By Bob Gaydos

Aaron Rodgers and Donald Trump, birds of a feather?

     Sometimes you can’t win for trying.

      If you’re a regular reader of my column (and thank you for that), you probably noticed I’ve taken a break from politics the last few posts. It was deliberate. A need to get centered and focused on what’s important in life before engaging, slowly, with the current … umm reality.

      But wouldn’t you know it, just as I decided it was time to tackle the litany of “in your face” spite appointments emanating from Mar-a-Lago, one of the most gratuitous Trump insults to the rule of law and the Constitution decided for himself (maybe) that there’s such a thing as being too cocky. Especially when there’s mounting evidence that you participated in a large sex trafficking ring, which apparently included an underage female and you also happen to be a member of Congress.

    Matt Gaetz will not be the next attorney general of the United States of America. He withdrew his name from consideration for the post, even though Republicans on the House Ethics Committee tried to keep him in the game by refusing to release their report on Gaetz’s activities.

      The stuff will all come out, but Gaetz, thankfully, is gone from Congress, having resigned soon after Trump named him as Attorney General pick. It was probably just a way to kill the report, but, also good news, too many Senate Republicans were having trouble swallowing Gaetz, even for their exalted leader. Checks and balances, anyone?

     So, good riddance to Gaetz and thank you for unintended consequences.

     This, of course, leaves a spoiled fish stew of other appointments and nominations announced by Team Trump to help run the country for four years without running it into bankruptcy or court, like virtually all other activities involving Trump.

       Bubbling to the top of this pot are worm brain, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be Health Secretary and TV crackpot Dr. Mehmet Oz to head Medicare and Medicaid.

  Close behind is Fox TV personality Pete Hegseth, as Defense Secretary, apparently because he once served in the military and stands accused of doping a woman’s drink to have sex with her (some call this rape), which refers back to the Gaetz qualifications for Trump’s Cabinet.

    Toss in a fracking company exec for Energy Secretary and a drill baby drill guy for Interior and you know where this is going. Lots of back-scratching and little concern for the future of the planet or the people.

      For now, also throw in a choice for Education Secretary who said she was a teacher, but wasn’t, but did run a professional wrestling business and donated millions to Trump’s campaign and a U.N. Ambassador who has no diplomatic experience but totally switched her political philosophy when Trump hijacked the GOP.

      It remains to be seen where Republicans in the Senate draw the line on Trump’s choices, if anywhere, but I’m hopeful that MAGA’s history of incompetence holds true and becomes evident to a lot more Americans.

     As a former sports editor, one of the things I turned to in my brief hiatus was the NFL season, such as it is in New York. If you want a non-political example of MAGA incompetence, take the New York Jets. Please, as Henny Youngman used to say.

      Their owner, Woody Johnson (Johnson & Johnson) is a big Trumper. He was rewarded with the ambassadorship to the United Kingdom in Trump’s first term and is looking for a repeat. Maybe he just wants to get out of town.

      Johnson thought he would improve his football team by insisting on paying big money to hire Aaron Rodgers, a 40-year-old quarterback who refused to be vaccinated against Covid, doubted the Sandy Hook School shootings and 9/11 attacks were truthfully reported and felt strongly both ways on abortion. He was critical of Trump, but questioned the results of the 2020 election and had the same Trumpian tendency to make stuff up. RFK Jr. considered Rodgers as a vice presidential running mate before jumping to Trump.

      Well, Jets fans know how that Rodgers decision worked out. In a disastrous season, Johnson fired the coach and general manager because, well, quarterback Rodgers may have shared some political views with Johnson, but he couldn’t connect often enough with his receivers. Out of touch and out of step. Time for a new quarterback. 

     If that’s a metaphor for MAGA, I hope all the rest of us USA fans can simply survive through a losing season and, like Jets fans, let ‘em know it’s time to draft a new quarterback.

      Heck, maybe everything is politics.

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.)

Geraldo Rivera ... "apologizes"

By Bob Gaydos

The B.S. meter, already recalibrated to measure record-level intensity since the Republican primary season began, reached new highs this past week thanks in large part to a TV personality who has been spewing hot air for decades and some professional football folks who are the reigning champion gas bags of the NFL.

We’ll start with Geraldo Rivera, but don’t worry, we’ll get to the New York Jets.

One of the most insulting and depressing developments of our Spin Age Society is the ascension of the non-apology apology. You hear it all the time now, from politicians, performers, athletes, commentators. The basic outline goes like this: “If I hurt or offended anyone with my remarks about (fill in the blank), I apologize. That was not my intent.”

That is pure bull and anyone who hears it knows it. Yet we let people get away with it all the time. What the “apologist” is really saying is: “If I hurt or offended anyone with my remarks, too bad, live with it. I am issuing this apology only because my advisers tell me it will soften the overwhelmingly negative reaction to my (a. hateful; b. bigoted; c. insensitive; d. ignorant; e. provocative; f. untrue; g. self-serving …) statements. I am not sorry for what I said, only for the reaction to it. I hope this puts an end to all this nonsense so I can continue to go about doing what I always do.”

