By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump speaks behind bulletproof glass during a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (AFP via Getty Images)

  (Deep sigh.)

     My fellow Americans, the Trump era in politics began with Stormy Daniels, a porn star, talking about the size of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s putter. (He’s an avid golfer, as you know.). Eight years later, the candidate himself, Trump, is talking about the size of the golfing legend Arnold Palmer’s driver.

     No, you’re right, this has nothing to do with golf. 

     And before I go any further, I want to extend my sincere apologies to David Bernstein, my first editor (and publisher) at the Binghamton (N.Y.) Sun-Bulletin, and Donald Koster, my journalism professor at Adelphi College in Garden City (N.Y.), for resorting to such snarky symbolism to refer to male genitalia. You taught me better. But unfortunately, that’s where we are today in journalism and in life in general. There are no apparent rules. F bombs abound. Besides, the topic never came up about what to do when a political candidate started talking about someone’s penis at a public political rally.

     Yes, that’s where we are, people, courtesy of the aforementioned Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felonies in trying to stop Ms. Daniels from telling the world about his extramarital golf game and awaiting sentencing on the convictions. Trump was also found liable, in a civil trial, for sexually assaulting a woman in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store. He was ordered to pay her $85 million for the assault and defaming her when she accused him. Plus there’s the matter of attempting a coup when he lost his bid for reelection in 2020.

       Back to golf. Trump was talking about Palmer because the rally was in Latrobe, Pa., the late golfer’s hometown. What better reason to muse about the size of Palmer’s penis. What better way to make your supporters feel good about themselves, laugh and pat you on the back when you come in from recess? Yes, they laughed and for good measure also tossed the word s—t out at Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris. At his urging of course.

      This coarse intersection of the presidential campaign highlights again the absolute depths to which the Republican Party has sunk, with no leader willing or able to step forward and point out that, not only does their leader and presidential candidate have no morals, he is also losing his mind. What Trump did in Latrobe and continues to do everywhere he appears, wandering off into a verbal mishmash fantasyland, accentuated by lies and threats, is not the behavior of a competent adult, never mind someone who is capable of leading the most powerful country in the world.

        What will it take for someone, some family member or party leader to step up to say Trump must step aside for the good of the party and the country? So far, only Liz Cheney has shown those kind of, yes, cajones.

         A day after Trump (apparently no longer interested in talking about tariffs, immigration or abortion) reminisced about Arnold Palmer’s manly presence in the clubhouse shower, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives was interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper.

        The speaker dismissed questions about Trump’s violent rhetoric about “the enemy within” and threats to use the military against his political opponents, specifically naming Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schaffer. Then Tapper asked, “Is this really the closing message you want voters to hear from Donald Trump, stories about Arnold Palmer’s penis?”

        Avoidance.

        Tapper persisted. “I’m sure that you think that a policy debate would be better than a personality debate. But if President Biden had gone on stage and spoke about the size of a pro golfer’s penis, I think you would be on this show right now saying you were shocked and appalled and you would suggest it was evidence of his cognitive decline.”

        The speaker, agitated: “Don’t say it again!”

        “We don’t have to say it. I get it.” Flustered: “There’s lines in a rally – when president Trump is at a rally, sometimes you’ll speak for two straight hours. You’re questioning his stamina, his mental acuity. Joe Biden couldn’t do that for five minutes. That’s how you started this segment. You said, what if Biden was in a rally like that? He couldn’t fill the room, Donald Trump does.”

         That’s how the Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency and supposedly a leader of the Republican Party, responded to questions about his party’s presidential candidate riffing at a campaign rally about the size of Arnold Palmer’s … you know … don’t say it.

          I hesitate to point out, but, what the heck, the embarrassed speaker is a conservative Evangelical Christian from Louisiana with the unfortunate last name “Johnson.”

          (Sigh.) Sorry, David. Sorry, Professor Koster.

