The Washington Post fact-checked last night’s debate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/11/fact-check-presidential-debate-harris-trump/
Trump suffers 3rd degree burns during debate with Harris
Category: politics
Getting it all wrong at Georgia Public Broadcasting
Last Friday Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), the ONLY television and radio entity serving all of Georgia, announced it is cancelling its most popular in-house produced program, Political Rewind on June 30th. The show, nearing its 10th anniversary, grew from a once-a-week program on Friday afternoons to five days a week at 9:00 a.m., with a rebroadcast at 2:00 p.m., a podcast, and a newsletter.
During fundraising drives, donations pour in from listeners to support the only statewide focused program that draws on panelists ranging from former staffers to Georgia’s governors to mayors, state legislators, journalists, political strategists, and university professors.
Why?
The discussion is civil. There is no shouting, no desk pounding, no ranting. Do the panelists always agree? No. Of course not. But they don’t turn the hour into a blood sport of shouting each other down. Facts matter in the discussions, with panelists being held accountable by host Bill Nigut and the panelists themselves, when they stray from the truth.
GPB provides programming for nine television stations across our state and d18 radio stations. A large part of their budget is devoted to Georgia-specific educational programming for Georgia’s teachers and students.
During the last day of the General Assembly session this spring, in a budget year when Republicans tout great economic revenue and reserves for the state, a nine percent budget cut was approved for GPB. Cuts have been staved off in the past, but not this year. The cut amounts to $1.17M, or three percent of its annual budget.
Why cut the only easily accessible radio program produced in Georgia, for all Georgians, featuring timely and civil discussion from a variety of perspectives? One reason given is frankly one of the dumbest excuses I have ever heard.
State Rep. Blake Tillery, R, Vidalia, according to Patricia Murphy at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, was getting complaints from “unspecified rivals” of GPB.
What a lame excuse.
How many commercial radio station owners are really complaining to their state legislators about publicly funded programming featuring award winning news, books of all sorts, music, comedy, food, and culture, can find by tuning their radio to the lower left end of the dial, or streaming? Were lobbyists for the Georgia Association of Broadcasters down at the Capitol telling legislators their commercial station members just can’t compete against “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” and “Masterpiece Theatre”?
Believe me, GPB ain’t the problem.
Satellite radio has changed the landscape of broadcasting, but it hasn’t been the death knell many small market station owners feared. Nope, because an awful lot of these small stations subscribe to satellite radio networks and sell ads based on broadcasting those programs. These stations hear the sound of cash registers if they can secure the local rights to Alex Jones and other conspiracy broadcasters, Braves baseball, and UGA football. I know because I have owned a small market radio station AND donated to public radio at the same time.
That’s right, I listened to and sent money to my “competitor.”
The issue here is that GPB produced a program that provides counterbalance to the national and local Alex Jones wannabes. Small market radio can sell air time all day to local businesses who want to expand the echo chamber for right-wing politics. If ring-wing programs, both national and local, because there are local people buy their own air time on small stations, aren’t cash cows, station owners aren’t trying hard enough.
Interim GPB President and CEO Bert Wesley Huffman and the Board of Directors have made Rep. Tillery’s problem their own. Now it is impacting the state, and not in good ways.
If having the only statewide, easily accessible variety of panelists on an hour-long radio program five times a week makes the Georgia General Assembly, and maybe a couple of commercial radio station owners uncomfortable because the participants discuss issues with verifiable facts and data anyone can find for themselves, that isn’t GPB’s problem to solve.
GPB has created a huge void with the cancellation of Political Rewind. If that single program is what led some unidentified, unknown number of 
commercial station owners to complain, the floor is yours. Get started on producing a high quality program like Political Rewind that can reach the entire state with a radio signal, GPB has removed your single source of “competition” for reasonable discussion of Georgia politics.
But be sure to do that only with donor funds, because as Nigut and others, including Huffman during pledge drives have said repeatedly, Political Rewind has been funded by donor dollars, not state or advertising funds.
Don’t forget, donors love swag!
