Day 67 of Nat'l Emergency: Joe Misspeaks, Trump Stumbles Toward a New China Relationship

What should we make of Uncle Joe’s latest humdinger (latest being very transient and perhaps overtaken by a new faux pas by the time this gets posted).

Sure, the 77-year-old presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee last week mixed up statistics about the devastation of the coronavirus. Joe Biden said 85,000 people were out of work and millions had died. 

Poor Joe, his mouth and mind do not always work in sync. But who among us has not conflated statistics when making public, even personal, observations. 

Of course, we hold our politicians, especially those who seek the presidency, to a higher standard, at least if those pols are Democrats. 

Republicans, on the other hand, have long abandoned any fealty to facts if the spigot of wisdom is Donald Trump. They only care for truth if a Democrat speaks, much the same way they railed against budget deficits by Democrats with nary a word of dissent when Republican presidents catapulted the national debt to the stratosphere.

Though Biden’s misspeaks provide fodder for ridicule from the insulter-in-chief, they have also generated an undercurrent of belief that Democrats should dump him in favor of a younger, more verbally adept candidate who would be able to stand up to Trump during debates. 

My response is Democrats should not panic. While not a perfect candidate, Biden, by all thoughtful accounts, is the lesser of what many call evils. Would the public rather have a candidate who misaligns statistics about the number who are dead with the number who have lost jobs, or would it prefer an incumbent who tells people to swig some Clorox, or who disdains the advice of scientists not only on COVID-19 but on climate change and relaxes EPA rules that further endanger our citizens and planet? 

The election is more than five months away. Only political junkies are tuned in to every word Biden utters. As for Trump, we are forced to hear or read about his latest delusional ravings because the media focuses on them as he is president. Several studies have shown that the more he rants and raves, the more votes from Independents and Never Trump Republicans he is sending Biden’s way.

Consider Trump’s latest barrage against what he calls Obamagate. He wants the former president investigated and charged for what he says was a conspiracy to topple his presidency. A heinous crime, if true. But Justin A. Horwitz, in a Facebook post, posed an interesting question: “If the president has absolute immunity like Trump says, how can Obama be guilty of ‘crimes’ committed as president?”

As the Shakespearean saying goes, “Hoisted by one’s own petard!” (D’ya think Trump ever read “Hamlet?”)

Deuces Wild: There are two wild cards when it comes to the election. First, the status of COVID-19 infections and its impact on the economy. Second, our relationship with China.

Trump realizes he will be held responsible if business does not return to a semblance of normalcy with lots of people returning safely to work. He’s pushing for a quick return so five months from now voters will not hold him accountable for the loss of at least 100,000 lives because of his inaction in February and March to prepare the country for the pandemic.

China is a more vexing issue. The Donald thought he could sweet talk Xi Jinping into economic concessions. But the novel coronavirus outbreak shattered their bonhomie. Trump now is playing a blame, and race, game against the Chinese. 

A winning strategy might be to base his reelection on changing our relationship with China. China, not North Korea or Iran, is more of an existential threat to our way of life than any other country, even Russia, given our reliance on China for much of our consumer and healthcare products and even strategic technical and military equipment. 

But to change that relationship Trump must educate the American public and convince it that it is in their best interests to pay a little more for all the products that China produces cheaply for us. In addition,  U.S. companies must abandon their manufacturing plants in China and build them either in America or in countries that are not as competitive with us for world domination. They might also have to forego the Chinese consumer market which would sharply slow their growth rates. That wouldn’t sit well with too many farmers who export soy beans, hogs and other foodstuffs to China. 

If Trump had developed a rapport with more than just the hotheads who follow him blindly this strategy might work, but I doubt he could pull it off. Besides, he’d first have to convince Ivanka to give up her China trade.

