In The Age of Trump Live for Today, Who Knows What Tomorrow Will Bring

Welcome on this Presidents’ Day, on this the end of the first month of a new presidency, to the Age of Trump where The Donald rules, where we live for today because who knows about tomorrow.

Don’t bother drinking the water. The Donald thinks it is okay to permit coal companies to flush their mining waste into our rivers. He doesn’t worry about pipeline leaks so he is okay with placing an oil line under the Missouri, longest river in our country.

Have you bought any TrumpAir bottles yet? You soon may have to as The Donald doesn’t believe in the Clean Air Act or the Paris climate change accords for environmental protection.

Those safeguards are based on science but Trump World doesn’t believe in science.

It also doesn’t believe in education. No reason clouding people’s minds with data that might conflict with the alternate realities Trump World is creating.

Speaking of creating, creationism is the preferred theory of Trump World. God must have ordained Trump World’s existence—those godless Russians couldn’t have had anything to do with The Donald’s election victory.

In the Age of Trump every black-skinned, brown-skinned, yellow-skinned person is a terrorist. They must be contained, kept out of America. Those who have managed to get here prior to The Donald’s ascension to leader must be watched, registered and, if possible, sent back to their country of origin.

Don’t bother looking to the media for information. Alternative facts form the foundation blocks of Trump World. All the media print or air are lies and fake news. Even media Trump believes support him, like Fox News, spread falsities, like reports of terrorist attacks in Sweden. You just can’t trust the media in the Age of Trump.

Most presidents and world leaders think of the future. In the Age of The Donald think only of the present. Don’t worry about retirement savings. Your investment counselor has been freed up to do as he pleases. He is under no obligation to invest in your best interest, so there’s no recourse if you question his judgment. 

Don’t worry about getting seriously ill and having enough money to pay medical bills. In the Age of Trump there is no affordable care while Medicaid and Medicare will be revised so only the rich may benefit, the better to limit our entitlement expenditures so we can spend more on the military and homeland security to keep all those terrorists on the other side of the wall that surrounds our 49 states.

Oh, did I forget to mention that rising ocean levels will swamp all but the highest points of Hawaii, so it no longer will be a state. And that we no longer will have to deal with that pesky issue of what to do with Puerto Rico—make it a state, keep it as a territory, or let it become an independent country. Well, it will join Atlantis under the waters of the Atlantic.

After the Eastern Seaboard, including sad to say Mar-a-Lago, flood from rising sea levels, Trump World will build a 30 -foot high sea wall along our eastern and western coasts and along the Gulf of Mexico. The sea walls will link up with the beautiful wall Mexico will pay for along our land border. Soon, the last section of our walled state will be completed across the 49th parallel as those refugee-loving Canadians cannot be trusted to keep terrorists from filtering down from their utopian land.

Don’t think this will all change with the next election or two. Trump World is cleansing voter rolls of his so-called three to five million illegals who voted in the 2016 election. He and his Republican-controlled state governments are also making it harder for any person of color to register to vote.

No matter. The Donald has set up presidential succession for the next three administrations, culminating with the first woman, first Jewish, president. Ladies and gentlemen, hail to the chief—Ivanka Trump Kushner.

Does Donald Trump Have an Ebenezer Scrooge Moment in Him?

His whole lifetime Donald Trump has channeled Ebenezer Scrooge in his quest for boundless riches, often at the expense of the everyman. He stiffed contractors. He wouldn’t rent to minorities to keep his property values high. He chiseled widows and other desperate souls yearning for a semblance of his wealth out of thousands of dollars spent on Trump University tuitions and affiliated expenses. He pandered to the wistful by opening casinos to exploit their get rich quick fantasies. He ran a campaign for the highest office in the land and didn’t pay many of his hired professionals.

I can’t imagine what Trump dreams as he lies next to Melania. If the nation is fortunate, perhaps he will be visited by specters of lives past, present and future. I’ll leave it to others to psychoanalyze exactly which personalities would enter his subconscious.

But if we’re lucky, just as Scrooge changed after visits from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, Trump’s nocturnal apparitions will channel a change from his scorched earth campaign rhetoric. Aides and friends, after all, are saying he will be “a softer, kinder” Trump as president.

Does that mean he will not deport “dreamers,” those illegal immigrants brought to the United States as infants who have not known any other country? Will he resist separating families, deporting illegal alien parents from children born the United States and therefore able to stay as citizens? If he tears up NAFTA and causes the loss of jobs in Mexico, is he ready to deal with an influx of more illegal immigrants, wall or no wall? Will he abandon his ideas to reinstitute torture and to kill the families of terrorists, actions that could prompt resignations from military and security officials? With his Mar-a-Lago home and resort on the beach in Florida, will he be ready to concede the effects of climate change? Will he fend off Evangelicals in their determination to roll back same-sex marriage and LGBTQ equality laws?