Examples of people who give up, and those who don’t
Two things keep circling in my mind as I put clean sheets on the bed and fold laundry-
Amber Schmidtke, PhD wrote in her weekly Covid-19 report (yes, Covid is still a thing in our world), “..Friday afternoon seemed like the right time for the United States Centers Disease Control and Prevention to give up on controlling or preventing a disease that has killed 900,000+ Americans. It was at that moment that any concern for protecting the immunocompromised, children under the age of 5, people with underlying medical conditions fell away. It was a moment when people who care deeply about narrowing disparities in health by race, rural versus urban, socioeconomic class, etc, were abandoned.”
She continues, “We aren’t winning. Look at Japan and say with a straight face that there was nothing more we could do. The politicians and enablers who caused this are expecting you to look away, to forget what they’ve done.” Sadly I think she is right. Her thoughts on using hospitalization rates to manage responses is spot on as well.
The other thing on my mind comes from historian Heather Cox Richardson, PhD. In her daily “Letters from an American” she wrote yesterday about the gyrations being done by Tucker Carlson, Rudy Giuliani, and Putin sycophant Donald Trump. All three have publicly worshipped Putin, but now find that with the dictator’s failure to quickly pummel the Ukrainians into submission and establish a Kremlin puppet government, things aren’t so pretty for their pro-autocracy stance. Yesterday at the Trump cult rally held by CPAC, Trump was asked what he would do about Ukraine and he answered, “Well, I tell you what, I would do things, but the last thing I want to do is say it right now.”
Considering the fact that he stole highly classified documents, and gleefully gave U.S. intelligence information to the Russian foreign minister, these are riveting words from the “stable genius” himself.
Before I walk the dog this morning
A few thoughts running through my mind before heading out to walk my pandemic puppy Abbie-
- Donald Trump is both dangerous and pathetic in his delusions of returning to the White House.
- Michael Flynn is a disgrace to the people who serve in the military with integrity. He’s also a threat to the security of our country.
- Naomi Osaka chose incredibly brave and hard work by publicly making her mental health a priority. Osaka’s courage benefits all athletes by drawing attention to mental health.
- Just because the Georgia Board of Education says the country and the state are not racist does not change reality.
- I am grateful for Paxton Smith’s Valedictorian speech.
The man without an exit strategy goes to war
In mid-October President Trump abandoned Kurdish allies in Syria. This resulted in deserting American military holdings in the area, Turkish assaults on Kurds, the escape of ISIS prisoners, and Kurdish leaders looking to Russia and the Syrian government for support against Turkey. On Tuesday, January 7th, dictators Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Bashar al-Assad (Syria) met in Damascus as Syria’s ally, Iran, surely finalized plans for attacks on Iraqi bases where American forces are stationed.
Amid heightening tension with Iran last summer, when asked about the possibility of armed conflict with Iran, Trump said he “doesn’t need exit strategies.” With a lifetime of multiple bankruptcies, $2Million in court penalties for abusing Trump foundation charity funds, failing to pay cities over $1Million for campaign security costs, bilking contractors for work done on his hotels, and shuttered casinos , clearly Trump is a man who won’t be bothered with planning for a smart exit.
Before we were 72 hours into this new year, Trump put American lives at greater risk by ordering, from his Mar-a-Lago country club, the assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani. Americans who have volunteered for our country, many of whom struggle to pay bills while getting a government paycheck, who chose the military over their rural communities where jobs are scarce, and, people of color whose numbers as commissioned personnel continue to lag, are at the mercy of a man who used bone spurs as his “exit strategy” during the Vietnam War.
With a dismissed national security advisor willing to testify during his former boss’s impeachment trial, talk of additional impeachment charges, a record $22Trillion debt, oil prices already climbing, farmers beginning to squirm harder under tariff restrictions, working family budgets stretched thin despite promises from tax cuts, and a base that requires larger and louder lies to keep them fed, Trump needed a distraction. He hoped to find one in Iran, but may learn he overplayed his hand.
I’m not pinning any hopes on the spineless Trump Republican Party-controlled Senate to remove him from office. Sadly, because the November election and January 2021 inauguration are so far away, and so much is at risk, the exit strategy may not take place until the fall.
Thursday marked a refusal to turn the other cheek
Pushback from the Speaker and V.P.
