By Bob Gaydos

“I don’t know.“

No, that wasn’t a multiple choice question that Donald Trump had just been asked by an ABC News reporter. He was asked if he thought it was his duty as president to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

Pretty simple and straightforward, most Americans would think. Instead of giving us choice A (yes) or B (no), Trump gave us C (I don’t know).

He expanded: “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are obviously going to follow what the Supreme Court said.”

Despite his sworn oath, it has become Trump’s standard answer to questions about following the law upholding the Constitution. Blame it on his lawyers. The only ones left who are going to represent him in court. They know the answer. They’re just not saying. Not if they want to keep their jobs. A Justice Department lawyer who goes into court and admits there is no constitutional basis for the argument he or she is making is volunteering for a pink slip.

But then, one can say they should’ve known better when they took the job to represent Trump in the first place. It’s not as if there’s no track record to check.

But honestly, “I don’t know” seems to be the mantra for Trump with regard to just about anything that comes up. He just doesn’t always say it out loud.

Like, I shouldn’t be so friendly with a Saudi prince who had a journalist who worked for an American newspaper killed and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Turkey because he didn’t like what the reporter wrote. Who knew? Or, I shouldn’t speak highly of an “attractive” Syrian president who once delighted in killing American soldiers in Iraq as part of Al Qaeda. Or, I shouldn’t take $400 million gift airplanes from a Mideastern country that supports terrorists. Or, actually, I shouldn’t take gifts from anyone. Emoluments, y’know? Beautiful word.

Stuff like that. Someone should tell him if he really doesn’t know because it’s infuriating and, frankly, embarrassing to have someone holding the office of president to be so, umm, ill-informed.

On the other hand, there’s such a thing as knowing too much. Or rather, thinking you do.

Take the case of Bobby Junior, better known as RFK Jr., who is now in charge of the health needs, issues and concerns of every American, allegedly.

Kennedy clatters around the Health Department like a know-it-all who once had a worm in his brain. Like a guy who might pick up a dead bear cub off the road, stick it in his car trunk, drive to Central Park and dump it on a walking path. For kicks. That kind of health savant.

Kennedy “knows” that vaccines cause autism and has chosen to ignore the research that dismissed that theory. He wants a new study to figure out why there are so many new cases, aside from the fact that we know so much more about identifying the behavioral disorder today. Gotta be vaccines.

He also “knows” that vaccines do not protect against measles, even though the MMR vaccine has done an excellent job of that for decades. So he’s cut off a lot of congressionally approved spending for vaccines and is promoting  more “natural” protections. Meanwhile, measles cases are multiplying nationwide because some people are following his advice not to use the vaccine. Because he “knows,” right?

Oh, and the man who  took his grandchildren for a Mother’s Day dip in a D.C. watering hole condemned because of the presence of a whole lot of bacteria, including E. coli, now wants to eliminate fluoride in water supplies so that kids and adults can once again get lots of cavities.

I have a local rooting interest in this one. The study that established fluoride as a safe cavity preventive when used in tiny amounts was conducted in 1945 in Newburgh and Kingston, two Hudson River cities in New York. My stomping grounds.

Newburgh got the fluoride. Kids got fewer cavities and their parents got lower dental bills. Kingston was the control group. No fluoride. Kids there got the usual amount of cavities. Since that groundbreaking study 80 years ago, thousands of communities around the country, including New York City, have added EPA-prescribed small doses of fluoride to their water supply to help residents avoid dental problems. It’s worked.

But Kennedy, also a one-time Hudson River denizen, is a longtime opponent of fluoride. He says it is a dangerous chemical with potentially harmful effects (which no one denies, but in much higher doses) and shouldn’t be added to drinking water.

How does he know? Well, he doesn’t, really, but he’s ordered the CDC to stop recommending fluoride as a dental decay preventive and to conduct new studies on the subject. Because, what does science know?

By the way, Utah was the first state to follow Junior’s advice and ban fluoride in its drinking water, under a decree by Gov. Spencer Cox, who happens to be a Mormon. Cause and effect has not yet been determined.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump as pope. SeriouslyPart of my morning routine, after tea and a friendly word game to get the brain cells active, is to scroll through my Facebook feed to get a handle on the news of the day.

Yeah, I check The Times, AP, etc. but for in-your-face-they-must-be-kidding stuff, Facebook gets it to me quicker and without the cautious prose of today’s major media. If You Know Who did something dumb, illegal or outright insane, I’ll know in a couple of minutes and from trusted sources.

Saturday was no exception. The hands down winner of the  “They-must-be-kidding, but-I-know-they’re-not” Award goes to the social media posting from the White House no less of Trump sitting on a throne dressed as the pope, crown and all. Seriously.

