It was Michelle Obama’s night — again.
The former first lady was the standout speaker, by some distance, on the first night of the Democratic National Convention Monday.
Obama took the fight directly to President Trump in a pre-taped but emotive speech. She accused him of being “clearly in over his head” and being “the wrong president for our country.” Continue reading.
Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah and the party’s 2012 nominee for president, will be sworn into the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.
It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. His early appointments of Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster, Kelly and Mattis were encouraging. But, on balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.
It is not that all of the president’s policies have been misguided. He was right to align U.S. corporate taxes with those of global competitors, to strip out excessive regulations, to crack down on China’s unfair trade practices, to reform criminal justice and to appoint conservative judges. These are policies mainstream Republicans have promoted for years. But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.
View the complete commentary by Mitt Romney on The Washington Post website here.
“Donald Trump is on the line.”
It was the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, at WWOR’s station in Secaucus, N.J., and Rolland Smith, the lead anchor for the news outlet’s coverage of the day, was apologizing for the channel’s technical difficulties. The crushing pictures and videos of airplanes hurtling into the World Trade Center were seemingly on a loop for hours. That’s when Brenda Blackmon, the co-anchor of the coverage, interjected to let her colleague know that Trump, the real estate mogul with well-documented ties to Lower Manhattan, was on the phone.
When the planes hit the towers, Alan Marcus got a call from Will Wright, the news director at WWOR. Upon arrival, Marcus, who acted as a spokesman, lobbyist and consultant for Trump throughout the ’90s and also did on-air analyst work for WWOR, said Wright asked him whether he could get a celebrity on the line for them to interview. Befuddled by the request during the tragedy, Marcus asked him to clarify.
The following article by Kenneth T. Walsh was posted on the U.S. News and World Report February 2, 2018:
Character doesn’t count the way it used to. In the past, most Americans honored their presidents and used them as role models who embodied time-tested virtues. No more.
President Donald Trump has gone a long way toward accelerating this unfortunate trend. He gave a reasonably agreeable State of the Union address this week, and even showed some compassion and empathy. But the bar was very low for him because, since he alienates so many people, any show of comity was going to be taken as a positive step.
Yet in many ways, Trump remains the un-president – seemingly lacking in traits that the nation used to prize such as honesty, empathy, forgiveness, a spirit of conciliation, humility, sharing the values of everyday people, self deprecation and a sense of humor. Instead he emphasizes bluster and narcissism. His presidency seems to be a reality show based on pride, preening and his immense ego, designed to call attention to the man in charge and crush his adversaries. Continue reading “The Decline of Character”