Ed Mellette
Farm raised, semi-retired businessman, and political opinionator. Columbia/Spartanburg, SC
reposted with permission from the author
With considerable admiration of her present leadership in the matter of Articles of Impeachment currently being considered against the President of the United States, I want to congratulate Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, on her measured, but aggressive pushback today on James Rosen of Sinclair Broadcasting.
First, allow me to apologize for my indiscretion a few months ago in the form of my critical commentary on her position as the titular leader of the Democrat Party. I was wrong. There, it’s done. She is the most powerful and savvy speaker in modern times. Now to get to my reason for this column.
James Rosen, the columnist for Sinclair, impudently asked an insulting question of Mrs. Pelosi relating to other’s (and his) perceived “hatred” by the Speaker, of the current duly elected, but faux and unworthy President. It’s important to note that Sinclair is the second largest TV and Broadcast media company in the United States. It’s by far the most conservative, and some say, the most dangerous right wing propaganda organization as well.
Rosen was taken to task and rightly so, by the Speaker, a devout Catholic, who both earnestly and publicly declares her faith, when he questioned the Speaker’s religiosity. Pelosi would not have it. The Speaker succinctly, forcefully, and articulately, spoke to the difference in political issues, and the Constitutional role and separation of powers as it relates to the Congress and the Presidency in the matter of a functioning and representative government, our Republic.
She scolded him for questioning her religious schooling and in a lesser manner, her faith. It was questioned yesterday by the erstwhile traveling salesman, turned preacher, turned lawyer, turned fast talking but shrill, Congressman, Doug Collins of GA.
Don’t mess with the Speaker; any Speaker.
Good on her; she doesn’t have to stand in front of the podium and endure insults ad infinitum, nor does Joe Biden, former Senator, Vice President, and current candidate for President.
Biden today, pushed back against the insulting false charge of an 83 year old man at a campaign event in Iowa, who in a moment of complete cognitive dissonance, suggested Biden too old to be President, and if that were not enough, claimed that Biden inappropriately sponsored and gained his son’s ascendency to the Board of the Ukrainian gas and energy company, Burisma. In a moment of moral equivalency, let’s just remember the three privileged grifters of the Trump dynasty, specifically Ivanka, Jr., and Eric, not to mention the boy wonder, Jared.
Biden called him a “damn liar” and when the octogenarian denied the obvious, Biden leaned in again. Good for him. It’s about time that junk is called out for what it is, patent bull. No one has a right to accuse with impunity, false charges, no matter what the occasion.
For those of my Democrat contemporaries, few of whom’s longevity is as loyal and committed to the Party’s espoused beliefs as I, and who oppose the boldness of both Pelosi and Biden, let me simply say: get over it; it’s high time we push back in our battle for the hearts and minds of the nation. It’s high time we hit the bullies in the mouth where they are most sensitive. It’s high time we act with both defiance and aggression in taking back our share of the high ground of both principle and religion in today’s political discourse.
No more Obama turning the other cheek, no more avoiding tough decisions, and no more pandering to unrequited respect from those caught in the thrall of Trump cultism.
How We Have Failed Since September 11, Redux
First posted here on September 10, 2014
How We Have Failed since September 11
Tonight President Obama will address the nation about ISIS and any actions that we may take in response to the horrific murders of Americans and innocent civilians at the hands of terrorists.
Tomorrow there will be an observance in my community, and many others, to honor the thousands of lives lost to hate and terrorism, and to support the families and friends who knew someone they loved would never return home again.