Rivera weighed in on the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by blaming the black teenager at least partially for his own death because he wore a hoodie. “I’ll bet you money, if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way,” Rivera said on his Fox News TV show.

When his own son told him he was ashamed of what Dad had said, Rivera “apologized.” On Twitter: “Heard petition demands my apology to Trayvon’s parents. Save effort: I deeply apologize for any hurt I caused-that is not my goal or intent.” He later sent an e-mail to the Politico web site: “I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent black conservative called my ‘very practical and potentially life-saving campaign urging black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.’ ”

He added that he had been told his remarks “obscured the main point that someone shot and killed an unarmed teenager,” and explained that his comments were part of his “crusade to warn minority families of the danger to their young sons inherent in ‘gangsta’ style clothing; like hoodies.”

A day later, after a torrent of negative Tweets to his Tweet and more grief from his family, Rivera added : “[M]y own family and friends believe [that] I have obscured or diverted attention from the principal fact, which is that an unarmed 17-year-old was shot dead by a man who was never seriously investigated by local police. And if that is true, I apologize.”

If that is true? Apparently his news sense disappeared along with his common sense when he joined Fox.

Note that at no time does Rivera ever simply say, “I’m sorry. What I said was terribly insensitive.” Nor does he ever seem to recognize the racism at the center of his “crusade.’’ Talk about forgetting your roots. He should go back to calling himself Gerry Rivers.

* * *

OK, before we get to the Jets, the more egregious football B.S. (because it involved potential physical harm to people) issued forth from one of the few head coaches in the NFL who can go toe-to-toe with Rex Ryan in smugness — Sean Payton, head coach of the ironically named New Orleans Saints. Payton was recently suspended for a year, without pay, for allowing a bounty system to exist, wherein defensive players on his team could win cash bonuses up to $1,500 for knocking a star player from the opposing team out of the game.

A lot of macho type talking heads and fans, whose careers and health were not on the line, said this was no big deal, that it went on all the time in the NFL. Commissioner Roger Goodell thought otherwise. He saw a sharp rise in concussions and a string of lawsuits from ex-players charging that the league was not concerned with the safety if its players. And here the Saints were targeting some of the league’s best players for injury. Talk about self-destructive.

Well, Payton and the Saints lied to Goodell about the bounties and when he caught them, he leveled the boom. Payton is the first head coach to be suspended for a year. When his punishment was announced, he said: “As the head coach, anything that happens within the framework of your team and your program you’re responsible for. And that’s a lesson I’ve learned.” … It’s easy to get carried away in regards to a certain side of the ball, or more involved offensively or defensively, and that’s something I regret.”

Huh? He regrets paying too much attention to the offense over the defense? Not that he might have ended the career of MVP Aaron Rodgers of Green Bay if one of the Saints defensive linemen (or two) hit him just right?

Payton never admitted lying to Goodell, but did say, “You’re disappointed, you’re disappointed in yourself that it got to this point.”

You’re disappointed? For what, that you got caught? How about, “I’m disappointed in myself and I’m sorry for my actions”?

* * *

OK, now the Jets. Really, compared to the first two, this is the least important offense in the scheme of things, but it is a so typically, insultingly Jet-like offense it can’t be ignored.

If you just got back from Mars, let me tell you that the Jets hired Tim Tebow, rock star, Christian athlete icon, to be their “backup” quarterback to Mark Sanchez, their three-year starter. In a week in which the pope was visiting Mexico and Cuba, Tebow (who seems to be pathologically “excited” to be a Jet) far eclipsed the pontiff in media coverage in the U.S.

The irritating thing with the Jets — and that includes their owner, Woody Johnson, general manager Mike Tannenbaum and coach Rex Ryan — is that they always say stuff that all their fans know is bull. For example, that getting Tebow was a “football decision” not a business-driven PR stunt to combat the coverage of their co-tenant New York Giants who just won their second Super Bowl title in four years.

Or that Sanchez, who wasn’t told about Tebow until he was signed, is fine with finding out he will be sharing game duties with a “backup quarterback“ who has guaranteed snaps in every game. Or that Tebow, who always talks of himself as a starting quarterback, is even considered to be a good quarterback by NFL standards. Or that the Jets actually have “a vision” on how to play offense with two quarterbacks (but with only a guaranteed scheme for Tebow) when Ryan is a defensive specialist who didn’t even know that his star wide receiver took himself out of the team’s most important game last year — against the Giants.

The sports commentators politely called all this B.S. from the Jets “disingenuous.” But heck, I doubt Ryan can even spell it, much less be it. I prefer the more accurate: “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” That can be their next HBO special.

And by the way, don’t expect Johnson, Ryan or Tannenbaum to say, “I’m sorry” to fans when this Spin Age tactic implodes. Of course, Johnson, as owner, will “regret” having to let Ryan and Tannenbaum go. They, of course, will say, “You’re disappointed when things don’t work out.”

Gentlemen, you have no idea.

bob@zestoforange.com