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.)

By Bob Gaydos

Stormy’s tawdry Trump story.

   Perfect. Poetic. The dotard was hoist on his own, uh, petard.

   With all the many sins and crimes alleged about Donald Trump, ranging from attempting to steal an election, stealing classified documents, actually stealing an election, obstruction of justice, attempted extortion of a foreign leader, inciting a riot and attempting a coup, the one that finally gets him fingerprinted involves paying a porn star hush money so she wouldn’t spill the beans about his having sex with her just four months after his third wife, Melania, had given birth to their son, Barron, and seeing the porn star several more times.

    That one. The tawdry one. The basic, dumb Donald Trump one.

   Perfect.

   Don’t get me wrong, the other stuff is serious. But Trump appears to be constitutionally oblivious to the magnitude of those other crimes. He has displayed no concept of loyalty, patriotism, honor, duty or responsibility, except as others apply those moral concepts towards him. Honesty is a foreign concept.

    But getting arrested because a porn star tried to shake him down and he had his lawyer pay her off to keep her mouth shut so he could steal an election and get to live in the White House? That’s a made-for-TV movie. That, Trump gets. It’s his entire life in a mini-series. Sex. Betrayal. Borrowed money. Lies. It suits him like a tabloid headline.

   Even the, umm, adult film star, Stormy Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford), recognizes the difference between her case and the handful of other investigations involving Trump.

    “It’s vindication,” she said in a recent interview. “But it’s bittersweet. He’s done so much worse that he should have been taken down [for] before.”

     The vindication she claims may refer to her allegation that Trump promised to get her a spot on his hit TV show, “The Apprentice,” because she was “amazing,” and, in true Trump fashion, never delivered. 

      Also to the fact that Trump’s buddy, David Pecker, publisher of The National Enquirer, paid her for her story on Trump and then killed it as a favor to Trump. And that Trump also denies the affair.

     The squashed story and the payoff to Daniels by then Trump lawyer Michael Cohen were intended to keep the story from hurting Trump’s campaign for president in 2016, and are the basis for the case against Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. A campaign finance violation.

   Cohen served a term in the Federal Correctional Facility in Otisville after pleading guilty for his part in the payoff. He’s a key witness against Trump in this case.

    The other grand jury investigations into more serious allegations against Trump, ironically, seem to have more direct lines to proving his guilt than Bragg’s, which is considered to be a difficult case to prove in court.

    But Bragg’s is the first and that makes it important as well as historic. It may well motivate other prosecutors who now don’t need to worry about being the first to bring charges against a former president.

    And it may help Americans pitted against each other get used to seeing the man who promoted and profited from the rift for what he has always been: A cheating, lying, self-serving, hypocrite who always looks for someone else to pay for his crimes.

      Daniels, who could be considered an expert witness, says that at their first sexual encounter in his hotel room in Nevada, she felt compelled to say to Trump, “Please, don’t offer to pay me.”

      She knew tawdry when she saw it.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos

Women marched across the nation this month.

I’m big on connecting the dots. A plus B plus C … sometimes it adds up to D. Or in this case, W, as in Women. Here they come, politically. And long overdue.

In this case, making the connections wasn’t too difficult, unless you happen to be someone — a Republican, for example — who is genetically incapable of recognizing the gross disparities, unfairness and outright abuse that continue to confront women in America decades after an Equal Rights Amendment was proposed by Congress and failed to get the required number of states to approve it.

That’s a dot still to be connected, but there are plenty of others falling into place, suggesting a new era is about to burst the male-dominated political/economic bubble that has encased America for, well, ever.

The dots as I see them, in no particular order:

• The Harvey Weinstein sex abuse scandal that rocked Hollywood, wrecking careers of powerful men throughout the industry.
• The #metoo movement that grew out of the scandal as women in all fields, from TV to Silicon Valley to sports, found the courage to tell their stories of sexual exploitation by men in a position of power.
• Many of those men losing their jobs as a result.
• The Women’s Marches that began last year to protest the election of the misogynist-in-chief and grew this year as millions of women (and men) marched across the country to demand equality for women in the workplace, in politics, in the board room, in society.
• Oprah Winfrey delivering a stirring speech as she accepted an award at the Golden Globes Awards, leading to a social media storm urging her to run for president. (Please, no, we’ve tried the really rich person used to giving orders with no government experience thing. But please do support candidates who agree with you, O. Generously.)
• Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America and former Fox News anchor who won a multi-million-dollar sexual harassment settlement from the network, being named chair of the Miss America pageant board of directors after the male bosses were shown to be mini-Trumps. Former contestants were also added to the board, which was previously all-male.
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, urging Democratic Sen. Al Franken to resign over sexual groping charges, saying Bill Clinton should have stepped down as president because of his sex scandals and urging Donald Trump to resign as president over sexual assault charges from a score of women.
• Trump attacking Gillibrand with sexual innuendo on Twitter and unleashing a powerful backlash.
• The doctor for the U.S. Olympics gymnastic team being sentenced, in effect, to the rest of his life in prison for abusing dozens of female athletes under his medical care for years. The athletes were given all the time they wanted in court by the female judge to tell their stories before the sentencing.
• Women of color turning out en masse at the polls in Alabama to defeat a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate who, as a district attorney stalked teen-aged girls at malls. The candidate, Roy Moore, had the support of Trump and the Republican Party. The Democrat won.
• A record number of women, mostly Democrats, running for political office this year at the local, state and national levels.
• Time Magazine choosing “The SILENCE BREAKERS,” the women who came forward with their stories of sexual harassment and assault, launching the #metoo movement, as “Persons of the Year.”
• Hillary Clinton running for president, getting nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, and losing anyway because (1) the Russians interfered with the campaign, (2) Republicans didn’t care and still don’t and (3) she apparently rubbed a lot of women the wrong way.
• Gillibrand, Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii joining Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Connecticut as leading voices in the Democratic Party and speaking eloquently about economic equality, health care, gun violence, family leave, veterans, the homeless, abortion, immigration, jobs, the drug crisis — all for the most part ignored by Republicans.
• Steve Wynn, financial chairman of the Republican National Committee, being forced to resign his position over numerous charges of sexual harassment and abuse of women over the years. The wealthy casino magnate is a major financial supporter of Trump and other Republicans.
• Congress rewriting the rules (such as they were) for dealing with members accused of sexual harassment. Secret non-disclosure agreements are probably not going to be the norm anymore.
• Female registered voters outnumbering male registered voters in the United States. They are also more likely to vote than men.

These are the dots. There are plenty more, but you get the idea. This is not simply a revolution about sexual predation — or an attitude of male sexual privilege, if you will. As I see it, it is an awakening, a moment of clarity, a realization that what was does not have to continue to be. Cannot be, in fact. Republicans are mostly clueless to the moment. Democrats ignore it to their continued ineffectuality at the polls.

You want another dot to connect? How about First Lady Melania Trump canceling out at the last moment on the trip to Davos with Donald? No standing stoically by her man. Someone said she sent him a private tweet: Dear POTUS, not going to Davos. Why don’t you see if Stormy Daniels is free for the weekend? Well, not free, but, you know, affordable.

Connect the dots.

rjgaydos@gmail.com