Since September 11, 2001 we as a country have talked a lot about being kinder to one another and being a better country. Yet 13 years later this is what consumes us as a country:
- fighting about allowing two consenting adults of the same-sex to legally marry each
- failing to take care of the thousands of veterans who have defended our country, many of whom returned with horrible wounds from the Middle East since September 2001
- allowing private corporations to decided which forms of legal birth control they will cover for employees through company based health insurance because some corporations should have the same privileges as churches
- granting corporations the same rights as citizens so businesses can pour money into elections and our representatives’ pockets
- making it harder for citizens to exercise their right to vote
- subsidizing corporations with huge tax breaks while their employees working full-time never earn enough to break the poverty barrier
- denying the hard facts of science because profits should come before cleaning up the mess we’ve made of the entire planet
- deporting children
- complaining about failing schools while slashing teacher pay and testing our children to death
- sitting by silently while racism and sexism are displayed proudly
- being sure we can take our assault rifles into the grocery store
- we pay for and support violence on playing fields, in the movies we watch, video games we buy, music we listen to, and television shows we watch, but we react with horror when students are sprayed with bullets in their classrooms, women are drug from elevators by their hair, students are bullied, children and women are raped as well as being forced into prostitution
- too many among us are convinced that their brand of faith should be followed above all others, and if necessary the rights of other citizens should be denied because they choose to worship differently, or not at all
We absolutely should remember and honor the victims of September 11th’s violence. I’m just not convinced we are a country that is a better reflection of the democratic values and freedoms which terrorists intended to destroy 13 years ago.
McConnell finds his voice
After weeks of political laryngitis on the government shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) found the will to say that fellow Republican Rep Steve King (R-Iowa) should “find another line of work.”
During a recent interview lasting almost an hour, King said he doesn’t understand how white nationalist, pro Western civilization, and white supremacist language are offensive. Trump says he “hasn’t been following” the fallout over King’s most recent statements. Perhaps Trump’s lack of interest, or outrage, reflect his own comfort with King’s views?
(Congressional photo)
In the mean time, King has been stripped of committee appointments by his own party. Without committee assignments to craft and vote on bills as they are developed, King’s ability to robustly represent Iowa’s only Republican district in Congress has shrunk to hoping he can find anyone in his party to lobby for his district as bills move towards the House floor. James Clyburn, (D-South Carolina) will introduce a call to censure King in the House.
King has announced 39 district town hall meetings this year. I’m not sure those meetings, due to certain protests and counter-protests, will even happen. The country, and the world, will be watching.
Can Governor Kemp deliver for rural Georgia?
Today marks a new era in Georgia, one that follows a contentious race for the governor’s mansion. Will Brian Kemp and the GA Legislature deliver on promises to rural voters?
Rural hospitals are fragile, while access to care is difficult in regards to insurance coverage, number of providers, and transportation. Will legislators swallow hard and request a waiver so much needed federal dollars can make their way to rural citizens and providers?
Will rural residents, and by rural I mean the ones who live on dirt roads or outside any semblance of a crossroads or town, begin to see a solution to high speed, affordable internet access? This infrastructure impacts businesses, schools, and the attractiveness of living in rural communities.
How will Kemp and the legislature handle districting when the census is completed? This issue didn’t get a lot of coverage during the campaigns, but it will impact rural Georgians in big ways as populations continue to shift to more urban areas. What about safe and secure voting?
The clock starts today. When the 40 day session ends, what will wait until 2020, or arrive on Gov Kemp’s desk to be signed?
Two things about this election
There are two things I’ve thought before the election and remain committed to as we wait for more votes to be counted.
1. Georgia needs to change our Constitution to require a Secretary of State to resign if running for a different office. Changing the Constitution shouldn’t be the path to solving every problem, but it is the only way to address the less than above-board election this year, and protect future contests.
2. Yes, Nancy Pelosi has raised lots of money for Democrats, and yes, she corralled Democrats during difficult issues (Democrats say Pelosi has eyes in the back of her head, knows who is in the room, and how they will vote at any given moment). When do we make room for a new leader like this if not now? Could Pelosi be an interim Speaker with a transition plan to pass the gavel, as suggested by my friend and former Congressional candidate Carol Miller of New Mexico? With a wave of newly elected “firsts” across the country, it is time to pass the role of Speaker to someone with solid knowledge of the House and Congress. There is a role for Pelosi, but it shouldn’t be as Speaker of the House.
Hear the candidates with your own ears!
Early voting is underway across Georgia with hotly contested races for Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Insurance Commissioner, and of course Congressional districts. Being an informed voter requires doing the homework, and one of the best ways to do that is to listen to the candidates themselves. I love political pundits and editorial columns more than most people, but someone else’s coverage of what a candidate says isn’t the same as hearing them yourself (or reading their policy positions on their web sites).
Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Atlanta Press Club are hosting multiple candidate debates that are free and easy for the public to access online. Watch live or find them later on demand, or do both to go back and make sure you are clear on what was said, or just as important, what wasn’t said.