          God bless America. Vote for Kamala Harris.

                                        ***

(David Bernstein, before owning The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, established the Middletown Daily Record, the first offset daily in the country, in 1956. It later became the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. I worked there for 29 years, including 23 as editorial page editor. Donald Koster was a member of the Adelphi College English Department in the 1960s. I squeaked through as an English major. Adelphi became a university in 1964, the year after I graduated.)

By Bob Gaydos

The rare black squirrel.

     I saw a black squirrel the other day. Black! Do you know how rare that is? One in 10,000. I had to check with the person driving to make sure I saw what I saw.

      “That was a black squirrel. Did you see that?”

      “Yes. A black squirrel. I never saw one.”

      “Me either.”

      And I’ve seen quite a few squirrels in 83 years.

       The black squirrel was sitting casually on the side of Black Rock Road in Pine Bush, a hamlet in slightly upstate New York better known for sightings of unidentified flying objects than appearances of unlikely furry objects.

        So I figured it had to be an omen. What does Google say?

       — “A spirit animal, the black squirrel represents adaptability and the ability to thrive in various environments and situations.”

       —  “They are portrayed as being of royal blood and are regarded as the wisest and noblest type of squirrel. In Celtic folklore, black squirrels were associated with magic, occult knowledge, and the otherworld.“

       In various cultures they are regarded as a symbol of good luck, good fortune, trust, preparation and foresight. Undoubtedly because of all that gathering of nuts before the frost.

     Taking all this into account and looking to connect the dots, I went looking for nuts in the rest of the world.

     J.D. Vance made it easy. At pretty much the same time as I was marveling at the black squirrel, the Republican Party’s candidate for vice president was talking to Dana Bash on CNN. He was talking about other animals. The senator from Ohio was in the midst of acknowledging that he knew the stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing neighbors’ cats and dogs and eating them were false, but he kept repeating them anyway, for political reasons.

     “The American media totally ignored this stuff (Republican campaign claims) until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”

      Bash pointed out Vance’s stunning admission: “You just said this is a story that you created.”

      “Yes!” Vance said.

      And he was proud of it. 

      Think about it. A United States senator admits spreading false racist, anti-immigrant stories about one of the communities he represents and having no qualms about the consequences. And there were plenty.

     Bomb threats were made against hospitals and City Hall. Schools, too. They were closed. Meetings were canceled. More threats were made. Police were on alert. Springfield was under siege. The MAGA world jumped at the bone Vance and Trump threw them. And kept throwing, despite statements from Springfield’s mayor (a Republican) and police chief that the stories were false. No evidence. All a mistake. Please stop.

  But the lies continued. Given the atmosphere of fear and violence casually and consistently promoted by Trump and Vance, lives were put in genuine danger in Springfield. Merely to gain attention so that Vance could spread other lies.

       This shameless behavior should not be allowed to stand. Ever. There has to be some consequence for political candidates knowingly creating a dangerous situation for selfish political reasons. Certainly for a sitting senator to do so.

     Some public official, in Ohio or in Washington, D.C., needs to find some law that says this is not allowed. Surely the Senate must have some basic rules of engagement that prohibit trying to gain votes by knowingly putting the lives of people in danger through reckless lying. If not, it needs to get some.

       And in the meantime, surely this heartless disregard for basic human decency by Vance and Trump and the pure hubris of Vance in publicly flaunting it, should finally convince enough clear-thinking Americans that these two soulless men belong nowhere near the White House.

    This is ultimately up to us. Let this finally be that magical, unexpected but well-deserved moment of good fortune for America. Connect the dots. Collect the nuts. 

       I’m not wasting this black squirrel, people.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

RJ Photography

By Bob Gaydos

There’s something about Donald Trump that has always puzzled me. It’s not the fact that millions of Americans could and still do bow at the feet of this inveterate grifter. For a long time I’ve been of the opinion that there are a lot of people shuffling through life in this country unknowing, uncaring and unapologetic for their behavior. Also racists.

