Trump

The Best Defense . . .

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump does not play defense. He is a true believer in the adage that the best defense is a strong offense. If attacked, he fights back harder, like when hit by the “grabbing” charges during the campaign. His ‘apology’ was an attack on Bill Clinton.

So his Tweet the other day that his base is “is far bigger & stronger than ever before” was completely out of character.  Normally Trump would not even be responding to media reports that his base was shrinking. For him to take to Twitter to contradict this can only mean one thing:

Trump himself believes he is loosing supporters.

Good time to go on vacation.

Et Tu, Boris?

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump is the master of the Taunting Tweet. Whether he is taking on the Democrats, Republicans or even members of his own cabinet like Jeff Sessions, he is pretty handy with the snarky, cutting comment.

To be sure, there have been plenty of Tweets tweaking Trump, but none of them are from anyone he cares about.

So it must have been particularly galling for Trump to read the Russian prime minister’s Tweet that his administration is showing “total weakness” in the “most humiliating way.” To have his buddies the Russians publicly proclaim him as “an incompetent player” (Facebook post) has to be the ultimate insult for smart, tough guy Trump. Truly humiliating.

Of course, there may be more to it behind the scenes. The best way to gauge Trump’s relations with the Russians is to follow the money. Is Russian financing still flowing to the Trump family of companies? Is Trump Inc. doing any new real estate development in Russia? We might have to wait until Robert Mueller speaks before we find out.

Kommander Kelly To The Rescue

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s appointment of John Kelly as his Chief of Staff will probably work. Kelly is retired military, and Trump spent five of his most formative years in a military academy under a tight command structure. If anyone can inject some discipline into Trump and his administration, it would be a four star general.

For a while.

Until Trump starts remembering what he didn’t like about the academy and the military life. Like how his command was taken away from him when he was ‘promoted’ into an administrative position. And how he chaffed at the rules (but got away with breaking them).

That’s when he will fall back on the fact that as commander in chief he actually outranks a four star general. He’ll go back to shooting himself and his administration in the foot. At which point Kelly might quit. Because if there’s one thing that really annoys a military man, it is friendly fire.

Loyalty Is A One Way Street

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Richard Nixon’s enemies list was secret but Donald Trump’s is right out there for everyone to see. If Trump does not like what you are doing, he will let everyone know in a tweet. Or fire you. Or both.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not the person is a Trump supporter. If Trump is upset with you, be prepared to be called on the carpet. Jeff Sessions was the first US Senator to support Trump, but he is now the subject of major presidential Twitter sniping. Reince Priebus supported Trump through the primaries to the dismay of the Republican establishment, which wanted any nominee but Trump. Priebus now has the distinction of losing his job faster than any Chief of Staff in history.

Both of these men were among the most solid Trump loyalists. But their experiences have shown that while Trump knows how to appreciate loyalty to himself, he has no loyalty to anyone else. It is all about “what have you done for me lately?”

Republican Washington is picking up on this. It will only get worse for Trump’s agenda as members of congress realize that he will sell them down the river in a New York minute if he doesn’t like something. Not exactly the Dale Carnegie approach, and it will likely fail sooner rather than later.

It Wasn’t Supposed To Be This Way

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump must be wondering. Here’s a guy who acknowledges having been ‘raked over the coals (in public) for thirty years.’ He finally ascends to king of the hill, winning the presidency. It’s time for a little bit of respect, right?

But it is not working out that way. The press, which has never been friendly, is even worst to him. His political party cannot seem to get things done, which makes him look weak, which is the opposite of the strong presidential image he deserves.

Heck, he can’t even get respect from his own administration. The press continues to get plenty of leaks from the White House, which totally pisses him off unless of course he is the leaker. His press secretary doesn’t seem to be able to make him look good – he had to go. Even his attorney general won’t go to bat for him. This guy was one of his most loyal supporters and now he’s just ducking the hard stuff.

No, Trump must feel like he got the ultimate raw deal. Which may be part of the explanation for his tweets about pardoning. He may be thinking, “Screw it. I don’t care about the recognition and respect. I’m just gonna do what I want and if they want to come after me and my family they can. I’ll just pardon our way out.”

What The Dems Can’t Figure Out

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Met up with some friends who were Democrats. When the conversation turned to politics, the ‘can you believes’ started flowing. “Can you believe what is coming out about Trump’s kids and Russia?”  “Can you believe Sean Spicer just resigned?”

The ‘can you believes’ are almost always followed by the ‘how cans’ and this was no exception. “How can anyone believe/support/vote for/trust Trump?”

Unfortunately for the Democrats, while this is exactly the right question, they just cannot figure out the answer. They feel that Trump supporters must be uneducated/hoodwinked/bigots or worse.

