By Bob Gaydos

Trump ( center) is led out of the hotel after the sounds of shooting.

It was fast.

Government officials were still semi-scrambling over their wives to get out of the room, hotshot White House correspondents were still on their knees under tables turning on their phones and the older gentleman with glasses seated up front was still munching on his salad when reports started popping up on social media that the latest assassination attempt on Donald Trump was, like the first one, a fake.

Just as quickly came the response from the MAGA crowd and the too-cool-to-take-sides crowd that people should stop spreading conspiracy theories about such a serious occurrence.

Fine.

I happened to be on my phone when the news was thrust upon me. I was not watching the White House Correspondents Dinner because I didn’t want to listen to a half hour or more of Trump rambling and berating the press while they sat there in their tuxedos and gowns pretending to laugh as he dumped all over them as he has for the last 10 years.

The group lost my respect when it agreed not to have a comedian roasting the president at the dinner, as was the custom, but rather let Trump be the only roaster. That’s the only grounds on which he would agree to be there. Capitulation for the sake of access. No guts, no glory, no sense that this man had indeed made them his enemy many years ago.

That’s fact one on my list of why conspiracy theories sprung up so quickly. It was so convenient.

Then there’s the fact that someone apparently managed to get into the Washington, D.C. Hilton, where the president, vice president and assorted top Cabinet officials were assembled in one room and get off a bunch of gunshots (reportedly ten) before being stopped by the Secret Service. How could this even happen if the first two reported attempts on Trump’s life were legitimate?

And then, back in the safety of the White House and looking none the worse for wear, Trump praises the security detail and then immediately invokes whatever happened as a reason for the construction of his gaudy ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand because it will include a secure bunker.

Huh?

The Hilton ballroom holds about 3,000; Trump’s proposed ballroom would hold about 1,000. Also, is this to suggest that all future presidents would never venture out of the White House to events? That’s ridiculous. The fact is that a judge had recently ordered construction of the ballroom stopped because of a lawsuit claiming it was illegal and the only option the judge offered to let the construction continue was that it was deemed to be a necessary secure site. How convenient.

Trump did not talk about the need to tone down the political dialogue. No talk about there being no place for violence in politics. No talk about that because, well that’s the way Trump always talks. Anger, insult, retribution, accusation and blame. It’s his whole game.

And of course, referring back to that first “attempt” in Pennsylvania, in which an innocent bystander was killed, we have the miraculous healing of Trump’s right ear and the virtual disappearance of any mention of the shooter, motive, etc. Gone with the wind.

Pack all this up with Trump’s addiction to lying, his background in television and his love for theater and staged events, creation of conspiracy theories about what happened in Washington was, in my opinion, inevitable.

Now, as for the facts. The so-called “manifesto” of the shooter, which was reportedly released by two unidentified law-enforcement officials not authorized to do so, says he was surprised that no one bothered to check his baggage when he checked into the Hilton the day before the scheduled event with his guns and knives. Seems like a flaw in the security arrangement.

Also, he managed to get within one floor of the ballroom before being stopped by security, but not before firing about 10 shots. The manifesto suggests the accused shooter was aware security officers will be wearing bulletproof vests and hoped they worked. The one person who was shot was indeed wearing such a vest. It worked.

These could easily be interpreted as failures of security or part of a script to save a ballroom.

One part I’m sure was not in any script was Norah O’Donnell on “60 minutes” Sunday night reading from the so-called manifesto in which the alleged shooter, in explaining his actions, said he was no longer willing ”to let a pedophile, rapist and traitor coat my hands with his crimes.”

O’Donnell asked Trump what he thought about that. Predictably, he called her “horrible people” for reading it and said, “I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anyone. I’m not a pedophile.” To which she replied, “Oh, do you think he was referring to you?“

Since Trump’s buddy now owns CBS, Nora’s job may well be on the line for that little bit of legitimate journalism. But let the White House Correspondents Association take note.

“Football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” George Orwell, 1984 

By Bob Gaydos

  If I were a wagering man, and having missed out on the Pam Bondi firing, I would lay a few sheckles on the likelihood that Trump will flush Pete Hegseth next and label him an ineffective Secretary of War.