News and Views of Friends and Family

David Pecker controls the National Enquirer and a handful of other sensational tabloid newspapers that assault or entice, depending on your perspective, your senses as you wait to check out at the supermarket. Pecker is chairman and CEO of American Media Inc., publisher of National Enquirer, Star, Sun, Weekly World News, Globe, Men’s Fitness, Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Fit Pregnancy and Shape plus the recently acquired Us Weekly.

To his stable of publications Pecker is said to want to add Time magazine as well as People and Fortune.

Pecker, who at one time helped John F. Kennedy Jr. launch George, is a friend and advocate of Donald Trump, which beggars the question, do we want a publisher who printed truly fake and misleading headlines and stories about Hillary Clinton and whose Enquirer was recently at the center of the Trump-Morning Joe dustup to assume editorial control of some of the most respected mass journals of our country?

Your political leaning will inform your response to that question. My answer, not surprisingly, is no, a thousand times no. But in this age of financial feebleness for far too many media companies, including Time Inc., the shareholders of Henry Luce’s trailblazing weekly might not be able to refrain from accepting a solid offer, even if they disdain its originator.

What America doesn’t need at this time of national division is a further erosion of integrity in the media. Time, People and Fortune have been stalwarts of independent, objective journalism. Under Pecker that impeccable position could be compromised.

By the way, it might interest you to know that “pecker” is Yiddish slang for penis. How fitting. (For a longer look at David Pecker, here’s a profile from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/the-national-enquirers-fervor-for-trump/amp)

If the Shoe Fits: I have a long held bias against women wearing open-toed shoes. I trace it back to my antipathy toward my mother’s choice of footwear. I know I should get over it, but it is there, I admit it and have never sought to impose my prejudice on Gilda, Ellie or Allison, not that they would have let me had I tried.

Anyway, long lead in to another example of too much government regulation, in this case, Republican desire to control attire, mostly that worn by women. 

It seems that at the direction of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan there is vigorous renewed enforcement of a dress code for appearing in the Speaker’s Lobby of the House of Representatives. It pertains to all elected congressmen, their staff and reporters. Sans proper attire one can be evicted from the area. 

Men have to wear coat and tie; women must be dressed appropriately, which has been interpreted to mean no sleeveless dresses/blouses and no open-toed shoes, preferred items by many women during Washington’s hot and muggy summer.

I found it particularly amusing that Elaine Quijano of CBS News reported on this brouhaha while sitting behind the anchor desk wearing a red sleeveless outfit. She did not reveal what type of shoes she had on.

Clothes Make the Woman: As long as we’re on the subject of women’s clothing, there’s no denying Melania Trump brings her A game to every public event (and probably to every private occasion as well).

Her popularity is soaring but indicative of how shallow Americans and other nationalities can be. They project her eye-candy appeal to positive status (much the same way Michelle Obama’s scores reflected her fashion sense even as she championed better nutrition and physical activity for children) but the public fails to consider Melania’s to date empty portfolio of first lady endeavors, particularly her expressed desire to reduce the incidence of cyber bullying, her husband’s favorite response-to-criticism tool. 

Ivanka on the Hot Seat: Despite criticism from many anti-Trump quarters, I have no problem with Ivanka sitting in for her father at the G-20 meeting while he met with the leader of Indonesia. She is as credible as any of Trump’s aides. 

But as I noted the other day when she, not he, visited a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, there are some symbolic functions that demand no substitute for presidential attendance. 

Tired of Too Much Trump? Fatigue Factor Sets In

The fatigue factor is setting in. Donald Trump and his gang that couldn’t shoot straight is overwhelming me. There’s too much to write. If I miss a day the accumulated copy weighs me down. So here’s a “in case you missed it”  blog including random thoughts on news of the days of jaw-dropping, head shaking awe …

Did you see Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wax ecstatic about the lack of protesters and dissenters in Saudi Arabia during Trump’s transactional relationship building trip to the desert kingdom?