     They are here, they listen to Fox “news” and I don’t expect most of them to change or go away. It’s a free country, even for bigots.

      No, what has had me stumped for five years is that so many Americans have carried on as if Trump is just a little anomaly in the history of this nation. No big deal. When can we go to the movies again?

       For me, Trump has been a major threat ever since he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. It wasn’t just that I knew how slimy he was; it felt just so wrong for him to even be involved in this democratic process. We’re talking about president of the United States of America, for Pete’s sake, I said to myself over and over. What is Trump doing in this? It’s almost a physical reaction for me. It lasted through his whole presidency. Why are all those people on Wall Street behaving as if this is just another 9 to 5 interlude? This man is an insult to the presidency.

         That’s how I felt. Still do, although the election of Joe Biden has eased my concerns considerably. More to the point, 

for the purposes of this column, I think I know why I’ve had such a strong reaction to Trump. Why I never used the word, “president” with his name attached to it. Why I took it so personally.

          I was lucky.

          That’s what history tells me. Or rather, a bunch of historians. Some 142 noted historians were surveyed by CNN for the cable news network’s latest rating of American presidents. It does this whenever there’s a change in administration. Trump somehow managed to not finish last. More on that in a bit. What struck me most, personally I guess, is that the historians rated an era that included my first 28 years alive as the best stretch of presidents in the history of America.

          Wow.

           It started with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 (I was born in 1941) and continued through Harry S Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1969. FDR was Number 3 on the list, behind Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Ike was fifth, Harry was sixth, JFK was number 8 and LBJ ranked 11th.

           Richard M Nixon (number 31) ended my personal winning streak of presidents and it was mediocrity or worse, in my opinion, until Barack Obama in 2008. But boy, those first 28 years! No wonder I resented Donald Trump in the Oval Office. I was spoiled and didn’t know it. I grew up with mature, responsible men as presidents, men who put their country ahead of their party and certainly ahead of themselves. Men who surely had their faults, but who each in his own way inspired confidence that he was always trying to do the best for all Americans. That’s what president did, I thought. Made us feel we had the right person making difficult decisions. Made us feel confident about the future. Made us proud to be Americans.

           FDR created the social fabric we take for granted today. Truman steered us steadily through the end of one war and into another while maintaining his touch with average Americans. Everybody seemed to like Ike, the war hero who warned us of the military/industrial complex. JFK, the orator, had his photo hung in virtually every Catholic family’s kitchen, alongside The Last Supper. He dreamed of going to the moon and gave us the Peace Corps. When he was assassinated, LBJ took up the tough fight for the Equal Rights Act and wrestled it through the resistance of southern senators. He knew how Washington worked. 

            Nixon lowered the bar before resigning. Ford didn’t do much as a fill-in. Carter was sincere but disappointing. Reagan got rated 10th by the historians, but I think he should trickle down several spots despite his affable communications skills. Bush senior was unimpressive, Bill Clinton was sporadically effective (he balanced the budget!) and George W. Bush, installed by the Supreme Court, was a disaster. I actually wept with pride when Barack Obama, the first black American president, addressed the crowd in a park in Chicago on his election night. We’re back, I thought.

             And then came Trump.

             An insult to the American psyche. A symbol of the decay of one of our two main political parties. And the fourth(!) worst president in American history. Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson James Buchanan — they rated worse than Trump. All I can say is I’m glad I didn’t live through their presidencies if they were worse than Trump. But history evolves over time and it is not too much to hope that he will ultimately bottom out.

             In the meantime, though, I am glad to know that I am not in some way weird for regarding the Trump administration as more than an anomaly in politics. I grew up with presidents who could read and speak with intelligence, who respected science, who had the respect of other world leaders, who did not lie with every waking breath, who did not divide Americans with angry insults and threats, who understood the Constitution and the obligation of presidents to serve the people, not vice versa.