   You can do that legally. I just found out. Somehow, the presence of so-called Prediction Markets escaped my attention as I struggled to maintain my sanity in a world going mad by design. Ironically, these markets are prime evidence of that phenomenon.

     And it has been happening for some time, starting with legalized sports betting. In my opinion, the emergence of legalized sports betting, not only on game outcomes, but specific moments within the game, has seriously eroded the simple enjoyment, never mind the credibility, of sports. The lure of big gambling money has made sports more profitable and players understandably want and deserve a share of the added money. Bigger contracts then mean higher costs at the stadium. Betting on a field goal or strikeout holds the lure of quick money to pay for the beer and hot dogs.

    It’s all about the money.

    But apparently it’s no longer energizing enough for people looking for an escape and maybe some easy money to just place a bet on whether some college or pro player will make or miss a foul shot. Now apparently you can bet on whether the coach will be fired and arrested at a DWI Checkpoint on the way home. Maybe he’ll run over someone.

   What are the odds? Who cares? What have you got to lose? If he makes it home safely, you can always bet on when Trump is going to lower tariffs again. That’s a surer bet.

    It’s also one of the things wrong with prediction markets. Never mind manipulating the stock market, people in positions of power can affect world events. People in power, if they choose to, can manipulate world events. And people in power, if they are of a mind to do so, might let someone know when to expect some unexpected event.

   Like the United States attacking Iran. While Trump was killing 168 Iranian school girls by giving the order to attack, someone betting on the prediction market was making a killing by predicting the attack would happen on the day it would happen. You may recall that Trump had just previously said talks between the U.S. and Iran were moving along on the nuclear weapons issue and no military action appeared to be imminent. No hints. No warning. Just bombs and a financial bonanza for someone.

   Some governors have sued to ban prediction markets as a form of legalized sports gambling, which their states do not allow. Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to simply ban prediction markets in this country, but the White House, of course, has no problem with them.

  With Trump, a former casino owner in charge, the house can literally fix the game. Like kidnaping the Venezuelan president, also apparently a coincidental lucky big payoff for some anonymous bettor. And it’s probably not a coincidence that Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Junior, have a major stake in a prediction market and Don is an advisor to another one, Kalshi. No likelihood of collusion here.

    But really, forget the fact that America is losing jobs, prices on everything, not just gasoline, are rising daily, young men are struggling to find work and hoping the draft isn’t reinstituted, farmers are being bailed out by the government that killed their markets and millions can’t afford healthcare. That’s just the day-to-day reality in Trump’s America. Prediction markets drag everything down to a lower level of humanity.

   Betting on war, assassinations, or some other form of others’ misfortune for personal financial gain is a dehumanizing activity. It’s immoral. A perverted version of no pain, no gain. As Orwell foresaw, it’s surrender disguised as entertainment. It’s like saying, as long as the world is so screwed up, I might as well try to make some money off it. 

    Forget it, pal. That game is rigged for the House, too.

John F. Kennedy

(Reprinted from The Retiring Mind… November 22, 2013)

By Bob Gaydos

     The first editorial I wrote for the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., appeared on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I wrote the headline, too: “The measure of the man.” 
Trying to “measure” the meaning of the life of a man who was literally loved and idolized by millions of people is no easy task, especially for a rookie editorial writer’s debut effort. But that’s what newspapers do and, in truth, I took it as a good omen that remembering JFK was my first assignment. He was a hero to me as to many young men my age when he was elected president. It was a combination of things: his youth, his wit, his easy-going style, his intelligence, his words, his sense of justice. Plus, we shared the same birthdate: May 29.
     As fate would have it, JFK would come to be remembered, not on his birthday, but on the anniversary of his death. And not so much for what Americans received for having him as president for 1,000 days, but rather for what we lost by not having him much longer.
     That first editorial said, in essence, that it would take more than 20 years to measure the meaning of the man. It acknowledged the things we had learned about JFK in the years since the shooting in Dallas — the flaws that made him human — as well as what I felt were his positive contributions. Thirty years later, no longer a rookie editorial writer — indeed, now retired after 23 years of writing editorials — with Nov. 22 approaching, I realized I had to write about JFK 50 years after his death (because that’s what old newspaper guys do). Before I started, I asked one of my reliable sounding boards, my son, Zack, what he knew about JFK. Zack is 19 and better informed than a lot of young people his age, so I figured his answer would provide me with a fair sense of what our education system had been telling kids about Kennedy.

