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

Kevin McCarthy (right) asks Matt Gaetz what else he can give him to get his vote after the 14th ballot late Thursday night. He never got it.

If only Kevin McCarthy were smart enough to understand irony.

If only Kevin McCarthy had a backbone.

If only Mitch McConnell had one, too.

If only there were still a mainstream, conservative Republican establishment.

If only Republicans understood the real meaning of these words from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Then, Americans would have been spared the worldwide embarrassment of the “people’s house” of Congress being unable to execute the basic task of choosing a leader after four days and 14 votes, even though one party, the Republicans, held a slim, but clear, majority.

The brass ring was eventually awarded to McCarthy shortly after midnight Saturday, January 7, on the 15th vote, when one more member of the wack job fringe of the House GOP agreed to vote for him and others agreed to vote “present,” lowering the number of votes needed for a majority. That agreement followed some tense discussions and avoided a vote to adjourn and a weekend of embarrassing stories about the shameless McCarthy and the rudderless GOP.

Politics often requires a bit of arm-twisting to gain a desired goal when there are differences of opinion. Usually, the leader does the arm-twisting and others make concessions. McCarthy turned this tradition on its head, making countless concessions as the likes of Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert kept twisting McCarthy’s arms while still refusing to vote for him. This does not bode well for a successful two years of McCarthy leadership in the House.

But here’s the thing, while McCarthy’s utter humiliation has come at the hands of a small group of Republicans who have no agenda other than to gain power so as to disrupt normal government routine and prevent all men and women from enjoying those self-evident rights Thomas Jefferson wrote about, the Californian has no one to blame but himself.

Here’s where the irony comes in. The fringe, the so-called Freedom Caucus, refuses to recognize McCarthy as its leader because of the one moment of rational thinking he displayed during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He actually called then-President Donald Trump and urged him to  do something to quell the riot.

McCarthy later said on the House floor: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump.”

McCarthy also said, “Some say the riots were caused by antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that, Conservatives should be the first to say so. …  Let’s be clear, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States in one week because he won the election.”

For one shining moment, McCarthy, as minority leader of the House of Representatives, spoke the truth. He couldn’t handle it. The rank-and-file Trumpers dominating the Republican Party weren’t buying it. They bought the Big Lie. A couple of weeks later, McCarthy was in Mar-a-Lago, kissing Trump’s ring and anything else to get back in his good graces and retain the support of his troops. Most, fearing Trump’s wrath and loss of his support, followed McCarthy. (Mitch McConnell followed the same playbook in the Senate.)

Not the Freedom Caucus. They remembered when McCarthy spoke the truth about Trump, the election, the insurrection and taking responsibility. When it came time to choose a leader, they chose to embarrass McCarthy and twist him for all they could get. He eventually celebrated his election as speaker, a leader held hostage to the whims of those who have no interest in governing. Truth has no purchase in today’s Republican Party. The rabble rule and “leaders” seek their approval out of sheer ego and cowardice.

Not all is lost, thankfully. While McCarthy was being humiliated in The Capitol on the second anniversary of the Insurrection, a more compelling drama was playing out in The White House. President Biden, in an often moving ceremony, awarded Presidential Citizens Medals to Capitol police officers and others who defended democracy on that day and to state election officials who withstood intense pressure and threats of violence from Trump supporters to ratify the results of the 2020 election. The best of America was on display. Courage, honor, respect, empathy, honesty and, yes, patriotism.

If only some of that were evident in today’s Republican Party.

By Bob Gaydos

Paula White … spiritual advisor

 It’s unraveling. Well, to be accurate, the Trump “presidency” has never been wrapped too tightly and he has always been loosey-goosey about such things as the Constitution, the law and the truth, but now the frayed strands of denial are becoming harder for even an occasional Republican to ignore.

     The change struck me recently when Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting Mr. Everything and currently acting chief of staff, said at a well-attended and well-recorded press conference that, of course, there was a quid pro quo proposal made by Trump to the president of Ukraine — a proposal that is now the focus of impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives. In fact, Mulvaney went on to say the White House did it all the time with foreign leaders.