What they cannot figure out is that there are legitimate reasons for supporting Donald Trump. They are actually very similar to the reasons for supporting Bernie Sanders. A lot of Americans feels like they are getting a raw deal and the deck is stacked against them.

They are right.

Income inequality keeps rising in the US, and it seems like the techies, Wall Street and corporate America are taking over.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were the only candidates really calling this out during the last election campaign. That message still resonates with at least 30% of the country, probably more. And they believe Trump can fix it because he has too much money to care about getting rich anymore (very not true) and he is not afraid to throw verbal bombs in normally reserved Washington to shake things up (very true).

They realize Trump has flaws, but they still see him as the only chance of changing the status quo. Until the Democrats have a message and leaders that resonate with the part of the country being left behind, Trump will remain the only game in town.

Follow The Money

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Where does Trump Inc. really get its money? In his interview with the New York Times this week, Donald Trump shot himself in the foot again and told everyone it was none of their business. Of course, now everyone will be focused on that very question.

Trump said that the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election would cross a “red line” if it started looking into his finances. But the special counsel is apparently thinking of doing just that, if he hasn’t already. After all, any crime investigator knows that the first thing to do is follow the money.

Trump’s supporters think he has a point: the investigation was supposed to be about Russian interference and should not be side tracked.  These are also people who have no love for the Clintons and surely supported Bill’s impeachment. They should remember that the only reason he was impeached was because an investigation of Clinton’s business affairs got sidetracked to whether or not he lied about having sex with an intern.

Sex with an intern is not Trump’s style, but the investigation may find that his firm is financially in bed with a number of dubious characters and governments, which could have the same consequences.

Where’s Papa Bear?

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

So  far, Donald Trump has been uncharacteristically restrained in his comments about his son’s dealings with the Russians. One would have expected him to be very vocal about the attacks on his namesake. There are a number of possible reasons why Trump is holstering his Twitter handle on this one.

  • He knows it is bad and is hoping it blows over
  • He does not want to say anything that may later be proven to be a lie by his son
  • He is keeping his powder dry in case his son really gets into trouble
  • He is selling his son down the river to deflect attention from himself

It is hard to imagine that the last reason is valid considering the tight family circle that is Trump Inc. After all, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law, was also involved, and if it turns out illegalities were performed, the two of them might go down together.

No, it is probably a combination of the first three reasons, with the emphasis on the first one. Trump is smart enough to know that the issue has absolutely no chance of blowing over if he goes to the mat on it.

It likely won’t blow over though, so look for papa bear to come out swinging on behalf of his cubs when things heat up.

Trump’s Media Smackdown

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s recent tweet of himself taking down CNN WWE-style has elicited a gaggle of news stories about how Trump has been modeling WWE fighters. But, as is the case too often lately, the media has the story wrong.

The story isn’t that Trump is using WWE tactics in politics. The real story is that the media has not figured this out until now even though it has been going on for a year. Why? Because the media are elites and have lost touch with the a large portion of America. For instance, the portion that makes WWE one of the top rated shows on cable TV. Have any of the national media even seen a WWE show or event?

Trump supporters know this. They can tell that the media has no clue about their interests, their lives and their daily struggles. Which is why they distrust the media. Meanwhile the media, which often reports on the very poor but hardly ever on the middle class, cannot understand where Trump’s support comes from.

Instead, they ought to be trying to figure out why Trump supporters would trust media that is so out of touch that it couldn’t figure out that Trump has been borrowing from the WWE (especially after he appointed the ex-CEO to his administration).

Don’t Ever Forget, Trump’s A Fighter

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

When asked what he admired most about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump responded, “She’s a fighter”. It is really the quality Trump admires most about himself (psychology calls that ‘projection’).

There are many people, primarily Trump opponents, who believe that if he is confronted with a terrible scandal or starkly contrary facts that he will back down and reverse position. They are completely and utterly mistaken.

Donald Trump will never back down. He was recorded talking about groping women but did not back down. Pictures of his inauguration crowd showed it smaller than Barak Obama’s, but that is just an ‘alternative fact’. Backing down is just not in his nature.

There are two possible exceptions. Going to jail or losing a lot of money. But these are debatable.

So looking forward to when and if Congress and/or the special prosecutor implicate Trump with regard to collusion with Russia, financial conflicts of interest or anything else, Trump will fight back with everything he has.

That will include mobilizing his base. There will be demonstrations in his favor. They won’t be as large as the ones against him, but that won’t be the point. The point of the Trump demonstrations will be to show the country what kind of social unrest might happen if it doesn’t back off.