“[The] thing that was fascinating to me was there was not a single hint of a protester anywhere there during the whole time we were there,” Ross told a global audience on CNBC. “Not one guy with a bad placard…”

Even after the CNBC newswoman suggested Saudis do not have the freedom to protest, Ross maintained his devotion to the repressive regime. 

Here are two reports you might want to read about the incident: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wilbur-ross-trumps-saudi-visit_us_5922dd3ce4b03b485cb31054 and http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/22/news/wilbur-ross-saudi-protests/index.html …

Bibi’s Slip of the Tongue: After Trump’s visit to the Western Wall, Israeli prime minister Bib Netanyahu lauded him for being the “first acting president” to stand before Judaism’s holiest site. 

Bibi had it right. Though he meant to say “sitting president,” Trump’s presidency is an act, an act of arrogance, idiocy, cruelty, meanness and braggado. 

Trump’s buffoonery was on display during their press conference when he volunteered that he didn’t mention Israel during his meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office, thus providing tacit recognition that he spilled confidential information to our adversaries. 

Compare Notes: After visiting Yad Vashem, the memorial to six million Jews slain during the Holocaust, in Jerusalem Tuesday, Trump left the following note signed by him and his wife, Melania: 

“It is a great Honor To Be Here With All of My Friends.

So Amazing & will Never Forget!”

After his July 23, 2008, visit to Yad Vashem, candidate Barack Obama wrote:

“I am grateful to Yad Vashem and all of those responsible for this remarkable institution. At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world. Let our children come here, and know this history, so that they can add their voices to proclaim “never again.” And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims but as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit.”   

CBSnews.com provided more context: “Then-president George W. Bush inscribed a brief message-- ‘God bless Israel’-- a few months earlier, in January 2008.

“Bill Clinton, who visited the memorial in his first term, was optimistic about the prospects for Middle East peace when wrote this in the book:

‘Today we have come one step closer to the time when the people of Israel will live in peace with all of their neighbors, when the awful events of death and destruction memorialized here will be banished to the past.’ 

  

“During her time as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic presidential opponent in the 2016 election, left the following note in March 2009:

“‘Yad Vashem is a testament to the power of truth in the face of denial, the resilience of the human spirit in the face of despair, the triumph of the Jewish people over murder and destruction and a reminder to all people that the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten,’ Clinton's note said. ‘God bless Israel and its future.’”

Okay, our current White House occupant is not a wordsmith. You’d think, however, that someone, someone in the administration would know better, would know the proper way to convey a message that is more than just “amazing.” 

Apparently not.

Killer Eyes: Last month Arkansas, with the approval of the U.S. Supreme Court, rushed to execute as many death row inmates as it could before its lethal chemical cocktail mix could no longer be used. 

I’ll forego commenting on the appropriateness of capital punishment, but I would suggest one change to the execution protocol. I would like any district attorney, governor and judge who favors an execution to have to witness the administration of said death penalty. It might not cut down on the number of executions but it would remove any shield they may have in meting out the ultimate punishment.

Comp Time Blues: There was a time several years back when human resources consultants advised that employees wanted more free time than more wages for overtime work. That idea is being incorporated in the Trump Administration’s proposals that comp time replace overtime pay.

Back when I worked for The New Haven Register chalking up comp time was the norm. There was, however, one flaw, a big flaw, in that practice—I was still required to file all the stories I would normally have to submit. 

Channeling Presidents: Unless I missed it, I must admit I was surprised Trump did not channel President Harry S. Truman when it came to defending his daughter’s creative talent. 

Truman’s daughter Margaret received less than flattering reviews for her singing from The Washington Post, prompting the plucky president to write the music critic, “Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”

To my knowledge Trump did not similarly respond to savage reviews of Ivanka’s book “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success” (http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5907a3f8e4b05c3976819069?section=us_arts&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=culture+shift+05-05-2017&utm_content=culture+shift+05-05-2017+Version+A+CID_420012b2802ea993f727cb880db1ee08&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=READ+MORE&ncid=newsltushpmgspecialculture+shift+05-05-2017)

We should also hope Trump does not channel one of his presidential heroes, Andrew Jackson, who defied a Supreme Court ruling, famously stating, “(Chief Justice) John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” 

Given all his judicial involvements Trump may well have to confront judgments not to his liking. 