      “Get over it!” he exclaimed defiantly, exhibiting the arrogance of the ignorant that surely will cost him his job. It’s one thing for the boss to indict himself with his own words, as Trump has frequently done, but “yes men” are wise to be stingy with their own words when defending the indefensible. Mulvaney has never been that type.

       When Republicans as well as  Democrats expressed shock at this bold admission of executive extortion masquerading as diplomacy — you’ll get U.S. financial aid if you try to dig up dirt on the Bidens -– Mulvaney was quickly dispatched to deny he said what the assembled media had recorded him saying. This trick — insisting you didn’t hear what you heard — only works for Trump because he’s assembled enough sycophants around him and throughout the government (hello, Lindsay Graham) that it’s taken this long for Democrats in Congress to begin a serious effort to remove him. 

    But it won’t work for Mulvaney, because, first of all, everyone knows he’s a stooge and, more to the point, like virtually everyone in Trump’s protective cocoon, he’s expendable. There’s always a Matt Gaetz auditioning to be the emperor’s next mascot.

     Gaetz made his play for Mulvaney’s job by leading a platoon of House Republicans on a mission to storm closed hearings in the pre-impeachment process. This was not only a stupid high school stunt that should have embarrassed all who took part, it was also a serious breach of security and violation of House rules. The stormers said Democrats were holding secret depositions, even though there were Republican committee members in the room and a dozen of the stormers themselves were entitled to be in there. But that would mean doing their jobs rather than staging a phony protest to try to delegitimize the process. Pure desperation.

        When it turned out Gaetz was acting with Trump’s blessing, the unraveling was even more obvious. Since then, there’s been nothing but name-calling by Trump (veteran government employees who testify are “traitors” or “scum”), refusal by White House staff to honor congressional subpoenas and demands that the whistleblower’s name be revealed. 

      That last is the nastiest, an indication of where Trump and his shameless acolytes (add Rand Paul to the list) have descended. Of course, there are laws to protect the identity of whistleblowers so that they feel safe enough to come forward with their concerns of government wrongdoing without fear of retribution. But Trump operates out of fear all the time. When he’s scared, he turns scarier and there’s not much scarier than the person occupying the most powerful position on the planet telling his supporters  — some of whom have displayed violent tendencies — that the whistleblower and those corroborating his or her story are traitors leading a coup to topple their leader.

        In addition to being an act of desperation, this can also be considered an impeachable offense — attempting to intimidate witnesses or obstruction of justice. But at this point, Trump doesn’t care. He’s also gone so far as to tell Republican senators who are up for re-election that he’ll support them only if they promise not to vote to convict him when the impeachment trial inevitably moves to the Senate. Bribing witnesses they call it. 

         Of course, in the ever-chaotic world that is Trump in charge, there was also the abandonment of the Kurds in Syria, pulling out U.S. troops without consulting his generals, insisting later that our troops were staying to protect Syrian oil (which is virtually non-existent), turning the killing of the Isis leader into another self-aggrandizing moment and thanking Russia and Syria for their help before mentioning U.S. troops who did the job, getting booed at a World Series game in Washington, D.C. (his staff had to know this would happen or they have become as delusional as he), and threatening to cut off federal aid to California, which is fighting devastating forest fires, because he doesn’t like the Democratic governor and the state voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

         This last bit of Trumpian unraveling put Californian Kevin McCarthy, House minority leader and the top Republican in that body in the delicate position of having to defend a man who was willing to let McCarthy’s home state be consumed by flames because the man was consumed by pride, anger and fear.

     But McCarthy, a true Trump trooper, grasping at strands, kept silent. After all, he would need Trump’s support from those California Republicans who fear what would happen if he were removed.

     In what would be considered the last strand for anyone else, Trump also announced that prosperity evangelist Paula White, described by some as his longtime personal pastor and by others as an opportunistic blonde con artist, had taken a position with the Office of Public Liaison as advisor to the president’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Let us all pray. Kneel if you wish. Send cash.

    When it’s all coming apart at the seams, turn to God, or in this case, someone who says you’re the next best thing.

rjgaydos@gmail.com