PEOTUS Falls Flat In Front of the Fourth Estate

Trump & props at the podium   [Photo - Getty Images]

From the moment incoming White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer took the stage Wednesday morning to vent righteous conservative outrage over "fake news" I knew I wasn't going to make it through Donald Trump's first press conference since July.

It wasn't easy trying to swallow my lingering resentment and listen, but I gave it my best shot.

Hell it was a crapshoot whether the newly crowned PEOTUS would even show up.

His transition team abruptly cancelled a press conference back on December 15th that was intended to quell the growing unease about the unprecedented conflicts of interests his wide-ranging business interests would represent.

But as many pundits noted, there was no way that Trump's gargantuan ego and paper-thin skin could resist doing something to try and seize the media headlines from President Obama after he delivered an eloquent, stirring and emotional farewell address on Tuesday night in Chicago that made many pine for the class, intelligence, thoughtfulness and grace of the 44th President even before he departs the White House after two terms.

So after Spicer's angry repudiation of BuzzFeed's release of as-yet unverified documents allegedly written by a British intelligence agent showing that Russian intelligence has proof of PEOTUS in some disturbing compromising situations (think R-Kelly...), and a wet dishrag introduction by incoming VP Mike Pence - there Trump was at the podium.

Don Jr. & Eric get the keys to the business? Really?

In just the latest example of the orange-haired one's bogarting of Ronald Reagan's best moves, Trump stood next to a table theatrically piled high with folders of documents that we can only assume are his version of "proof" of his cutting his ties to his businesses.

It was meant to ape Reagan's use of big stacks of continuing resolutions as props as he did in the 1988 State of the Union address.


But for Trump it looked like a really cheap stunt, made worse by his assertion that he won't sell his assets, but instead put his two sons Don Jr. and Eric in charge of his hundreds of businesses.

(Funny, I don't seem to recall the indignant Sean Spicer expressing outrage over "fake news" when Eric Trump was re-Tweeting a phony story back in October about a man who claimed he was paid to protest at a Trump rally...)

In a scathing op-ed posted on The Guardian's Website Richard Wolffe eloquently summed up the impressions of many who watched some, or all of today's press conference.

He pronounced it an unequivocal "train wreck." 

Trump's tax attorney Sheri Dillon

As Wolffe observed, "After a rambling introduction about carmakers, veterans affairs and his inaugural celebrations, Trump finally arrived at his desired topic of the day: the non-resolution of the conflicts of interest that will embroil his presidency from now until he leaves the Oval Office."

When Trump said, "I will be the greatest jobs creator God ever created.", I considered turning it off.


Then when he brought attorney Sheri Dillon up to the podium to outline the plans for him to cut his ties to his business interests by placing his assets into a trust to be managed by his sons and executive Allen Weisselberg, I started shaking my head in disbelief.

Moments later when Trump returned to the podium and said he would have no conversations with his sons about any aspect of his businesses during his presidency, I just turned it off.

Overall my impression of Trump's performance at his press conference today is best summed up by a quote from a really interesting essay written a month ago by Sarah Kendzior on the Website TheCorrespondent.com that looks at how his controversial cabinet picks are shaping up to form a kleptocracy in the White House.

As she observed of Trump:

"He has a look I see on a lot of faces these days as people take in the news: the raw panic from knowing both too little and too much."

Devoid of Decency: Dishonoring the Gold Star

Memorial honoring Gold Star moms in Yonkers, NY

In the wake of his ongoing efforts to hurl insulting cheap shots at the Pakistani-born parents of a U.S. Army Captain who was killed in combat while trying to shield his men from harm, Donald Trump is on a downward spiral.

It's been six days since Khizr Khan called Trump out in front of a national television audience from the podium of the DNC in Philly, yet Trump seems determined to engage in a war of words with a couple still grieving the loss of their son.

Most presidential candidates would've simply apologized or better yet moved on to change the media narrative.

But instead Trump has stubbornly dug his heels in, refusing to yield.

Determined to characterize two Gold Star parents as enemies, rather than as heroes as depicted by the memorial pictured above by sculptor Richard Masloski.