   “He was the first Catholic president,” Zack said. Correct. “He had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.” Uh, correct. ‘There’s still some theories that there was more than one shooter.” Right. “Do you think the Kevin Costner movie (“JFK,” directed by Oliver Stone) was true?” Well, the people portrayed were real. “The Bay of Pigs didn’t go too well.” No, it didn’t. I took the opportunity to point out that Cuba was the site, not only of Kennedy’s biggest failure in global affairs, but also his biggest success.

     I was a little older than Zack is now when the world stood at the brink of a nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missile-launching sites in Cuba, aimed at the United States. I was a senior in college and knew full well, as did all my classmates, than no 2-S deferment was going to exempt me from what might happen if the Soviets did not — as Kennedy demanded — remove their missiles. Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade Cuba to prevent the shipment of Soviet missiles and equipment. Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet president, who had initially denied the existence of the missile sites, sent a naval fleet to Cuba, loaded with supplies and armed for battle. As the world watched and waited and prayed, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged messages. Kennedy prevailed. The Soviet fleet stopped short of Cuba and turned around. I lived to write this remembrance. Kennedy was dead not long after.

     So here I am 50 years later, still looking to take the measure of the man and still wondering how that is possible. Kennedy had the gift of engagement. He appeared to be comfortable with whomever he was speaking. He had tremendous appeal to young people, being so different from the older, stodgier presidents who preceded him. He created the Peace Corps — a legacy that continues to this day with not enough fanfare. He made many Americans — and this is not a small thing — truly proud to be Americans. Not in an arrogant, flag-waving, we-know-better-than-you way. Just proud. And he cheated on his wife and kept his serious health problems a secret from us and sometimes needed to be prodded by his brother, Bobby (another tragic loss) to take the proper (courageous) stand on issues.

     So the question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer? What did we lose at Dealey Plaza? Certainly, whatever innocence we still possessed. The wind was sucked from our sails as a nation and our domestic politics have slowly and steadily deteriorated into such partisanship that is virtually impossible for any president to speak to the minds and hearts of a majority of Americans the way Kennedy did. Maybe it would have happened even if Kennedy had lived a longer life and gone on to be an ambassador to the world of what America stands for. Or maybe not.

     It dawns on me in writing this that it is an ultimately frustrating task to try to take the measure of another man or woman. I know what JFK meant to me personally. I know a lot of others feel similarly and others do not. I know what history has recorded (he was also the youngest man to be elected president) and what the tabloids have told us. I have a sense of what I would like to think Kennedy would ultimately have meant had he not died so young. But it’s only speculation.

     The only man I can truly take the measure of is myself. It is 50 years since that morning when I was waiting at home to go to Fort Dix, N.J., to begin six months of active duty training. How do I measure up today? That’s a question I work on every day. It wasn’t always thus, but the years have a way of insisting on perspective. Maybe the answer will appear in some other writing. I have neither the space nor the inclination to do so here. I will say that, on balance, I’ll probably give myself a passing grade, but there’s still some stuff I’m learning. For now, I’m through trying to take the measure of JFK, as man or president. Let the historians have at it. I’m going to try to take his advice and ask not what life can do for me, but what I can contribute to life. And I’m also going to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born. 

rjgaydos@gmail.com

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

By Bob Gaydos

John F. Kennedy

The first editorial I wrote for the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., appeared on the 20th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I wrote the headline, too: “The measure of the man.”

Trying to “measure” the meaning of the life of a man who was literally loved and idolized by millions of people is no easy task, especially for a rookie editorial writer’s debut effort. But that’s what newspapers do and, in truth, I took it as a good omen that remembering JFK was my first assignment. He was a hero to me as to many young men my age when he was elected president. It was a combination of things: his youth, his wit, his easy-going style, his intelligence, his words, his sense of justice. Plus, we shared the same birthdate: May 29.

As fate would have it, JFK would come to be remembered, not on his birthday, but on the anniversary of his death. And not so much for what Americans received for having him as president for 1,000 days, but rather for what we lost by not having him much longer.

