Op-ed: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump ignited violent opposition that could be compared to numerous uprisings in the past, including the Prague and April springs. But Trump doesn’t have a strong army to send in to shut down opposition. There are hundreds of millions of guns in the country and millions suffering from mental illness, both partly a result of the Republican Party’s support for the NRA. Also, the social media now available for organizing disruptions are vastly superior to what brought down several Arab governments. Of course people who try to break up Trump rallies are organizing, and it is very easy to do it these days. They can study other uprisings and learn techniques. Attack one rally at the start; attack the next one near the end. Stay away from one. Or just shout outside. Don’t give away your plans. Mislead. Fly false flags. Trump himself is at threat of an attack. There has already been on case when a man nearly got next to him. He was easily within distance of shooting Trump except he did not have a gun, and it is not clear he wanted to hurt the candidate. There also are millions of soldiers trained as marksmen. Dare Trump go to a theater? Is Bernie Sanders inciting his people? It doesn’t matter. They do not need to be pushed. They have been dumping on Hillary Clinton since the campaign began. Just as Trump can say he cannot stop his supporters from attacking his opponents, Sanders can say he can’t stop people from venting their frustration. This election is becoming increasingly like the 1968 race. The assassination of Robert Kennedy led to the election of Richard Nixon and the quagmire of the Vietnam War. People dissatisfied with Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey stayed home. They did not want the lesser of two evils. Some say Trump is hoping for a repeat of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
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Op-ed: The answer is yes. What remains to be seen is whether it will be partly responsible for getting him elected or simply destroying the Republican party. Media executives themselves have gone on record as say confirming they give Donald Trump special access. CBS CEO Les Moonves said, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” He said it was a “good thing.” The “good thing,” was that the network’s ad revenue was driven up by the increased viewership resulting from the controversy created by Trump's insults. The pro-Hillary Clinton site Media Matters said tv networks were letting Trump take over their news shows, letting him call in and get on at a moment’s notice. Media Matters sent a letter to CBS: “Through the course of this election, time and time again your network allows Donald Trump call in to shows. We fully recognize that sometimes phone interviews are necessary. But Trump’s reliance on phone interviews is completely unprecedented and far exceeds what any other candidate has been allowed to do. By letting Trump phone it in, you’re just enabling media manipulation and reinforcing the idea that the more he takes, the more you'll give in. It's time for that to end.” We’ve all seen this. Switch from one news channel to another and find Trump, even if he is not on the dais yet. Clinton was not shown after winning the Mississippi primary before everyone was focused on Trump. Trump’s success may seem unprecedented, but war criminal Charles Taylor outdid him. Taylor, who had fled charges in the U.S. and was trained by Muammar Gaddafi, led an invasion of his native Liberia. He brought with him a satellite phone. He would daily be interviewed by the BBC and others, warning the Monrovia government that his forces were headed their way. In many cases the government forces threw down their rifles and took off their uniforms believing Taylor was coming. Supported by money made from blood diamonds and sales of guns to rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone, Taylor captured Liberia. He won the presidency campaigning on a slogan: "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him." He began a reign of terror that only ended after several civil wars and the intervention of 2,300 U.S. Marines. After escapes and captures ultimately Taylor was convicted of bloody crimes and imprisoned in a British prison. This raises two questions. Is the media responsible for what follows its decisions to publicize controversial characters. Is regime change necessary sometimes. During the latest Democratic debate, references to Gaddafi came and went without mentioning how he had killed hundreds of Americans and others bombing planes outside of Libya. President Ronald Reagan tried to have Gaddafi assassinated but barely missed. As a long-time journalist I am disturbed by the concept that we have to show the people what we want. Often in news rooms I heard we had to report copycat killers because if we did not someone else will. My feeling was we do not have to do anything we don’t want to do. Certainly just not for ratings. We know, as was written in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday: “American working class has legitimate reasons to be angry at the ruling class. During the past half-century of economic growth, virtually none of the rewards have gone to the working class. The economists can supply caveats and refinements to that statement, but the bottom line is stark: The real family income of people in the bottom half of the income distribution hasn't increased since the late 1960s. ... During the same half-century, American corporations exported millions of manufacturing jobs (and) the federal government allowed the immigration, legal and illegal, of tens of millions of competitors for the remaining working-class jobs." Republican candidate Ted Cruz, who I rarely quote, said Trump has been deeply involved in the ripping off the working class, cooperating with people for sale in government and using bankruptcy laws to his benefit. Op Ed: If you get all your news from cable you might believe that Donald Trump has tapped into a vast reservoir of anger. And there is plenty of anger. But there are multiple possible reasons. Despite what news networks report over and over it is not just anger that people have to get by on less