He might find comfort in conjuring up the image of Woodrow Wilson, often considered a great president for “making the world safe for democracy,” but who discriminated against Afro-Americans and immigrants he thought were a threat to national security.

“I am sure the country is honeycombed with German intrigue and infested with German spies,” Wilson wrote in 1915 to one of his advisors. 

Once America entered the war against Germany, Wilson signed the Sedition Act of 1918 which restricted speech and the expression of opinion that criticized the government or the war effort. Convicted offenders could be imprisoned for five to 20 years.

Perhaps it is a good thing Trump is not a student of history.

Flynn Debacle Reveals There's No Security Without a Confirmation Process

The country is nearing completion of a mostly bruising confirmation hearing process for Donald Trump’s cabinet, a prelude to what no doubt will be an even more debilitating and exhaustive fight over the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Even before we get to that high drama, we will be engaged in the possible resignation or dismissal dance of Trump’s national security advisor. The choice of retired general Michael Flynn was controversial from the get-go, but it could not be stopped as the position did not require congressional vetting or confirmation. 

But Flynn, whose reputation as a loose cannon preceded his selection, has apparently provided an audible example of his undisciplined howitzer-like disposition. Secret tapes of his conversations with the Russian ambassador prior to Trump taking office reportedly reveal he talked about the possibility of lifting the sanctions President Obama imposed on Russia. It would have been a violation of the Logan Act for a then private citizen Flynn to have done so. Moreover, he denied such conversations to Vice President-elect Mike Pence who proceeded to tell the American public no such dialogue occurred. 

Washington is a city where politics is a blood sport. Any hint of impropriety can, and usually does, mortally damage an official (just ask Hillary Clinton about her email server or Benghazi experience), especially someone entrusted with the nation’s security.

Of course, we’re dealing with Donald Trump here, a man who never likes to retreat, so he may well excuse Flynn’s misconduct as he did last week with Kellyanne Conway’s shilling of his daughter Ivanka’s apparel line on Fox News, a violation of federal law.

Back to the confirmation process. Mostly, so far it has been what might indelicately be called a “circle jerk.” Even Betsy DeVos, who provided eminent evidence that she lacked essential knowledge of the department she would oversee, passed the low hurdle Republicans have set for the people to whom they are willing to commend our nation’s future.

Chalk it up to politics. Get used to it, at least for the next two years, probably four and, god forbid, six or eight.

But as disheartening as the process has been in having a cabinet chosen and consented to by the Senate, at least there was some vetting, some disclosure of the thinking that informs and propels the men and women who will have the president’s trust and ear.

Nothing of that confidence and assurance has been afforded the public for the individual who has Trump’s most immediate access (and I’m not referring to Melania). What do we really know about Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, other than his employment history at Goldman Sachs and most recently the alt-right media site, Breitbart News?

For sheer terror-of-an-answer read the following Huffington Post analysis of Bannon’s apocalyptic thinking. Read it and wonder how it is possible that our laws do not require public inspection of the chief strategist to a president and to anyone named to a president’s National Security Council, as Bannon most recently was. Read it and cower under your blanket: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5898f02ee4b040613138a951?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Steve+Bannon+Believes+The+Apocalypse+Is+Coming+And+War+Is+Inevitable&utm_content=Steve+Bannon+Believes+The+Apocalypse+Is+Coming+And+War+Is+Inevitable+CID_df955470d3be4aaf6b5fb08f4740df70&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=Read+More&

Foreign Affairs and Christian Charity

I feel like Michael Corleone in Godfather III: Every time I try to distance myself from Donald Trump and write about something or someone else, he does another unimaginable act that pulls me back in. (Dedicated readers might remember I used that analogy once before: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2013/06/godfather-iii-and-supreme-court.html)

So, the soon-to-be 45th president has startled the foreign relations community by talking directly with the president of Taiwan, what international experts are saying will be interpreted by China as an affront.