Whether you’ve made up your mind or not, these debates are good opportunities to learn more about the candidates. Time consuming? Sure.
But Georgia state senate and house members, and US House members, have a total of 17,520 hours on the clock during the two years as your representative. Four year representatives are in for 35,040 hours. Invest a little of your time over the next few days to know the candidates better.
The new generation of leaders
The Friday Photo
Decatur High School, Decatur, GA
Students walked out or took a knee on Wednesday because #enoughisenough. I stood with them and for them.
Enslaved people are not immigrants
Dr. Ben Carson, recognized as a brilliant surgeon, used some “alternative facts” in comments to the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) staff today, as he begins his work there as the Secretary of the agency. Carson chose to describe enslaved people forced onto boats and brought to the United States, as immigrants.
I looked up immigrant, and I never found a definition that parallels definitions of enslave, “To enslave someone is to force that person to work for no pay, to obey commands, and to lose his or her freedom.”
Carson told HUD staffers, “There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”
What alternative history book did Carson get that version of optimism on the part of enslaved people? I’d say you couldn’t make this stuff up and try to pass it off as the truth, but if you are Secretary Carson, apparently, you can try.
What I’m reading about last night
What I’m reading about last night (link to the address is below from the New York Times):
WAPo: “In describing his bleak vision of a ruined United States exploited by foreigners, Mr. Trump wrote a series of checks he almost certainly cannot cash.”
The ugliest moment in the 60-minute address came when Mr. Trump announced the formation of an office on “Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement,” and then introduced families of people allegedly murdered by illegal immigrants. It was an appeal to raw prejudice and fear that will do nothing to promote the national unity he claims to be seeking. (emphasis added)
WAPO: Fact checking demonstrates that Trump continues to take credit for things he didn’t do, including the sourcing for DAPL pipeline materials
WaPo: Why any glow from last night won’t last very long
WaPo: The word you didn’t hear last night
NYT: Did Bannon and Miller talk Trump away from a pivot on immigration during lunch yesterday?
NYT: Five takeaways from last night’s speech
Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal Constitution on pouring money into the military,
“In short, this is not a carefully thought-out strategy from the Trump administration, based on consultation with the experts and our allies. Instead, the man who took five draft deferments to avoid fighting in Vietnam, the man who says that he knows better than the generals how to defeat ISIS and who claims he understands the military because he attended a military-themed boarding school, is offering a military strategy fueled largely by his own deep personal insecurities.”
Who isn’t in the room now?
The duties that the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence include participating in discussions and decision-making in the National Security Council. Trump has decided that they don’t need to attend unless specifically asked. Their job every day, all day, is to protect our country. They’ve been told to wait in the hall.
Who will be attending National Security Meetings?
Trump’s strategist, Steve Bannon, who does not go through any confirmation process with the Senate, as Cabinet and other high-ranking officials are required to do, is now a member of the National Security Council. Two men with military and diplomatic experience were sent to the hallway to make room for Bannon.
What are Bannon’s politics in addition to anti-Semitic and misogynist views? In August of last year he told reporter Ronald Radosh,“Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Trump is giving his chief strategist free rein to do that.
The millions of people who have filled our country’s streets, airports, Congressional offices, and jammed phone lines, are doing their part to protect the Constitution and our government from the hands of those who are determined to destroy all of it.
Calling his bluff
Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto refused to fall victim to Trump’s childish demand that Mexico pay for a wall that Trump insists on building on the Mexico-United States border. Instead of tolerating the behavior of a spoiled child, Neito said he’d just stay at home.
Every business threatened by Trump’s insistence that he would impose tariffs and taxes on them if they don’t do exactly what he wants, should be watching. If they are smart, they also know that Trump doesn’t have the authority to do that- Congress levies taxes and tariffs.
Bullying is breaking a good relationship with a continental ally. Will it prove to embolden American companies to follow their own course, leaving Trump to look like the fool he is proving himself to be?
The cancellation of this working meeting comes on the heels of senior State Department officials leaving their jobs en masse, according to the Washington Post.
Jay Bookman at the AJC has an outstanding column today on the first six days of Trump’s administration.
