By Bob Gaydos

Dinner with Trump? No words.

   It was a good question. An excellent question, actually: “What would you say to him if you did have dinner with him?”

     The “him” in this case would be Donald Trump. The notion of having dinner with him was the subject of a recent column I wrote regarding an email (actually several) from Trump inviting me to enter a lottery for a chance to have dinner with him. One lucky person will win! Just donate!

     Ultimately, I didn’t donate and then killed all the emails and wrote a column about what a unique experience it would be to have dinner with a former president, especially this recently indicted and convicted and still under investigation former president. But then, what would I, a mere retired journalist, possibly say to Trump, I asked jokingly, “Pass the ketchup?”

      The moderator of a Facebook site to which I belong and where I had posted the column (The Thom Hartmann Bloggers Group) approved the post and then called me on it in the comments section. “What would you say?”

       I hate when they do that. Make you get all serious about stuff. But, I thought, it’s a legit question. So I’ve given it some thought.

        Knowing what a narcissist Trump is, there’s always the basic question to ask a prominent person: Who was the biggest influence on your life?

        But I probably wouldn’t want to hear about his racist, slumlord father or his old friend and thug-of-a-lawyer Roy Cohn. Not dinner talk.

        Family? “How’s Baron? When’s the last time you saw him? Does he play any sports? How do you feel about Ivanka losing interest in politics? Wasn’t that something how the woman in the changing room at Bergdorf Goodman looked so much like your second wife, Marla, in that photograph?”

       Scratch family.

       Sports? “How come that hotshot football player, Herschel Walker, whom you signed to play for the New Jersey Generals in the doomed-to-fail USFL when they wouldn’t let you have a team in the NFL, lost, despite your support, when he ran for the Senate in Georgia?”

    No.

    I finally decided the only question I really wanted to ask Trump was, “What did Putin say when it was just the two of you in that room together with no one taking notes and you came out looking like someone who had just been blackmailed over incriminating photos and he was smiling like he had just swallowed the canary?”

     I also figured he’d never answer.

     Umm, “How do you live with yourself?”

     He wouldn’t understand.

     Ultimately, I decided there could be no dinner talk with Donald Trump because from what I’ve seen, he doesn’t have conversations. He talks at you. He makes pronouncements. He tosses out gratuitous insults. He comments on how much he knows about so many things. He makes stuff up. He doesn’t understand a lot of stuff. He has no sense of humor. For some reason, he likes to show off old maps he found lying around the White House. If you’re an attractive, young female, he’ll put his hand on your thigh and slide it as far as possible because he can because, as he’s said, he’s a celebrity.

     And then there’s this: He has, by extension, called me, an ink-stained wretch of a newspaperman, “the enemy of the people.”

      “Pass the ketchup,” it is.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos 

Umberto’s Clam House, where Joey Gallo met his demise.

    It had all the subtlety of a mob hit.

     The Don: “So what’s the story with this Soleimani? Why’s he still around acting like a big shot, messing around in our territory? He should show some respect.”

     Old Soldier: “Well, Don, when you tore up that treaty with his boss, this guy started acting like that territory was all fair game for him. I mean, he was always a pain in the ass, causing trouble everywhere.”

      Don: “How come nobody set him straight?”

      Old Soldier: “It ain’t that simple. His boss let’s him take care of business how he sees fit and his guys are really loyal. They’ve also been through lots of family wars and, to tell you the truth, I think they like hitting the mattresses and blowing people up. The Don before you felt it was more important to make the family stronger, expand its influence and not lose any more young soldiers. He kept an eye on Soleimani and warned his boss not to get too greedy. But this guy’s ambitious and a little reckless, y’know? Difficult. Kinda like Joey Gallo was.”

      Don: “Yeah. Was.”

      Old Soldier: “Whaddya mean?”

     Don: “I hear this guy likes to hang out at Amani’s Falafel House in Baghdad.”

      Old Soldier: “Yeah. Kinda on the QT, though.”

      Don: “Maybe we should surprise him.”

      Old Soldier: Nods.

      Don: “I hear you got a new house painter.”

      Old Soldier: “Yeah. Irishman, name of Droghn.”

     Don: “Ask him if he likes falafel pita. Tell him it’s my favorite. It ain’t, but he don’t have to know.”

      Old Soldier: “You sure, boss?”

     Don: “Yeah. The old Don was too soft. He let people walk all over him. The Korean boss, the Chinese. The only ones he ever gave grief was the Russians and they’re our best allies. We have to let our people know that nobody pushes Don around. They’ll go to the mattresses gladly for me. I’ll be at the golf club if you need me.”

                                              * *.*

       In the world of Donald Trump, repercussions don’t matter if they don’t impact on you directly. Foreign policy (Iran) is like domestic policy (health care) or campaigning — a matter of the moment. Instinct. Ego. It’s all personal. Learned at the elbow of Roy Cohn. Hit ‘em hard. Show them you’re tough. Be nasty. It’s just business. Ignore the doubters. Don’t listen to the “worriers.” Be a warrior. Yeah, others may suffer, but you’ll look strong. That’s the main thing. You pulled the trigger when the other Dons were too scared. You showed them who’s boss.          