Now that he’s been elected, he’s officially a politician and the first job of any politician is to get re-elected. Keep in mind Trump did not win the popular vote. He secured more Electoral College votes than Hillary Clinton. The conventional wisdom espoused by many pundits, including yours truly, is that Trump was elected by racists, misogynists, neo Nazis, anti-Semites and xenophobes.

But that denies the reality that disaffected blue collar white voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Wisconsin—men and women who twice had voted for Barack Obama—abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of Trump and Republican senatorial candidates. They didn’t overnight become racists, misogynists, neo Nazis, anti-Semites and xenophobes.

They chose populism over traditional Democratic memes. They swallowed his promise of radical change and revived manufacturing jobs.

So Trump must deliver within four years without reducing their health care benefits, regardless of what he does to Obamacare.

Which begs the question, would Bernie Sanders have prevailed over Trump? As a populist himself, would Bernie have negated Trump’s cross-party appeal? We will never know. What we are left with is the reality that we were thisclose to electing the first woman or the first Jewish president.

Trump is an enigma. We don’t really know what he stands for since he has walked back many of his earlier pronouncements, including a tweet from 2012 wherein he called the Electoral College “a disaster for a democracy.” Doubtful he thinks so today.

A most troubling potential aspect of a Trump presidency is who he will include in his inner circle. Ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Steven Bannon of Breitbart are divisive figures who would signal a hard right administration. The danger is that Trump would delegate policies to cronies with more reactionary thoughts than his. It’s especially apropos of vice president-elect Mike Pence, decidedly more radically conservative in voice and action than Trump (http://nyti.ms/29Dx7CO or for another take read http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/think-trump-is-scary-check-out-mike-pence-on-the-issues_us_57f137d5e4b095bd896a11db).

Before Trump, Richard Nixon probably was the president-elect (and president) most reviled by Democrats. But Nixon took some decidedly progressive actions. He created the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in 1969; achieved voluntary desegregation of schools in seven Southern states; reoriented the Federal Native American policy, becoming the first president to encourage tribal self-determination; established the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and signed into law The Clean Air Act; abolished voter discriminatory tests by extending the Voting Rights Act in 1970; declared war on cancer; and signed Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits gender bias at colleges and universities receiving Federal aid.

Nixon also changed U.S. relationships with China and the Soviet Union. He signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT 1) in 1972.

True, Nixon wasn’t always progressive. But his legacy offers clear evidence that the presidency can bring about goodness. 

So, over the next four years we will wait to see if Trump remains the Ebenezer Scrooge of the beginning of A Christmas Carol or if he emerges as the reformed Scrooge at its conclusion. 

More Help for Lester Holt: A New Set of Questions for the First Clinton-Trump Debate

Less than a week until the first presidential debate. The pressure must be excruciating on … Lester Holt of NBC News, the first moderator. Two weeks ago I suggested questions Holt should ask both candidates. 

They were almost exclusively designed to elicit differences between Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s policy positions. It wouldn’t necessarily make for good television, but it would be educational (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2016/09/policy-questions-for-first-clinton.html).

But TV, if anything, is about ratings and keeping an audience engaged. So here’s a different list of questions I believe Holt should ask of them individually and sometimes together (you’ll notice I have more questions for Trump because, in my humble opinion, he has more explaining to do). 

Trump and Clinton:  What is the greatest threat facing the United States?

T: What information changed your mind about President Obama’s birth in the United States? When did this information reach you?

C: What made you think the public did not have a right to know about your recent pneumonia?

T: Why do you feel the public does not have the right to see your tax returns as all presidential candidates, and many seeking lower offices and judicial positions, have released them over the last four decades?

T: You have called Hillary Clinton crooked. Can you point to any examples of crooked behavior?

T: You have called for paid family leave. Do you already provide it in your own companies, and if not, why not? Also, you have promised paid family leave but Republicans in Congress have not supported such a measure. How can the public expect you to fulfill that promise?

C: If Republicans maintain control of one or both houses of Congress how will you be able to get your platform passed?

C: Why should the American public trust you when time and again you have not been totally forthcoming when explaining your email server and your recent illness?

T: You have called Secretary Clinton “lyin’ Hillary,” yet time and again independent fact checkers have labeled more of your statements as untrue by a wide margin even though you have promised never to lie to the American public. Why should they believe you?

T: Almost all reputable scientists believe sea levels are rising due to climate change. Your property, Mar-a-Lago, sits on the beach in Palm Beach, Fla. Do you believe in the forecasts by the scientists and if not what evidence have you to the contrary? 

C and T: What can be done to stop sleeper cell terrorists, many of whom would be natural or naturalized citizens, from attacking Americans on our homeland? 

