Tag: Stormy Daniels

Trump Paying Stormy Means Biden Wins?

W.J. Astore

The Absurdity of Democratic “Strategy”

The vacuity of Democratic strategy is astonishing if you take at face value the claim that a Trump victory this November will “end democracy.” Apparently, Trump paying Stormy Daniels $130K in hush money, after which some creative accounting obscured the source of the payoff, renders him “unfit for office.” And that claim is now a “top 2024 issue” for Democrats, as The New York Times notes here:

Democrats Push Biden to Make Trump’s Felonies a Top 2024 Issue

Interviews with dozens of Democrats reveal a party hungry to tell voters that Donald Trump’s conviction makes him unfit for office, and hopeful that President Biden will lead the way.

Meanwhile, this was the lead headline in the NYT “top news” send-out this morning:

A Felon in the Oval Office Would Test the American System

Some are wondering how the Constitution’s checks and balances, meant to hold presidents accountable, would work if the next president elected were already a felon.

“Some are wondering”: What a vapid phrase!

I think there are more severe “tests” of the “American system.” How about a president enabling a genocide in Gaza, for example?

If you want to beat Donald Trump this November, how about running a more attractive, more dynamic, more charismatic, more populist and popular, candidate? Whatever else Biden is, he is very much lacking in dynamism even as his actions render him increasingly unpopular among key segments of the Democratic base.

My wife jokingly said today: Just what we need, another election featuring two tired and seriously old white guys. She has a point. It’s not that Trump is now a felon that renders him allegedly unfit. Trump is, in my view, constitutionally unsuited for the presidency. Biden, in contrast, is a fading political hack who will be 82 years of age at the end of this year. Yet, this is what the “American system” produces. Maybe that “system” needs an overhaul?

So, which tired and seriously old white guy do you want to vote for this year?

JFK in 1963. Read his famous “peace speech” at American University

It seems hard to believe that in my lifetime we had a young, dynamic, and visionary president, JFK, who was 43 years of age when elected. A president who grew in office, rather than fading. A president who in 1963 made a commitment to pursuing peace with the Soviet Union. A man with flaws, but also one with potential.

Of course, the DNC with its superdelegates has created a system to deny anyone like a JFK (or even RFK Jr.) any chance at securing the nomination. Only corporate stooges need apply. That has allowed a populist-fraud like Trump to emerge from the right, a billionaire who poses as a man of the people. That Trump’s claim is plausible to so many is a measure of how far the Democratic Party has fallen.

It’s already been a very long election cycle, and it’s only early June. Five more months of total BS to go, America.

Enabling Genocide Is OK, Hush Money Not OK

W.J. Astore

What a country!

I’m already drowning in mainstream media coverage of Trump’s trial for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and hiding it under the cover of legal fees. The gavel-to-gavel coverage is mindlessly extreme, designed as it is both to tarnish Trump’s image (as if that’s possible) and to capture eyeballs and ratings.

Stormy weather for Trump (Photo by Victor J. Blue)

Meanwhile, Biden’s enabling of genocide in Gaza proceeds apace, and indeed Congress is acting to accelerate it by sending even more weaponry to Israel. Crimes against humanity—what? Where? I don’t see any.

The message: enabling genocide is OK, killing or displacing millions of Palestinians from Gaza isn’t a crime, but don’t you dare pay a woman you had a consensual fling with to keep quiet and then try to hide it. Some crimes can’t be forgiven!

The other big story this week, besides the trial of the millennium against Trump, is the upcoming NFL Draft. I cannot count the number of “mock” drafts I’ve seen, the amount of ink spilled, predicting what will happen in the draft, which players will be chosen in which order, what trades will be made, and so on. The coverage is both endless and exhaustive. And all of it is unnecessary. If you want to know about the draft and which players “your” team selects, why not just wait until the draft is over?

I just wish the mainstream media devoted one-tenth of the resources it commits to the NFL Draft to more serious issues like Gaza or Ukraine or homeless people in America.

Speaking of Ukraine, did you see Members of Congress waving little Ukrainian flags when the House approved over $60 billion in aid to prolong the Russia-Ukraine War? At least now we know whose side they’re on. I had no idea we elected representatives to serve Ukraine, but I’m learning.

If you’re a Trump aficionado, an NFL fanatic, and a Ukraine flag waver, this is your week, America.

Standard Disclaimer: Nope, I’m not a Trump fan. See this article I wrote in March of 2016 about how Trump is constitutionally unsuited for the presidency.

Trump and Death by 1000 Indictments

W.J. Astore

If you can’t beat him at the polls, beat him in court

If you’re like me, you’ve lost track of the number of charges against former President Donald Trump. He’s facing at least 78 criminal charges stemming from three indictments: the Stormy Daniels case, the classified documents one, and now the January 6th riots/”insurrection.”

Readers of Bracing Views know I’m not a Trump supporter. In fact, in March of 2016, I wrote an article stating unequivocally that Trump had disqualified himself from running as president (he’d stated troops should follow his orders even if those orders were unconstitutional). That article was the most popular one I’ve ever written in terms of “hits,” but of course Trump prevailed as many Americans concluded that Hillary Clinton would be even worse of a president than a narcissistic and clueless con man.

Interesting image from CNN that superimposes Trump on the charges against him stemming from the classified docs case He sure looks guilty, right?

Democrats seem to think the way to “kill” Trump is death by a thousand paper cuts inflicted by all these legal charges and indictments. I don’t think so. I think most Americans know what Trump is. They know he’s a rogue and a scoundrel. They know he paid off Stormy Daniels in a dodgy, probably illegal, way; they know he shouldn’t have had all those classified documents around; they know he’s a sore loser who lashed out in petulant and dangerous ways on January 6th; but they also know Democrats aren’t offering much of an alternative except four more years of Biden/Harris. Their motto might be: More of the same, only more!

The way to beat Trump is to offer real changes of substance that will help Americans who are struggling across our country. But we’re not going to get that from Biden/Harris. Just look back to all those campaign promises, vintage 2020, that haven’t come through, such as a $15 federal minimum wage, substantial student debt relief, a single-payer option for health care, and a ban on oil and gas drilling on federal lands.

Democrats always have excuses here, someone else to blame, like Joe Manchin or the Senate parliamentarian or the conservative Supreme Court. But what matters to voters is results, and Biden/Harris haven’t succeeded in producing results consistently. Truth is, Biden is an aging president, a stumbling figurehead rather than a strong leader, and Harris is deeply unpopular. It’s not exactly the “dream team” the Democrats are running in 2024.

In these increasingly Dickensian times, the Democrats keep shoveling billions of dollars to the Pentagon and to Ukraine while offering a new Cold War with Russia and China. Main Street USA may wish to declare war on those two countries, if only to get money from Congress.

Alternatives exist for the Democrats, of course, such as Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yet the Democratic establishment is too busy mocking or smearing them to listen to their ideas for substantive changes.

The Democratic establishment, it seems, is content to roll the dice in 2024 with Biden/Harris, preferring even to lose to Trump than to win with more progressive and dynamic candidates. Perhaps they truly believe they can “kill” Trump through all those indictments and charges, the equivalent to death by 1000 cuts.

It’s a strategy, I guess—just not a winning one.