent other people’s mistake.  I would not have made it out of the first boardroom.  I don’t agree with his philosophy here.  On the other hand, he is a multi-billionaire and I am not.  Maybe he knows something that I don’t.  Whether you think this is good or bad, it is who he is.  You can’t understand Donald Trump without understanding this.

The Good 1:  The CEO

The best thing about Trump is that I think he would be a great Chief Executive of the United States.  The man knows how to run an organization.  Most importantly, I believe he would bring in very talented people to work under him.  Too often, key government positions are political payoffs.  They are rewarded as political prizes, often with little thought given to the ability.  Trump didn’t get to where he is by hiring his buddies.  I am not worried about Trump’s lack of Washington experience.  He can hire people with Washington experience.  Presidents often hire people who will tell them only what they want to hear. You don’t become a billionaire by surrounding yourself with flatterers; you surround yourself with highly competent people that tell you what you need to know.

The Good 2: The Blunt Spokesman

When my son was about five years old, he was randomly selected for a full body pat down at the airport.  While security was busy making sure that Jimmy was not carrying any weapons such as high-caliber squirt guns, multiple people who appeared to be from the Middle East walked through security without being hindered.  Sometimes political correctness is silly.  Sometimes it can get people killed.

I think it is important to have a president who is willing to tackle serious issues and will not be frightened off by political correctness or the fear of offending someone.  Trump is correct when he says he made immigration a major issue.  Before Trump’s initial comments, immigration was a secondary issue and primarily focused on how we should not offend Hispanic voters.  After a few words from Trump, it became the issue in the campaign.  He not only says what needs to be said, but when he says things, people listen.

The Good 3: The Attack Dog

In 2012, the Democrats painted Romney, a person who truly has dedicated his life to helping others, as one of the most horrible people the world has ever known.  Romney, on the other hand, would attack Obama’s policies but he refused to say anything negative about Obama as a person.   Romney lost.  The Republicans cannot make this mistake again.

Many pundits think that Hillary Clinton would mop the floor with Trump.  I have heard predictions she would win forty nine states.  I think that these people have not watched Trump at all.  When Trump attacks, people listen and his attacks work.  His low-energy comments destroyed Bush.  His attacks on Cruz’s citizenship, which I personally think are without merit, have caused Trump to surge in the polls and overtake Cruz in the Iowa polls.  Bill Clinton has been an abuser of women for women for over twenty years and Hillary has helped him do it, but until Trump brought it up, nobody thought anything about it.  After a few words from Trump, Hillary’s poll ratings from women plunged.

Trump is probably the best, most-effective attack dog I have ever seen.  He has the ability to find the attack that sticks and get people to talk about it.  I think he could devastate most opponents.  If his opponent is Hillary Clinton, with so many negatives that most people don’t even begin to know, some of which dwarf the email issues, I think that Trump could be the most effective candidate the Republicans could run against her.

The Bad 1:  The Meanie

I understand Trump’s need to counter-attack his enemies.  I am disturbed how he needlessly says mean and crude things about people who sometimes aren’t even his enemies. Comments on Carly Fiorina’s face or saying McCain wasn’t a hero because he got captured just make me cringe.

I think that Trump’s war on Megyn Kelly is the best illustration of his pettiness.   Megyn Kelly asked Trump a question in the first Fox  debate about his denigration of women. The moderators began the debate by asking each candidate a tough question that would certainly come up at some point if the candidate won the nomination.  In that light, I thought that her question was  totally fair and reasonable.  Since then, Trump has been throwing out a steady stream of attacks on Kelly including a line which I certainly interpreted as being about her menstruation.  It culminated in his boycott of the Iowa debate.    During this time, Kelly has shown nothing but class.  I can certainly understand a candidate attacking the media for being unfair.  It often is.  In this case, though, it is certainly vast overkill.  He comes across as petty, petulant, and just plain mean.  These are not characteristics you want in a president.

The Bad 2:  The Narcissist

I have always thought that President Obama is a narcissist.  In his campaign, he consistently stated how he could make everything right based upon the force of his personality.  The Iranians might hate America under Bush, but Obama would turn them around and make them see the light.  Obama also never admits he is wrong about anything.

I see the same narcissistic characteristics in Trump.  He can make Putin see reason.  He can work with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  He very seldom says how he will do anything, asking us to trust that he will succeed because he is Trump.  While Trump may have more justification than Obama in thinking he can succeed just because of who he is, I still think is is a dangerous personality characteristic.

Trump also refuses to admit he ever makes a mistake.  For example Trump claimed he saw a newscast video of thousands of Muslims celebrating 9-11 in New Jersey.  Nobody has found such a video.  To me it is obvious and innocuous what happened.  He saw videos of thousands of Muslims in the middle east celebrating.  He saw another video of a few Muslims in New Jersey celebrating.  Over time, he mixed them up.  This is a fairly normal type of thing.  I certainly have done it.  Trump, however, will never admit he made a mistake about anything.  I can’t say for sure it is from Narcissism.  I don’t know if he knows he made a mistake but feels if he admits a mistake, it will destroy the Trump magic.  Maybe it would.  I just don’t want a president who can’t ever admit when he has been wrong.  If a policy is bad, it needs to be changed.  Would Trump change it?

The Bad 3: The Waffler

I have my doubts about Ted Cruz, which I will not go into right now, but I certainly admire his integrity and consistency.  In Iowa, Cruz has stated his opposition to Ethanol subsidies.  Iowa lives on Ethanol subsidies.   Every candidate who ever campaigns in Iowa supports these subsidies except Cruz.  To me this clearly shows that Cruz will stand by his principles no matter what.  I can’t say that about Donald Trump.  I don’t really know what his convictions are.

In the last debate, Trump swore he would not personally bring a lawsuit against Cruz on the citizenship issue, then a few days later he said he was considering it.  How can he consider it?  He just promised he wouldn’t.  Likewise, pledging to support the Republican candidate no matter what, he started hinting again that he might run as a third party candidate if he wasn’t “treated fairly”.  It bothers me that he reneges or at least considers reneging on promises that easily.

With this lack of integrity, I find it hard to evaluate Trump’s true views on many issues.  Earlier in life he espoused some fairly liberal positions and supported Democratic  candidates.  He says his views have evolved over time and he supported Democrats because as a businessman, it is what he had to do.  That might be true, but I don’t have enough confidence in his integrity to know that for sure.  While the Cruz citizenship suit threat might be minor in the grand scheme, it tells me that his promise can’t be trusted. I understand that sometimes promises must be broken due to extreme circumstances.  This, however, is not an extreme circumstance.  If he can break his word here, he can break it anywhere.

Conclusion

I am still torn on Donald Trump.   There seems to be a trend where I start to like him and then he says something that makes me cringe and it pushes me back away from him.  I would certainly vote for Trump over Clinton, Sanders, or any Democrat who I can think might run.  I just kind of sort of hope that the Republicans choose somebody else.  Maybe.  I think.  Ask me again tomorrow.