money, assuming they have jobs at all. Network polls don’t ask about many of the other issues driving anger. Some of the people attracted to Trump may be angry that the Supreme Court has protected abortion and gay rights. Polls show a majority support these rulings, but plenty of people are very angry. They would support reversing these decisions if their candidate got into the White House. People also are angry that local governments have to pull people over and give them tickets because tax cuts have governments with too little money to provide services expected by these same citizens. Parking tickets are eagerly issued, and cars towed. Owners sometimes have to pay $100 or $200 to retrieve them. Though it is not related to income, widely publicized killings of unarmed civilians by heavily armed police has angered some people, and not just the black community that is so often the victim. Governments at all levels caved in to pressure from the Tea Party to reduce taxes at the same time we were fighting wars and expected to provide health care for wounded veterans. Many of these veterans are still waiting. And Trump is not the only one benefiting from anger. Bernie Sanders is getting thousands of donations from people angered by what Wall Street did to America’s economy and neighborhoods. There is a widespread feeling they largely got away with it without being punished. Sanders has been able to win some support by linking Hillary Clinton to the banks. Usually being considered a socialist is enough to turn off American voters. Not this time. Sanders won a surprise victory in the Michigan primary on Tuesday, at least partly because independents chose to vote in the Democratic primary and because some Democrats were detected voting in the Republican primary, for reasons that can only be guessed. That Trump, who has ripped so many people off with his private businesses, some of which then declared bankruptcy, is ironic. Funny, journalists are often taught not to use that word. Never in my lifetime has it seemed so appropriate There is an expression in America, often used in song lyrics and movies: be careful what you wish for you may get it. For followers of the Netflix series “House of Cards” everything Trump has done has already been done by Kevin Spacey. Op Ed: I still vividly recall being harassed by fellow college seniors for volunteering to work for Bobby Kennedy. They strongly supported Eugene McCarthy because he confronted President Lyndon Johnson months before RFK. What is happening today, at least in my eyes, is similar to 1968. McCarthy’s troops, led by students, hated Bobby for waiting so long. The fact that politicians would hate him for challenging LBJ did not matter to these students. To a certain degree Hillary Clinton is in a similar fix. And so is the country. If Sanders’ cadres drop her it could elect Donald Trump. In 1968, after Bobby was killed, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hubert Humphrey. Richard Nixon was elected. No more need be said. So should Bernie back off, or even consider running as Hillary’s vice president? That is what it looks like to me. The Daily Beast suggested Sanders is not a candidate suited for minorities because he does not understand them. It’s not just about poverty. Some minorities are middle class are doing even better. But they face constant insults and in some cases, are targets for police. This raises the philosophical question an individual can only answer for herself or himself. Should I vote for the lesser of all the evils or not vote and take what happens. At least then the voter can not be blamed. Or can he/she? Then there is the question of whether citizens should abandon the ballot box or if that is a sort of treason. It is unreasonable to say this is not the same issue because we do not have 500,000 mostly drafted soldiers in Vietnam. Trump and most of the leading Republicans are ready to carpetbomb the Middle East and any other area they fear. More bombs were dropped on Laos alone than the U.S. dumped in World War 2. Though it is not being mentioned much, if at all, by the mainstream media the declining living standards may not be the only thing angering people. Some of these people willing to ignore outrageous statements by Trump may be so angry because they are upset with court decisions allowing gays to marry and continuing to allow women to have abortions and many other issues that are not being decided the way they would prefer. Op-ed: Reports are circulating that Donald Trump has told the New York Times in private not to worry about his racist, xenophobic, anti-abortion, anti-gay statements. The word is that he is just responding to what his supporters want to hear. Using his own logic then, he needs to be asked whether he might be impeached if elected when his supporters realize he used them. That could bring some unnamed vice-president to power who would do what Trump has promised to do. It is the same logic he uses every day of his campaign when he says Hillary Clinton might not be able to service because she will be indicted in her “email scandal.” She has been under investigation for an entire year with no indictment. Of course Trump has been under fire for three years for his “Trump University Scandal” and may be forced to testify about fraud allegations later this year. TV networks, meanwhile, claim Trump is the choice of a majority of Republicans, based on what has been seen in primaries and caucuses. Polling expert Nate Silver said today that “Trump has received only 34 per cent of the Republican vote, aggregated across all primaries and caucuses to have voted so far. He did not really improve on that figure on Super Tuesday; Trump had a combined 33 percent of the vote through the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada); he got 34 percent in Super Tuesday states themselves.” Do Trump supporters represent what the majority of Americans believe. Polls are constantly being used to support this view. But the same kinds of polls show that a majority of Americans support causes rejected by these people: gay and transgender rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, high minimum wages and more. Trump supporters say this is merely the view of Hollywood. In my experience art has often represented where a country is headed, both in the U.S. and in countries I covered as a journalist around the world. South Africa was a classic example. I often watched plays and heard music that I knew was going to tear apartheid down. I wondered why the government allowed it. I later felt that it wasn’t so much that they allowed, in some cases people were jailed and banned, but that they knew they couldn’t stop it. To try too hard would cause some of their best people to leave the country. They wanted more than just servants and swimming pools. It was impossible for me to watch this year’s Oscars without seeing that the people who run the art world have decided to support human rights. This is not new. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. These films, plays and music make money. That is the bottom line. Op-Ed: For a man who claims he has the world’s greatest memory of any presidential candidate, Donald Trump apparently has forgotten that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi killed 189 American passengers on a Pan Am jet. Passengers from other countries and people on the ground in Scotland also died. Trump defended Gaddafi in Thursday night’s Republican debate. He didn’t mention Gaddafi’s terrorist acts against many countries. Gaddafi’s agents also blew up a DC-10 operated by the former French airliner UTA over the Sahara Desert. The 170 killed included seven Americans. His agents also killed three people, including two American soldiers, and injured many more people, in a West Berlin discotheque. President Ronald Reagan tried unsuccessfully to kill Gaddafi. Trump also apparently forgot during the debate that Gaddafi had pitched a tent on land owned by Trump in New York, though public pressure prevented him from ever staying in it. Trump and other defenders of Gaddafi say he kept order in the region, and had stopped terrorist acts, and paid money to some victims. Trump denied during the debate that he had supported the overthrow of Gaddafi, though fact checkers confirmed he had publicly claimed a role in the regime change. BuzzFeed reported: “I can’t believe what our country is doing,” said Trump on his video blog. “Qaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all have the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is: It’s a carnage. “Trump said Libya could end up one of the worst massacres in history, and it would be very easy to topple Qaddafi. “You talk about things that have happened in history; this could be one of the worst,” he said. “Now we should go in, we should stop this guy, which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it, and save these lives. This is absolutely nuts.” One implication of Trump’s remarks was that because Gaddafi had used his oil revenue to pay more than $2 billion to some of his victims he could be forgiven. This is consistent with Trump’s attitude that deals can always be cut. It should come as no surprise. Last November Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah had predicted Trump could become America’s Gaddafi, the nation’s “first African president…” The writer of this blog covered the Sahara Desert crash of the UTA plane blow up by agents of Gaddafi. He was then a reporter for Associated Press based in West Africa. IN THE TENERE REGION OF THE SAHARA (AP) First it appeared like confetti in the endless sand. Then big chunks of fuselage shattered in the crash that killed all 171 aboard, came into view. WATCH: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - Donald Trump: America's African President Check out: Donald Trump's Pants on Fire claim he never discussed Libya intervention As he appeared to be heading towards nomination as the Republican presidential nominee, is it possible Donald Trump will be the one in jail? With all the talk about Hillary’s secret emails it is Trump who may be going to court. He may be answering questions in as many as three lawsuits about a university critics say he created to make more money. This isn’t something he can shout down with the backing of crowds and network television. Here is what Wikipedia, ever mindful of Trump’s threats of law suits, said: “On August 24, 2013, the State of New York filed a $40 million civil suit against the institution (which had largely ceased operations in May 2011), alleging illegal business practices and claiming numerous "false promises" made by The Trump Entrepreneur Initiative and its representatives.Donald Trump denied the allegations, claiming the school has a 98% approval rating and said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is "a political hack looking to get publicity."The New York Times editorial board stated that "Mr. Schneiderman’s suit offers compelling evidence of a bait-and-switch scheme." “Schneiderman accused Trump of misleading more than 5,000 people to pay up to $35,000 to learn his real estate investment techniques. “Trump has given conflicting stories. In his infomercial he said: “And honestly, if you don’t learn from them, if you don’t learn from me, if you don’t learn from the people that we’re going to be putting forward, and these are all people handpicked by me, then you’re just not going to make it in terms of world-class success.” He testified in a 2012 deposition that, contrary to the Trump University sales materials and statements he made in the infomercial to the media, he neither selected the instructors nor oversaw the curriculum. “In October 2014 a New York judge found Trump personally liable for the institution's violation of state education laws." Media reports this week said Trump would be compelled to testify in the case. Politico said no trial date has been set but Trump could be forced to appear on a primary day. He already has had to defend himself against charges that he profited from bankruptcy. Politico said even without a trial ”… After winning three of the first four nominating contests, Donald Trump hasn’t just hijacked the Republican Party but fractured it newly into three.” Might there be a brokered convention. Would Trump break his pledge not to run as an independent. Would Michael Bloomberg throw his hat in the ring? |
Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
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