What could possess Trump to attack loyal Americans who eloquently expressed an opinion (albeit in front of millions of people) that scorched Trump's paper-thin ego?

Trump is the same guy who received no less than five deferments starting in 1968 that kept him from serving in Vietnam, including one for a bone spur in his heel that later miraculously healed on it's own once the war ended.

Same guy who kicked off the first full week of the presidential campaign by joining his son Eric in making remarkably uninformed comments about sexual harassment of women in the workplace.

To top it all off, he further demeaned himself in the eyes of millions of current and former U.S. servicemen and women, as well as civilians, when he accepted a Purple Heart medal given to him by a military veteran / rabid supporter and then had the temerity to joke:

"I always wanted to get the Purple Heart; this was much easier." 

Did you really want one Donald? 

You went to military school in the 1960's where you distinguished yourself as a ladies man and an athlete, then when the draft was instituted you got your rich daddy to find a doctor who wrote you a note claiming a bone spur in your heel prevented you from serving in combat.  

According to a Snopes.com article, a reporter named Katy Tur claims the man who gave Trump the medal says it was actually a copy - whether it was or wasn't, the damage has been done.

Unfortunately for Trump's delusional sense of false grandeur, the fact that Purple Hearts are only awarded to those seriously injured in actual combat is no laughing matter, and former U.S. Marine Will Fischer quickly recorded a brief Youtube video response in which he explained the kind of horrific physical, mental and emotional injuries that warrant being awarded such a distinguished honor.  

Lately there are any number of political observers, news analysts and influential figures asking the question on the minds of many Americans these days; when is Donald Trump finally going to have his "Senator Joseph McCarthy" moment?

At a campaign event in Omaha, Nebraska for Hillary Clinton on Monday the world's third-richest man, Berkshire-Hathaway Chairman and investor Warren Buffet, posed that very question before tearing into the concocted myth of Trump's acumen as a businessman.

McCarthy, the junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin for whom the term "McCarthyism" was coined by political satirist Herb Block, was already growing increasingly unpopular with the American people for his obnoxious wide-ranging campaign to uncover the scores of Communists and homosexuals he alleged had infiltrated various branches of the U.S. government; including the Army and State Department.

Boston lawyer Joseph Nye Welch

The Army-McCarthy Senate hearings were convened in 1954, just one of 150 different hearings McCarthy held in a two-year period.

By that time, Americans, including some U.S. Senators, were loosing patience with McCarthy's toxic mix of false patriotism, grandstanding and innuendo.

30 days into the hearings the tide shifted forever in a testy exchange.

Army legal representative Joseph Nye Welch, a plain spoken Harvard-educated defense attorney born in Iowa (pictured above), grew fed up with the unchecked absurdity of the hysteria-driven anti-Communist atmosphere fueled by McCarthy's excessively aggressive questioning and vilification of innocent people, he famously asked the now-disgraced Senator "Have you no decency, sir, at long last have you no sense of decency left?"

It was a long overdue moment, and one that effectively branded McCarthy for what he was and heralded the start of the end of the long dark nightmare of paranoid Communist witch hunt fervor that stained America's post-World War II reputation - and ruined the lives of so many decent citizens.

With each passing day, and the subsequent litany of verbal gaffes uttered by Trump, I keep wondering which one is going to finally put him over the edge and stamp him as the monumentally unqualified disaster of a presidential candidate that he is. 

After listening to his demented hate-filled fear mongering and paranoid delusional rambling at the Republican National Convention, I thought maybe that kind of exposure to the mainstream mass American audience might be the moment.

But it wasn't, where is the modern-day Joseph Nye Welch who can publicly denounce this obnoxious, intellectually vacant, preening faker?

Speaking of the horror show that was the RNC, reporter Matt Taibbi offered some pretty searing first-hand insight into the RNC and Trump's speech in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. 

As Taibbi observed of Trump's bloated closing night acceptance speech:

"When we finally pulled the lid off this guy, there was nothing there. Just a cheap fraud and TV huckster who got in way over his head, and will now lead his hoodwinked followers off the cliff of history."

It should now be perfectly clear The Donald has no decency left; if there was ever any to begin with.