That first editorial said, in essence, that it would take more than 20 years to measure the meaning of the man. It acknowledged the things we had learned about JFK in the years since the shooting in Dallas — the flaws that made him human — as well as what I felt were his positive contributions.

Thirty years later, no longer a rookie editorial writer — indeed, retired after 23 years of writing editorials — with Nov. 22 approaching, I realized I had to write about JFK 50 years after his death (because that’s what old newspaper guys do). Before I started, I asked one of my reliable sounding boards, my son, Zack, what he knew about JFK. Zack is 19 and better informed than a lot of young people his age, so I figured his answer would provide me with a fair sense of what our education system had been telling kids about Kennedy.

“He was the first Catholic president,” Zack said. Correct. “He had an affair with Marilyn Monroe.” Uh, correct. ‘There’s still some theories that there was more than one shooter.” Right. “Do you think the Kevin Costner movie (“JFK,” directed by Oliver Stone) was true?” Well, the people portrayed were real. “The Bay of Pigs didn’t go too well.” No, it didn’t.

I took the opportunity to point out that Cuba was the site, not only of Kennedy’s biggest failure in global affairs, but also his biggest success. I was a little older than Zack is now when the world stood at the brink of a nuclear war over the presence of Soviet missile-launching sites in Cuba, aimed at the United States. I was a senior in college and knew full well, as did all my classmates, than no 2-S deferment was going to exempt me from what might happen if the Soviets did not — as Kennedy demanded — remove their missiles.

Kennedy ordered the U.S. Navy to blockade Cuba to prevent the shipment of Soviet missiles and equipment. Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet president, who had initially denied the existence of the missile sites, sent a naval fleet to Cuba, loaded with supplies and armed for battle. As the world watched and waited and prayed, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged messages. Kennedy prevailed. The Soviet fleet stopped short of Cuba and turned around. I lived to write this remembrance. Kennedy was dead not long after.

So here I am 50 years later, still looking to take the measure of the man and still wondering how that is possible. Kennedy had the gift of engagement. He appeared to be comfortable with whomever he was speaking. He had tremendous appeal to young people, being so different from the older, stodgier presidents who preceded him. He created the Peace Corps — a legacy that continues to this day with not enough fanfare. He made many Americans — and this is not a small thing — truly proud to be Americans. Not in an arrogant, flag-waving, we-know-better-than-you way. Just proud.

And he cheated on his wife and kept his serious health problems a secret from us and sometimes needed to be prodded by his brother, Bobby (another tragic loss) to take the proper (courageous) stand on issues. So the question I still ask myself is, what might JFK have done, what might he have meant to America and the world, if he had lived longer? What did we lose at Dealey Plaza?

Certainly, whatever innocence we still possessed. The wind was sucked from our sails as a nation and our domestic politics have slowly and steadily deteriorated into such partisanship that is virtually impossible for any president to speak to the minds and hearts of a majority of Americans the way Kennedy did. Maybe it would have happened even if Kennedy had lived a longer life and gone on to be an ambassador to the world of what America stands for. Or maybe not.

It dawns on me in writing this that it is an ultimately frustrating task to try to take the measure of another man or woman. I know what JFK meant to me personally. I know a lot of others feel similarly and others do not. I know what history has recorded (he was also the youngest man to be elected president) and what the tabloids have told us. I have a sense of what I would like to think Kennedy would ultimately have meant had he not died so young. But it’s only speculation.

The only man I can truly take the measure of is myself. It is 50 years since that morning when I was waiting at home to go to Fort Dix, N.J., to begin six months of active duty training. How do I measure up today? That’s a question I work on every day. It wasn’t always thus, but the years have a way of insisting on perspective. Maybe the answer will appear in some other writing. I have neither the space nor the inclination to do so here. I will say that, on balance, I’ll probably give myself a passing grade, but there’s still some stuff I’m learning.

For now, I’m through trying to take the measure of JFK, as man or president. Let the historians have at it. I’m going to try to take his advice and ask not what life can do for me, but what I can contribute to life. And I’m also going to remember to honor him not on the date he died, but on the date we both were born.

bob@zestoforange.com