I don’t know enough about Sino-American relations to comment beyond what I read. But I do recognize that unilateral surprise actions by our president-elect have the potential to unhinge diplomatic ties around the world. Remember how his casual comments during the campaign questioning support for NATO members caused tumult throughout the alliance? 

It has been reported that Trump has disdained receiving global security updates and has preferred having his daughter Ivanka sit in on meeting with foreign delegates rather than State Department experts. This is no way to run a country, at least not a nuclear power considered the bulwark of western civilization.

During the campaign wacky pronouncements from The Donald were commonplace, dismissed by his handlers as electioneering bravura. But now, even before he has nominated a secretary of state, Trump is upending decades of bipartisan United States foreign policy relations.

He was blindsided into talking with the president of Taiwan. He answered her congratulatory telephone call. Looks like his ego, the chance to have it stroked, got the better of him.

He compounded the diplomatic faux pas by tweeting—what else is new—about it. In his tweet Trump called Tsai Ing-wen the president of Taiwan, a title American presidents have resisted using for decades because of our tangled relationship balancing China and Taiwan as the true representative of more than 1.4 billion people.

Of course, this controversy is not the first set off by the next president. He has ruffled feathers in regard to India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Russia and Japan (http://nyti.ms/2gwOZX3). 

Well, he will be president and have the power and authority to set foreign policy, but I would feel a lot more comfortable if Trump discussed his moves with qualified experts before thrusting them on the public. Could he at least have the decency to maintain the status quo until after January 20 so President Obama doesn’t have to clean up any messes his successor creates? 

Christian Charity: Now that evangelicals can claim they helped elect Trump, I am wondering how much pressure they will exert to further Christian charity toward the needy?

Presumably, they will get their election reward in the form of an anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee. But once Roe v. Wade is overturned, or, at the very least, restrictive state measures are condoned and upheld, making more unwanted babies a reality, will evangelicals be willing to lobby for more social services for them and their mothers?

Evangelicals have been welcoming to refugees fleeing Mideast conflicts. But will they be able to soften Trump’s anti-immigration, anti-Muslim stances?

Trying to discern the thinking and values of the religious right is an exercise somewhat beyond my ken. Consider the case of Liberty University, a Christian university in Lynchburg, Va., and its quest to become a college football powerhouse.

It displayed a greater belief in football excellence than Christian values in selecting a new athletic director tainted by a failure to appropriately respond to charges of multiple gang rapes and sexual assault by members of the football squad at Baylor University, his last employer (http://nyti.ms/2gYinCd). 

It is easier to figure out Republican values in saying that after they repeal the Affordable Care Act a new health care plan to replace Obamacare would not be ready for three years. They clearly want to avoid having to answer for lost coverage by millions of Americans until after the mid-term elections of 2018. 

The GOP is simply abiding by the first and most important tenet of any politician—get re-elected.

Trump's Locker Rooms: Bastions of the Entitled

At first I thought the locker rooms Donald Trump had in mind in explaining his crude comments about women were those used by sports teams. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to think so, as numerous professional athletes and sports journalists rejected Trump’s contention of such offensive locker-room banter (http://nyti.ms/2dQbaUX).

Then it hit me. The locker rooms Trump had in mind were those at the ritzy, exclusive golf clubs he owns where powerful corporate titans feel empowered to say what they want about women, where their exploits—real and imagined—make them feel superior.

It is in the locker rooms of the entitled where high testosterone men strut their conquests, alleged and real. Trump is a modern day incarnate of Don Draper and his Mad Men cohorts of the 1950s and 1960s, where account executives like Pete could essentially rape and impregnate secretaries like Peggy without consequence. 

