Donald trrump

Let’s make it clear right off the bat that Tulsi Gabbard will not be the Democratic nominee in 2020. The party’s base is so consumed with hatred for the president that only one criterion matters: which candidate can cast embody the spirit of The Anti-Trump. Do you hate the Orange Menace for his divisiveness, his crudity, his total lack of chill? Then lose yourself in Obama nostalgia with Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, and Joe Biden. Or are you looking for an all-out brawl, fascists v. reds, Spanish Civil War-style? Well, Elizabeth Warren is sharpening her tomahawk, and Bernie Sanders has his game face on. Gabbard is not the antithesis of Trump, in either temperament nor ideology. Quite the opposite: more than any of her colleagues, she resembles Trump circa 2016.

Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech tried to strike a unifying tone. But it was unnerving to hear him talk of rejecting the politics of revenge and the need for compromise. Did Melania write it? The only humdingers centered on illegal immigration, but they were essentially a recitation of his greatest hits. The same old claptrap about MS-13 swarming over 20 states and caravans heading for the borders and squishy liberals failing to recognize the dire need for a border wall. When it came to NATO, he was on his best behavior, stating that he, and he alone, had cajoled its members into forking over $100 billion to beef up their militaries. His emollient approach was jarring.

Is Donald Trump a new Winston Churchill? Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who fancies himself an expert on history, entered the lists today to defend Trump from allegations that he’s spending too much time loafing on the job. Churchill, too, Gingrich suggests, was a late riser who enjoyed luxuriating in his pajamas in between delivering speeches denouncing the depredations of the Nazis. Today, Gingrich tweeted: ‘The distortions of the hate Trump movement are never more obvious than in the reaction to the President’s leaked schedule. The ignorance of history of the current elites is pathetic. Churchill slept late, worked late, took a nap every afternoon (getting into his pajamas).

The knives are out for Donald Trump. ‘The President blew it,’ former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show about the government shutdown. Yesterday the intelligence chiefs disputed Trump’s assessments of Iran and North Korea. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed a measure decrying a ‘precipitous withdrawal’ from Syria and Afghanistan.And it’s only going to get worse for Trump. Roger Stone’s statement that the Mueller investigation is a ‘speeding bullet heading for his head’ offers a reminder that he has failed as badly at impeding, or even shuttering, the Mueller investigation as he did at constructing a border wall.

Trump caved, Trump caved, Trump caved. That’s the incantation, and if you repeat it long enough, the words begin to feel right. The president’s capitulation was ‘total’, say the media heads. He has been ‘humiliated.’ Nancy Pelosi ‘took him to the cleaners’ and ‘kicked his behind.’ This, apparently, qualifies as high-level political analysis. The trouble is, it isn’t true. Trump didn’t cave. He backed off. He may have folded, temporarily, but what journalists and many Democrats struggle to understand is that elections are not won and lost in news cycles. The irony is that many of Trump’s opponents accuse him of having ADD, of being a Twitter addict who watches too much 24-hour rolling news.

In the history of the Republic, no president has ever been barred by the Speaker of the House from delivering the State of the Union. Until now. The conventional wisdom is that Speaker Pelosi has scored a point against the president. In fact, she has handed him a weapon. But will he use it? My proposal is simple. Trump must speak directly to the American people. He must be presidential. And he must use his constitutional power to protect the nation. The president should submit his report to Congress in writing following Jefferson’s tradition and simultaneously deliver it as a live speech to the nation on television. He should make the case that Congress has failed to fulfill its obligations.

I have bad news for you. Somewhere in the this country, right now, teenage boys are acting like jerks. Yes, it’s true. Some are taunting their little sisters. Others are picking on a funny looking kid in their class. Still others are grandstanding for the benefit of the cute girl who happens to be part of their clique. It’s not new. Mitt Romney, the Grecian-formula candidate, was bullied by The New York Times and other subsidiaries of the Democratic party for bullying a kid in high school who, the Times reported, later turned out to be gay. Fine doubled, Mr Romney: you should have known. The episode might have sunk Romney’s Presidential bid but, with the customary bureaucratic efficiency of the 53 percent, he saw to that himself.

Nancy Pelosi made a major move this week when she rescinded her State of the Union invitation to President Trump as long as the government remains shut down. In all likelihood, Pelosi thought this would provide Democrats with a strategic advantage in future negotiations over border wall funding. In response, President Trump canceled Pelosi’s government-funded overseas trip.The petty political blows can continue back and forth, but there is an actual strategic play President Trump can make that will be much more powerful – he needs to address the nation, as scheduled, on January 29, 2019.With Pelosi considered a political tactician within the Democratic party, it is no surprise to see her cancel the State of the Union address.

Will the government shutdown end soon with a grand bargain between Democrats and Republicans that trades wall money for the legalization of the Dreamers? Dream on. President Trump sent out an email today in which he called for an ‘agreemnet’ to occur that would ensure the construction of a wall ‘immediatly.’ The typographical errors were no accident but symptomatic of a derelict White House that seeks to substitute showmanship for substance. Yesterday it was the bogus news conference at the White House with various glabrous fellows from immigration and border control services who were trotted out to testify to their fealty to Trump. One after another, they blubbered about how important Trump and his wall were to them.

Well, well, well. So President Trump isn’t serious about Syria. Sen. Lindsey Graham has announced that President Trump is pondering his declaration that its time to bring the boys back from the wasteland of Syria within 30-days. ‘I think we’re in a pause situation,’ Graham said on Sunday. Trump himself tweeted, ‘we’re slowly sending our troops back home to be with their families, while at the same time fighting ISIS remnants...’ This is classic Trump. Announce a bold policy, create a furor — and then move on. Disarm North Korea? Extract real concessions from Canada and Mexico? Improve relations with Russia? Bulky China into a trade deal on American terms? Build a wall?

On Christmas Eve, President Trump spoke to a seven-year-old girl called Collman Lloyd. ‘Are you still a believer in Santa?’ he asked her, ‘coz at seven, it’s marginal, right?’ Perfect. Pure Trump. It was OK, though. Later, little Collman told reporters that she still believed, despite what the leader of the free world had said to her. Trump didn’t manage to shake a seven-year-old’s faith in Santa. But, in another surprise declaration over Christmas, he announced that American troops would be leaving Syria. It happened ‘very fast,’ as Trump likes to say. He took a call from the Turkish leader, President Erdogan.