“The little voice in your heart must guide you”- my daughter’s letter to her children
The Friday Photo
January 20, 2017
reposted with permission from my daughter McKinsey Cummings
An Open Letter to My Children on MLK Day
4 days prior to the inauguration of He Who Must Not Be Named: I’m sorry. Sorry that the world you were born into is about to change. Sorry that the value I raise you with: honesty, kindness, and fairness to all will not be the values reflected by the head of government in this country. When all this is over you will be teenagers and trying to find your place in the world. You will have heard and witnessed things I would have never thought possible for your generation. I promise I will show you the path of generosity of spirit and deed. And that the little voice in your heart must guide you in the face of overwhelming animosity that is sure to come. #notmypresident #bluedot #notthis
If your plane has been hijacked….
This saying has been circulating since the election, and I understand the thinking behind it.
It also reminds me of the passenger-heroes of Flight 93, who overtook hijackers on their September 11, 2001 flight, forcing the plane to crash in a Pennsylvania field instead of its intended metropolitan target.
If your plane has been hijacked, and you know it is on a suicide mission, do you sit by idly? Or, do you organize and try to regain control of the plane, putting it on its right course?
Check the dictionary
The Friday Photo
January 13, 2017
I did some checking on definitions last night. Carl Bernstein, who, with fellow reporter Bob Woodward, earned a Pulitzer Prize for the Washington Post after uncovering and reporting the Watergate break-in and resulting coverup, tagged Donald Trump’s campaign manager and staffer Kellyanne Conway, as the incoming administration’s Propaganda Minister. Bernstein bestowed that title following her complex and unsuccessful verbal gymnastic routine with Anderson Cooper over Trump’s media event on Wednesday.
I googled Propaganda Minister and the second listing was:
Jospeh Goebbels served Adolf Hitler as the Reich Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich.
Another word getting lots of use in recent months is gaslighting. Wikipedia definition: Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of manipulation through persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying in an attempt to destabilize and delegitimize a target. The online resource goes on to offer examples: Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws, and exploit others, but typically are also convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their own perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent.
Gaslighting may occur in parent–child relationships, with either parent, child, or both, lying to each other and attempting to undermine perceptions. Gaslighting also occurs in examples of school bullying. The word gaslighting is often used to describe the tactics of the President-elect. Teenvogue, of all places, had an excellent editorial on Trump’s tactics.
Forum
Nine points on Trump’s “press” conference
There were LOTS of things said during Trump’s “press conference” today that either conflict or contradict what he has said or Tweeted in the past, or were simply outrageous. A few of the highlights:
1. Trump made all kinds of claims about removing himself from any business conflicts, or rather his attorney did in an eye-glaze-over statement. He also said he could manage to run the government and his companies too.
2. The President-elect almost stomped his feet while trying to make CNN reporter Jim Acosta quit asking a question, finally resorting to “You’re fake news.”
3. Despite statements from Congressional Republicans that they aren’t prepared to repeal and replace ACA in the near future, Trump said all that would be happening soon.
4. He wants a report on hacking within 90 days from US intelligence agencies. Didn’t he get a report last Friday?
5. Trump asserted that, he “will be the greatest job producer that God ever created.” That’s a pretty bold statement. Will Trump singularly receive confirmation that he has hit that mark? Will it be Tweeted so everyone can see it? And what happens if things aren’t going well and God decides we need a course correction?
6. Only the media wants to see his tax returns. Um, no, lots of Americans want to see them.
7. Of his Cabinet choices, Trump said, “generally they are smart.” I sure wish he would identify the ones he thinks aren’t so smart.
8. Trump says the wall on the Mexican border will be built, and he isn’t willing to wait on the funding from Mexico. He wants American taxpayer dollars sunk into it now.
9. After a rambling event that included shouting at a reporter, Trump was asked what will happen if his sons don’t do well with running the family businesses. He gestured towards the stacks of papers that are supposed to demonstrate some type of disconnection between the President-elect and his businesses, and then, pointing to his sons, said, “You’re fired.”
Except Trump also said he won’t know what is happening with his family companies because his sons aren’t going to discuss them with him. How can Trump fire anyone if he is in the dark?