Until now, most women who were assaulted by such baseless men reacted as Peggy did. They hid their predicament. If there is any silver lining to Trump’s exposure it is that women are stepping forward to uncover his chronic, abusive behavior (http://nyti.ms/2dYsUQ7). 

Perhaps they will be examples to women in all walks of life who have had to live with systemic sexual assaults.

Trump has denied all alleged sexual assaults, but as with his denial of support for the invasion of Iraq, a tape from Howard Stern’s radio show trips him up. In 2006, during a  lengthy interview, he did not object when Stern sidekick Robin Quivers called him a “sexual predator.” 

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders in confirmation. All this while daughter Ivanka and son Donald Jr. sat next to him (https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomgara/heres-trumps-response-to-being-called-a-sexual-predator?utm_term=.sb8ZlQlbN#.cwEMpNpBw).

False Equivalency: I reject the notion of equal guilt associated with the gutter-level discourse of the presidential campaign.

I’m tired of equal distribution of guilt for the quality and tenor of the campaign. Let’s look at the primary campaigns of both parties: Democrats engaged in dialogue on issues worthy of would-be party nominees. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley didn’t insult each other. They debated policy. They argued about gun control. Trade policy. Health care. Income inequality. Support for student debt and college tuition.

Meanwhile, almost entirely egged on by Trump, Republicans argued about the size of hands and sex organs. Trump labeled his adversaries as “lyin,” “little” and “low energy,” while hardly ever discussing policy differences. For their part they called him a pathological liar, a sniveling coward, the biggest narcissist in American history, a con artist, uninformed, scary, a jerk, a clown, disgusting, a cancer and a barking carnival act, to name just a handful of epithets cast Trump’s way.

The name calling, and worse, have carried over to the main campaign. “Crooked, lyin’ Hillary,” Trump calls her. He’s intimated she should be stopped by gun toting members of the NRA. At last Sunday’s debate he said he wanted her jailed. 

He’s maligned veterans suffering from PTSD. He’s verbally attacked a former Miss Universe. Hillary has characterized his demeanor and temperament as unfit for the presidency. Yet, she has not labeled him with defamatory appellations, as his fellow party members have.

Any attempt to assess equal blame for the sleazy level of discourse in the run to the White House is wrong, misguided and in a very real sense another form of sexual assault on a woman whose only guilty of wanting to break the ultimate glass ceiling. 

Trump's Plan: Invoke Fear, Dehumanize Clinton

From genocide to genocide one constant has been the dehumanization of victims by aggressors. If a victim can be reduced in stature to a level where death can be condoned, killing can be implemented without remorse.

Dehumanization does not have to go to the extreme of a concerted campaign of murder. Slavery or state-sanctioned discrimination can be way-stops with little or no punishment should murder occur now and then.

With its treatment of Native Americans and Afro Americans, White America has engaged in genocide, slavery and discrimination. And now, with their rhetoric, Donald Trump and his Republican advisors and sycophants are pursuing a dehumanizing and demonization campaign against Hispanics, Muslims and Democrats. It is the next step in the Republican Party’s strategy to delegitimize the presidency of the first elected Afro American, from the birther movement to assertions that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim to claims that he clandestinely supports the killing of policemen by blacks.

Trump’s total campaign has been waged not on policy and programs but rather on smear tactics to dehumanize his adversaries. By repeating a verbal description of Hillary Clinton as a criminal and a liar they are undermining her legitimacy as president should she win the election. Trump doesn’t offer a critique of her platform or details about his alternatives other than to say under him life would be great.

Perhaps we should have expected this result. Too many of our entertainment diversions, especially reality shows, pit good against evil. Cooperation is encouraged only as far as it advances one’s own self interest.

Republicans want to paint themselves as the law and order party, Democrats as the party of lawlessness and chaos.