Disgusting. Crude. Callous. Ignorant. Egotistical. Obscene. Incredibly stupid. One hundred percent Trump. On the day Pope Francis was being laid to rest. After Trump having previously fallen asleep at the funeral service. An insult to every Catholic on the planet and a message to all Americans. Trump wants to be pope. Seriously.

The rest of the feed included what had to be the most obsequious cabinet meeting in history, as each member of the Trump team, seated around him with their red Maga hats on the table facing him, competed with each other to offer the most ingratiating, devoid of facts compliments to their leader, who was sitting self-satisfied in the middle. Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio duked it out for the coveted comfy knee cushion award. No one, apparently, was embarrassed, except for millions of Americans who saw this cult video and at first mistook it for a Monty Python movie.

There was also a post about, of course, Pete Hegseth installing a dressing room next to his office in the Pentagon, presumably so his eyeliner could be on straight when he has unprotected group chats on his phone with family and friends about U.S. military attacks in the Middle East. No Republican in Congress expressed any displeasure with the defense secretary spending taxpayer dollars in this manner. Because of course.

Then there was an item about RFK Junior, secretary of health, asking the Centers for Disease Control to look for some alternative treatments for measles because Kennedy believes the vaccine that has prevented the disease for  decades contains “aborted fetus debris” as well as “DNA particles” and doesn’t work. This, as the measles outbreak in the country reaches 900 cases as he bad mouths the vaccine. And, the man who says he once had a dead worm in his brain, also still insists that vaccines are causing autism and wants to conduct new testing on this theory even though it has been done and disproven.

Finally, one unrelated item on my feed informed me that May is mental health month.

Sign me up.

By Bob Gaydos

Fighting measles, the RFK Jr. way.
RJPhotography

   I got sidetracked from following the all-Trump-all-the-time news cycle recently because I was doing less exciting things like filling the bird feeders, cleaning the fish tank, walking the dogs, picking up a book, so I had to do a real quick catching up on the big stuff.

   For starters, I’m proud to report that, as per advice from our new Health Secretary, Bobby Worm Brain Kennedy Jr., I have been taking my cod liver oil capsule daily so that I do not catch measles … again. If that’s possible. Had it when I was a kid.

  I understand a lot of children in Texas have recently contracted the disease for some reason and that one child has died. That’s surprising in this day and age. Reports said the children’s parents, as with most of the others affected,  agreed with the new health czar’s philosophy of not vaccinating their children, but maybe they forgot about the cod liver oil. Sad.

   I also learned that Trump, after taking back his threat to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China and I can’t remember who else when those countries said they’d do the same, then reinstated the threat only to change his mind again when The Wall Street Journal said it was a stupid idea and the Stock Market tanked. I think that’s what happened. 

   You know, if I had a suspicious mind, I might suspect the felon was manipulating the market for those in the know — like friendly billionaires — who could buy lots of shares when his tariff threat drove prices down, then sell them when his, um, surprise change of mind, sent the ever-reactive market up again. But that wouldn’t be legal, would it? Guess we’ll have to stay tuned on this one.

      I also read that all is not so lovey-dovey in MAGA world regarding some things Trump’s prime minister, Elon Musk, has done. The Supreme Court, of all things, acted as the, well, supreme, decider and said Musk/Trump could not just cancel payment of funds approved by Congress and owed under contracts for USAID programs. That’s the country’s soft foreign aid program, helping countless people around the globe.

     A federal judge had already ruled that the funds could not be canceled and Trump appealed to his presumed buddies in robes so he could stiff the contractors, per usual, and got a surprise when Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices in agreeing with the judge in Rhode Island.

    The 5-4 ruling included instructions for the judge to figure out who should get paid, when, etc. I understand that this ruling may have had something to do with Trump snubbing Barrett at his State of the Union ramble. But that would be really petty, no?

    That USAID flap apparently also came up at a Cabinet meeting (and wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall for that), when Marco Rubio, the actual Secretary of State, complained that Musk, was firing people at State who did actual work and that it was supposed to be Rubio’s job to decide. A couple of other Cabinet members also apparently had their Wheaties that day and said the same thing and Trump apparently said play nice, children. According to reports leaked to The New York Times, Trump actually said that Musk, who still has no actual federal job and reportedly wore a suit to the meeting, wouldn’t fire anybody anymore and that Rubio, Kennedy et al could run their departments.

  There’s also apparently no truth to the rumor that Kennedy blamed Musk’s autism spectrum disorder and his sometimes out-of-sync social behavior on a vaccine. Yet.

      There, I think that catches me up as much as I really want to right now.