T: You have said “to the victor go the spoils,” that we should have taken Iraqi oil and left troops in Iraq to guard the oil wells and that to combat terrorism we should torture suspects and kill the families of terrorists, all violations of international law. Is that the standard you want to set for the United States?

C: The Clinton Foundation accepted donations from foreign governments and citizens. Why should we believe you have not been influenced or would not be influenced by such funding?

T: Why do you believe right wing and racist fringe organizations have expressed support for your campaign?

T: Illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than American citizens. What would you do to reduce crime in America?

C: What went wrong in Iraq, Libya and Syria under your watch as secretary of state and why should we believe you would handle future crises differently and better?

T: You have said your response to threats against NATO allies would be dependent on their financial support of our troops. Is that a prudent plan in dealing with Russia?

C: Time and again you advocate a cautious, measured response to events and the status quo in government. Yet the American public appears interested in decisive leadership that would break up the status quo, which you seem reluctant to provide. Why should they expect you to be an agent of change?

T and C: Which three presidents or world leaders, living or dead, do you admire and why?

T: Our greatest economic gains over the last 40 years occurred under Democratic administrations that advocated and passed higher taxes on the wealthy, while lower taxes under Republican administrations did not produce the promised gains for the middle and working classes. Please explain why your tax strategy would reverse this reality?

C: As a senator you voted for the Iraq war. As secretary of state you advocated involvement in Libya and Syria. What is your standard for military intervention by the United States?

T: You recently said if Irani planes or boats interfere with our ships we should shoot them. Are you willing to risk a war over such provocations?

T and C: Almost all of our domestic terror attacks have been perpetrated by lone wolves. Is there any way to prevent such attacks?

C and T: How would you change the Affordable Care Act? Would you reduce or eliminate benefits that the ACA  provided?

C: Do you endorse a path to legalization for illegal immigrants? Would they earn the right to vote?

T: Clarify your position on who and when deportations of illegal immigrants would occur. What is your position on dreamers, the children of undocumented aliens who were brought here as children?

C: A Clinton administration to many would seem to be a continuation of the Obama administration. What would be different?

T and C: After you are sworn in what executive actions would you take within your first week in office?

Trump Says It Was All a Joke, Says He Really Is a Liberal with New York Values

Donald Trump revealed today his candidacy for the Republican Party presidential nomination was an elaborate April Fool’s hoax to show how bigoted and xenophobic the majority of GOP voters were.

The leading vote getter in the 29 primaries and caucuses already held, Trump said he could not believe how gullible Republican officials and party members were in their desperation to win back the White House. Each time he tried to torpedo his candidacy, as when he dissed senator John McCain and all prisoners of war for being captured, or when he advocated waterboarding and more extreme measures of torture, Trump said he was surprised to see his poll numbers go up. Even when it was revealed he had donated thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and invited her and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, to his daughter’s wedding, he was able to hoodwink the public into believing it was just business as usual for an entrepreneur like him to curry favor with politicians of both major parties.

In fact, Trump said he was a proud progressive imbued with “New York values.” He said his true colors almost came out when he acknowledged that Planned Parenthood is a valued healthcare provider to many women. Fear of exposure before April Fool’s Day prompted him to double down on anti-abortion rhetoric with his assertion that women should be prosecuted if they obtained illegal abortions. His wives, he said, always underwent legal abortions. “That’s one of the benefits of being rich,” he mused.

Now that the big reveal has been revealed, Trump had another surprise. He’s staying in the race to win it. Who knew, he said, that it would be so easy to vanquish a field of more than a dozen contenders? Who knew how gullible voters were? Who knew how bigoted and just plain dumb they were? 

“There’s nothing in the party rules book that would mandate my dropping out,” Trump said. “Sure, at the convention party leaders could change the rules to deny me the nomination, but they were going to do that anyway, so why not expose the hypocrisy of the process and party faithful now,” he argued. 

Even after admitting it was all a joke Trump said he believes he will still win primaries in New York, New Jersey, California and other states to give him sufficient delegates to win a first round nomination at the Cleveland convention, assuming no changes are made to convention rules.

Trump also revealed he would pick Chris Christie as his vice presidential running mate and, if elected, would designate him as attorney general, as well. “There’s enough of Chris to go around for both jobs,” Trump said.

As expected Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich along with Democrats Clinton and Bernie Sanders, along with leaders of both parties, denounced Trump’s duplicity, but, as in the past, their criticisms fell on deaf ears and brainless minds as Trump’s poll numbers rose in instant surveys run by the media.

It was further revealed that far from feuding with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly Trump was having an affair with her, having ended his secret relationship with Rosie O’Donnell. He also admitted that he is not “really, really rich,” that he is, in fact, close to filing for personal bankruptcy and that his two best friends are a Muslim in charge of security at Trump Tower and an illegal Mexican immigrant who is one of the gardeners at his Mar-a-Lago resort who also trims his hair.