Trump began the assault on normative behavior when he launched his America First campaign with an attack on Mexicans and Muslims. The net effect of his remarks was the unleashing of forces of evil in our society—anti-Semites and racial bigots. By not quickly and forcefully repudiating comments by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan and neo Nazi extremists, and by knowingly or inadvertently retweeting their screeds, Trump emboldened them. 

Perhaps not coincidentally, Duke announced his intention to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana Friday. “I’m overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years. My slogan remains ‘America First,’” Duke said.

Evil cannot be given fertile soil on which to grow. Yet Trump has been its constant gardener.

The produce of his tolerance of intolerance emerged for all to see during the just concluded Republican National Convention. Trump confidante Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire delegate and state representative, said Clinton should be tried for treason and hung. Or killed by firing squad.

Potential vice presidential candidate and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich proposed that all Muslims in the United States be required to take a loyalty test as a condition of their continued residence in the country, even if they are U.S. citizens. One wonders how a former university history professor does not know his suggestion is patently unconstitutional.

Another passed over vp hopeful, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, led the assembled delegates in a modern day version of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution when he called upon them to shout “guilty” after he enunciated Clinton’s alleged transgressions as secretary of state. 

New Yorkers remember Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s assault on art he didn’t like, similar to Hitler’s attack on Modern Art, what he called Degenerate Art. Giuliani is another Trump insider. 

Images of a police state come to mind. 

In his acceptance speech Thursday night, Trump said he would suspend immigration from any nation that has been “compromised by terrorism.” Does that mean no one can come here from Belgium or France, for surely those countries at present are nests of opportunity for Islamic terrorists?

There were some winning rhetorical flourishes in his near 75-minute speech. Saying, “I am your voice,” he forcefully drove home the point that he would be the champion of the people, not special interests. But as The New York Times noted in a front page article Friday under a picture of Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, just a few blocks away from the convention hall lobbyists already were feasting on the potential business and influence they would have in a Trump presidency. “Lobbyists cheerfully passed out stickers reading ‘Make Lobbying Great Again,’” The Times reported. http://nyti.ms/29XIbha

Trump also deftly turned Clinton’s campaign motto, “I’m with her,” into a more personal “I’m with you,” again defining himself as the people’s champion.

But his brag that “l alone” could effect change in Washington revealed a major hurdle he would face. He would need Congress to pass legislation that Republicans have not previously embraced. Though his daughter Ivanka, when introducing him, talked about his compassion and generosity for working women, he did not include in his speech any support for measures many women crave: a higher minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, affordable child care. He said he would scrap Obamacare and replace it with something better without providing specifics. Getting any of these programs through a Republican Congress would be a challenge worthy of Hercules.

To almost everything he said he would do he exhorted, “Believe me, believe me.” And that his fixes would happen “quickly.”

Trump promised to deliver a safer America, that he will be the law and order president. Putting aside for now the reality that crime is down in the country, most criminal laws are enforced on the local level, not by the federal government, unless Trump has in mind a national police force that would supersede state and municipal police departments.

Interestingly, Trump did not mention who would pay for the wall he says he will build along the Mexican border. He also did not repeat his vow to deport 11 million illegal aliens. 

The transcendent theme of Trump’s speech was the antithesis of the words on the Statue of Liberty. Instead of “give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Trump wants your angered, your fearful, your resentful, your bigoted, and, since he wants to regenerate the coal industry, your masses struggling to breathe clean air.

After the speech, as Trump and Pence with their respective families stood awkwardly on the podium, music blared in the background. It was the Rolling Stones singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Some viewers and commentators couldn’t help but wonder at the juxtaposition of the words against his laundry list of will-dos. 

But maybe Trump intended a deeper message. Since the last line of the chorus is, “But if you try sometime you find you get what you need,” perhaps this a veiled message that Trump’s platform is what the country needs at this time.