           I grew up with real presidents. Trump dishonored the office.

History is on my side.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

There’s still too much happening, too fast, so I’m sticking with the Jimmy Cannon approach for a while. So …

— Maybe it’s just me, but I’m having trouble figuring out which is worse: a) claiming you don’t know someone you just appointed to a pretty important job when critics immediately say the appointment is illegal and inappropriate; b) lying about knowing the guy when you just said on national TV less than a month ago that you know him and he’s “a great guy”; or c) thinking that the best way to cover your butt for making what is being described as an “unconstitutional appointment“ of someone who is being widely described as a “crackpot“ to the position of acting attorney general of the United States of America is to say, in effect, “Hey, they told me he was a good guy for the job. I never met him. Don’t blame me.”

The buck never stops at Donald Trump‘s desk. Think about it (you Trump supporters who stumbled in here by mistake can ignore this part), the man who occupies the most powerful position on the planet would rather people think he appointed a political hack to the most powerful law enforcement position in the country without ever talking to the man face-to-face than admit maybe he was a bit too hasty. Coincidentally, of course, at a time when the Justice Department this stranger would head has an active investigation of Trump and the 2016 election.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, with Drumpf, lying is second nature, but being embarrassed is unacceptable. It must be someone else’s fault. The media’s! Yeah, that’s it. I’ll blame CNN.

— Maybe it’s just me, but if I were a member of the White House press corps, I wouldn’t ask a single question at the next press conference if Sarah Huckabee Sanders is at the podium. No one. No questions. She took lying for a living to a new low with the use of a doctored video to revoke Jim Acosta’s White House credentials. The truth is under constant assault by this administration and the Republican Party. The press is the defender of the truth. Sarah must go,

— Maybe it’s just me, but I have issues with voters who prefer a dead pimp, a congressman indicted for insider trading, another one indicted for using thousands of dollars in campaign funds for personal affairs and another one who is proudly racist over their opponents just because their opponents are Democrats. Methinks it says some unpleasant things about those voters. The Republican Party of Reagan, never mind Lincoln, no longer exists.

— Maybe it’s just me (and this definitely falls in the category of patting my own back), but those dots (I listed 17 of them) I wrote about back in January got connected on Election Day with a wave of women (mostly Democrats) elected to the House of Representatives. Sparked by the #metoo movement, with “a record number of women, mostly Democrats, running for political office this year at the local, state and national levels,” I wrote, and with “female registered voters outnumbering male registered voters in the United States … this is not simply a revolution about sexual predation — or an attitude of male sexual privilege, if you will. As I see it, it is an awakening, a moment of clarity, a realization that what was does not have to continue to be. Cannot be, in fact. Republicans are mostly clueless to the moment. Democrats ignore it to their continued ineffectuality at the polls.” So I said. It’s nice to be right occasionally, even nicer that the Democrats paid attention.

— Maybe it’s just me, but has anyone heard about anyone being charged with murdering Jamal Khashoggi? Are we still buddies with the Saudis?

— Is that caravan still threatening our southern border?

— Is it petty to criticize by name the members of your political party who didn’t get re-elected because they didn’t beg for your support? Is it typical (see item one) to think you, with your policies and rhetoric, bear no responsibility for their defeat?

— Maybe it’s just me, but Floridians deserve whatever they get for electing Rick Scott governor in the first place and maybe a bonafide racist to replace him. Throw in Marco Rubio, too. Imagine, counting all the votes is cheating.

— And finally, maybe it’s just me, but have you noticed that, unlike Congress, the third leg of government, the courts, have been holding their own against the onslaught of anti-everything coming out of the White House? The latest rulings stalling the Keystone Pipeline and preserving DACA show the value of independent courts. Maybe it’s just me, so why is Chuck Schumer being so soft on Mitch McConnell?

#voxpopuli

rjgaydos@gmail.com