By Bob Gaydos

The defiling of The Kennedy Center.

    He slapped his stupid name on The Kennedy Center. The *@*%+#*ing Kennedy Center! Are you kidding me? The master of sloth, pride and lust had to remind us of his penchant for envy?

    Of course it’s illegal, but honestly, it’s obscene. The John F. Kennedy Center is not only a cultural landmark in Washington, D.C., it is a memorial to a slain president. Yet Trump slapped his name above Kennedy’s on the memorial to Kennedy, a president loved, admired and respected by millions of Americans, a true patron of the arts. And a war hero to boot.

   The new, handpicked-by-Trump board of directors supposedly voted unanimously to change the name of the center, apparently to reflect the tackiness and total lack of class he has brought to the institution. Having also named himself chairman of the board, he has transformed it from first-class to no class with the ease and skill of a onetime reality TV show host. 

    No, he’s no Jack Kennedy. Mr. Bone Spurs undoubtedly never saw the movie or read “PT 109,” a book about Kennedy’s military service in World War II. In fact, a lot of Americans today probably aren’t familiar with the story, so here’s Google AI’s summary:

    “PT-109 was an 80-foot Elco motor patrol torpedo boat famously commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy (the future 35th U.S. President) during World War II. The vessel is best known for its sinking in the Solomon Islands on August 2, 1943, after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer.

• The Collision: While patrolling Blackett Strait at night, the radar-less PT-109 was struck and sliced in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, which was traveling at high speed.
• Initial Loss: Two crewmen, Harold Marney and Andrew Jackson Kirksey, were killed instantly in the collision and explosion.
• Heroic Swim: Kennedy and the 10 remaining survivors clung to the floating bow for hours before swimming 3.5 miles to a small, uninhabited island (Plum Pudding Island). Kennedy famously towed a badly burned crewman, Patrick McMahon, by a life jacket strap clenched in his teeth.
• The Rescue: The crew survived for several days on various islets by eating coconuts. They were eventually discovered by two Solomon Islander scouts, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who were working with an Australian coastwatcher.
• The Coconut Message: Kennedy carved a distress message into a coconut shell, which the scouts delivered to the coastwatcher, leading to the crew’s rescue by other PT boats on August 8, 1943.”

— A life jacket strap clenched in his teeth.

— Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

— Purple Heart

— Pulitzer Prize for book, “Profiles in Courage”

— Youngest person elected president, at 43

As president:

— The goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him.

— The Peace Corps

— The Cuban Missile Crisis

— “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

   In his 1961 inaugural address, Kennedy, a cum laude graduate of Harvard University, famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” 

The law creating the memorial, signed by Lyndon Johnson.

   Trump, whose words mostly serve as fodder for comedians, has been bleeding this country for every dollar he can get ever since he set foot in the Oval Office, both times. Putting his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is not only obscene and illegal, it is an affront to the office of president, an insult to Kennedy and his family and a sorrowful reminder to Americans (like me), who lived through the Kennedy years and in 1963 mourned his assassination, of the pitiful depths to which Trump has dragged this nation.

     When this chapter in our history is done (the sooner the better), Trump’s name must be ripped off the facade of the defiled memorial/culture center and that garish, golden ballroom, if it ever gets built, torn down. Day One.

     If you’re around, that’s what you can do for your country. 

By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump
… shooting off his mouth again

It was The Week of the Do-Overs: Actually, for Donald Trump and Republicans, it has been nothing but one do-over after another as the disintegration of their party continues in the guise of a presidential campaign.

Most recently, the man “who tells it like it is” and “says what he means” has been going around saying that President Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton were the founders of ISIS. That is so absurd on the face of it that only a rabid Trump supporter would believe it. But Trump said it often enough that his spokespersons (the most hapless lot of sycophants in history I have to believe) defended it all over TV. Then Trump did what he always does — a do-over. I didn’t mean it, he said. It was “sarcasm,” he said. His lackies moved on.

Trump also said that if Clinton won the presidency there would be no way to stop her from appointing Supreme Court judges who would not be amenable to conservative points of view. Then he added that maybe the “Second Amendment people” might be able to do something about it. When even Republicans said this was a possibly treasonous call for assassination of his opponent, Trump eventually said, well, he meant that politically they might do it. A do-over.

But there are no do-overs when you suggest that killing your opponent would be an acceptable political act. Not in this country where innocent people are murdered for no reason by deranged men with guns every day and the NRA buys congressional support to defeat any reasonable efforts at gun control. Not when all it takes is for one of those unstable Trump followers to get a gun and follow his leader’s suggestion. Some of them don’t even know what sarcasm is.

Trump is a threat, an insult, a slur, a lie, a boast, an absurdity waiting to happen anytime he speaks. Life to him is one, big do-over. He doesn’t tell it like it is; most of the time he doesn’t know what it’s like. He makes it up. Then, because he’s Trump, he expects to be able to say, “That’s not what I meant” or “the media misinterpreted it” and have everything be OK. He never even suggests an apology for any possible harm his words might cause.

For example, he recently said he “always wanted to get a Purple Heart,” one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard. Trump said it in the midst of insulting a father whose son earned the medal in losing his life in combat saving many of his fellow soldiers in Iraq. Because the man is a Muslim and used the platform of the Democratic Convention to attack Trump’s targeting of Muslims, Trump belittled the man by suggesting he was possibly an ISIS agent. Then, Trump showed how small he is himself (not just his hands) by saying he “always wanted” a Purple Heart and being given one by a veteran was “easier.” Ha ha. Joke.

Thousands of men and women who earned Purple Hearts by being wounded in combat were not amused. They would take no do-overs on this slur. If Trump wants to learn more about these wounded veterans, he can visit the Purple Heart Museum in New WIndsor, N.Y.. It’s not far from where he did his only “military duty” at the New York Military Academy.

But really, this is all the same, week after week. He knows Putin; he doesn’t know Putin. He’s not so sure about supporting NATO allies. What’s a Crimea? What’s the big deal about using nukes? Trump doesn’t tell it like it is. Rather, to use the overworn phrase, he is what he is. A phony, in so far over his head that he is trying desperately to find a way out. The debates are supposedly rigged, he says, so maybe he won’t take on Clinton. The elections are also rigged, he says, so he can’t possibly win.

The ones who really want a do-over are Republican “leaders” who allowed this racist bully to claim their prized possession — candidate for president of the United States. A man with no morals, no compassion, no intellect, no regard for anyone but himself. A man who mocks people with disabilities. A man who says he wanted to punch all those Democrats saying nasty things about him. This, to him, is reasonable discourse for someone wanting to be president of the United States. For shame.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is supposedly OK with Trump avoiding the debates and is his chief apologist. Well, Priebus, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan can go on denouncing Trump’s statements and supporting his candidacy at the same time, but it only makes them look like spineless fools. The know-nothings to whom Trump appeals will stick with them. That’s not enough to save the party of Lincoln. Their day of reckoning is looming.

It seems to me that any Republican with a shred of decency and self-respect, not to mention common sense, should have abandoned Trump and the GOP apologists by now. Any Republican male with a wife or daughters, or both, should have written him off months ago for his comments about women. Any veteran, any Hispanic, any Muslim, any black, any gay, any parent, any woman, any man who respects this country and has hopes for its future needs to look in the mirror and ask, “How can I live with myself if I vote for Donald Trump?”

Evangelicals will have to reckon with their maker.

Some mistakes have no do-overs.

rjgaydos@gmail.com