      Just like in the movies.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump and mentor Roy Cohn.

“Slime ball.”

That’s how the man with all the ‘‘best words,” the man who “know(s) words” replied when a man he had once fired called him a liar and compared him to a mob boss.

The man who had been fired, James Comey, also happened to be the former director of the FBI and also happens to have written a book in which he says the man who fired him was overly concerned with proving that he had never been involved in a situation that included Russian prostitutes and people urinating on each other. “Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?” Can you imagine me in such a situation? the former FBI director says his former boss asked him in the Oval Office.

This is where Donald Trump has taken the office of president of the United States. And, just to get it out of the way, yes, I can imagine Trump in such a situation. That’s the problem, America.

Think about it. If it didn’t happen, then there’s no way for someone to prove it did. And in this country, prosecutors — even special prosecutors — have to prove you did something wrong, rather than you proving you didn’t. It’s called the presumption of innocence, a commodity this administration has flushed down the toilet, along with any semblance of dignity.

There is no shame in the White House. We are reminded of this daily, with lies, big and small. Payoffs to cover up extra-marital affairs. Blatant racism, nepotism and corruption. An aversion to the rule of law and an ignorance of the Constitution. An aura of pettiness, shallowness and vindictiveness. Utter disdain for the poor or disadvantaged. And smiling all the time.

So, too, with the Republican Party as it bows at the feet of Trump, a Russian puppet now clearly its leader. There is no shame. No sense of decency. “At long last,” I find myself asking rhetorically of the Republican Party, “have you no sense of decency?

Well … history offers an answer.

Those words were first uttered in 1954 by Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer hired by the Army — the U.S. Army — to defends itself from charges by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, of lax security at a secret Army facility. McCarthy had used his position as chairman of the  Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to intensify his ongoing crusade to weed out what he claimed were hundreds of Communists working in the State Department and other federal agencies as well as in private industry, notably entertainment and the arts. During an endless round of hearings brutally conducted by McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn (remember that name), witnesses were accused, insulted and relentlessly grilled. “Red-baiting.”

Finally, during the three-month-long, televised Army-McCarthy hearings, the senator charged that one of Welch’s young lawyers, who was not working on the case, at one time had ties to a Communist organization. He pressed the issue. Welch had had enough. “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” he said. As McCarthy tried to continue, Welch interrupted:  “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

McCarthy, finally, was done. Someone had called him a bum to his face. He was eventually censured by the Senate and scorned by his own party. But careers were destroyed, lives ruined, families and friendships broken because of an unfettered campaign of reckless accusation and fear-mongering conducted by a publicity-hungry politician being advised by a ruthless lawyer, Roy Cohn, for whom nothing — facts, lives, careers … decency — mattered.

Roy Cohn, it turns out, was a younger Donald Trump’s lawyer, confidante and social secretary for many years in New York City. “If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent, you get Roy,” Trump once said.

The student learned from his mentor. Trump testified as a character witness at Cohn’s disbarment hearing in the ‘80s (they got him), but eventually dropped him as his lawyer on discovering Cohn was dying of AIDS. People are dispensable.

More history. In 1972, Sen. Edmund Muskie, one of the most-decent people to ever run for president, had the misfortune to weep during a speech in snowy New Hampshire in which he was defending himself and his wife from accusations from William Loeb, conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. An editorial accused Muskie, a Democrat, of using an ethnic slur against French-Americans, a large voting bloc in the state. The charge was based on a letter from a Florida man that was later shown to be a hoax planted by the dirty tricks division of the Nixon White House, another time when Republican shame took a holiday. Loeb also made a not-so-subtle suggestion that Muskie’s wife enjoyed drinking too much.

In defending her, Muskie spoke during a snowstorm, calling Loeb a “gutless coward.” But the senator’s voice broke and tears appeared to roll down his face. His aides later said it was snow because, apparently, decency in a presidential candidate was unacceptable. Voters agreed. Muskie eventually dropped out.

One more lesson on Republicans and shamelessness from history: Swiftboating.

The phrase was born during John Kerry’s run for the presidency in 2004. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania was subjected to a relentless campaign in TV ads and even a book questioning his claimed military service and the circumstances of his combat medals.

A Navy veteran, he was commander of a swift boat, used to patrol the waters in Vietnam. A group calling itself Swift Vets and POWS for Truth attacked Kerry’s record as false and his medals as undeserved. The well-funded campaign dealt a serious blow to his campaign, leading to the re-election of George W. Bush. The Swift Vets claims were eventually determined to be unfounded, with virtually none of the veterans in the group having served on a boat that Kerry commanded.

“Red-baiting,” “dirty tricks, “swiftboating.” The terms live on today as examples of lying in politics and shameless disregard for the impact on people’s lives. All by Republicans in the pursuit or defense of power. It wasn’t always so with the party, but now it is. Trump, the proud ignoramus, gets a free ride from a shameless Republican Congress that has abandoned all pretense of decency. We’ve got ours, they smile.

Well, I for one am ashamed, America. At long last, I wish more of you were, too.

rjgaydos@gmail.com