Tag: Donald Trump

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Gird Up Your Loins: Resistance Is NOT Futile!

Donald Trump is ruining and dismantling our country. In his misguided effort to “Make America Great Again,” he is trying to take us back to what many of us know as the “bad old days.” Trump seems to want to destroy what is best about the United States by pushing back the progress we have made in every area: arts, culture, race, foreign policy, education, health – you name it – and he and his Project 2025 have a plan to disrupt and tear it apart.

The most upsetting thing about all of this is that we, the people, are letting it happen. I, like many of you, am frightened by all the chaos. I haven’t known what to do about any of it, so I have done nothing . . . other than talk with friends about our country’s decline and how abnormal the president’s actions are.

However, now, I say it’s time to get into some “good trouble.” How? By pushing back with letters to the editors of the newspapers still publishing, regardless of their political leanings, decrying the unnaturalness of everything Donald Trump has done and is doing. My city, Dallas TX, only has one newspaper which tends to the right of things. I will write to it beginning with this blog post as an open letter to my fellow citizens.How else can we push back? By serving as witnesses to the detaining of the undocumented as they leave their Immigration Court appointments. We can push back by calling and writing our municipal, state, and federal representatives urging – no, demanding – that they push back against what they know is wrong. And finally, by meeting with friends and neighbors to figure out other ways of resisting.

Even though it doesn’t feel like it right now, we, the people, have the greater power, not Donald Trump and his minions. Let us gird up our loins and act as if we are in charge of this nation’s destiny. Because we are!

 

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The Sky is Not Falling; Biden Just Had One Bad Debate Night

President Joe Biden and Donald Trump were on the same debate stage June 27, but they were not participating in the same debate.

President Biden came to his lectern to answer the questions from the moderators for all the American people; Trump went to his lectern to score talking points with his base. While the President worked to craft cogent responses to the questions, Trump flung out stale lies which seldom addressed the questions at hand.

On the one hand, Trump did not come off as unhinged – a real accomplishment for him – he just came off as the lying liar he is. Rarely did he seem to think about his responses; he didn’t have to because he had a script in his head that had nothing to do with the questions CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash asked the debaters.

On the other hand, the President had a less than good night and seemed less on the ball than the Dems and I would have liked. But for Democrats to talk about asking him to step off the ticket is not only premature, it is too late for that. The election is less than five months away. The President and the Democrats are going to have to stay the course. Joe Biden is the incumbent, the Democratic nominee. It’s a fact everyone must live with.

Let’s face it, to some Trump may have seemed better prepared than the President but he really wasn’t, because he didn’t come to debate, he came to pound his acolytes with his favorite lies. And when asked if he would accept the results of this November ‘s presidential election, Trump, who was asked the question three separate times, never said, “Yes.”

As to the President’s performance, he did not have a stellar debate night. Though he marshaled and shared a huge amount of information with the American people, a couple of times he had trouble using his two minutes, he was sometimes hard to understand, and he was ineffective in responding. to Trump’s lies or pointing out Trump’s failure to respond to most of the questions.

However, what I ask you to remember is this: Barack Obama had a poor first debate with Mitt Romney, but he aced the subsequent debates, and he won the election that November!

So, Democrats need to pull themselves together and worry about getting out the vote. The sky is not falling after all! Joe just had a bad night.

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Thoughts on the Final 2020 Presidential Debate

Week before last, Donald Trump said, “I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate!” What that actually meant, folks is, “I’m not going to waste my time talking to the majority of the American people.”  And, so he reverted to type. Less than a week out of the hospital with Covid-19, Trump was on the hustings creating Super-Spreader rallies with his acolytes. He makes no bones about it: He is their president, not yours and mine.

Joe Biden and Trump have  agreed to a final debate at Belmont University in Nashville TN on Thursday, October 22 at 8 PM CDT, 9 EDT. I usually tape  and alternate between both C-SPAN and PBS, and that’s what I will do on Thursday. I like those stations because they don’t do any or much talking while the candidates are sharing their points of view.

Of course, the number one question on everyone’s mind is a two-parter: will Trump act with decorum or try to wreck this final debate as he did the first; and will NBC’s Kristen Welker be able to maintain order on the set?

I’ll be watching and hope you will be, too. I’ sure you’re sick of hearing what a momentous election will conclude on Tuesday, November 3. But you know it is. Most people already have made up their minds, and millions already have voted, so the last debate is rather anticlimactic. For most of us the debate is more a thought exercise than anything else.

In the few remaining days until the debate, the media – and you and I – will speculate on how it will go, and how often Trump will misbehave and flaunt the rules he’s agreed to observe. Have fun!

pei