Journalists

2018 Presidents And Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey Of 170 Political Scientists: First Experts Assessment Of Donald Trump

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The American Political Science Association conducted a survey from late December 2017 to mid January 2018 of social science experts in presidential politics, the first such survey to assess all of the 44 men who have held the office of the Presidency, including Donald Trump after one year in office.

Last year, C Span had its third survey of Presidential experts, mostly historians but some political scientists and journalists, rating the Presidents, as Barack Obama left office.

So this is a significant moment, as now Donald Trump is part of the equation. The score rating is, theoretically from 100 high to a Zero low.

Abraham Lincoln had 95.03 rating of this group of scholars, and Donald Trump ended up number 44 out of 44, with a score of 12.34, nearly three points lower than James Buchanan with 15.09 score, with the pre Civil War President finally getting out of the basement as the lowest ranked President.

Even William Henry Harrison, the one month President in 1841, who accomplished nothing but his inaugural address and selection of his cabinet, ended up 42nd with a score of 19.02, demonstrating just how disastrous this group of political scientists sees Donald Trump after one year.

Democrats and Liberals and Moderates rated him 44th, the bottom, while Independents ranked Trump 43rd, ahead of only Buchanan. But even Republicans and Conservatives only rated him 40th out of 44, only ahead of Buchanan, Harrison, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson for Republicans, and only ahead of Buchanan, Harrison, Andrew Johnson and Pierce for Conservatives.

In percentage, Democrats gave Trump a 7.60 rating; Liberals a 7.92 rating; Moderates a 13.43 rating; Independents a 16.49 rating; Republicans a 24.53 rating; and Conservatives a 25.19 rating.

Trump topped the list as the most polarizing President, mentioned 138 times. The closest to him was Andrew Jackson, mentioned 81 times; George W. Bush with 74 mentions; and Barack Obama 72 times. Richard Nixon was fifth, with 55 mentions and tied with Abraham Lincoln, followed by Andrew Johnson with 37 mentions, Ronald Reagan with 33 mentions, Bill Clinton with 30 mentions, and Franklin D. Roosevelt with 29 mentions, to round out the top ten.

Five questions were asked about Trump: his Presidency overall; Legislative Accomplishments; Foreign Policy Leadership; Embodying Institutional Norms; and Communicating with the Public.

Trump earned three Fs and 2 Ds, with his best score on Communicating with the Public and lowest on Embodying Institutional Norms.

The only area in any group where Trump gained a C was in Foreign Policy Leadership, and also in Communicating with the Public, both from Republicans.

So Donald Trump, in the view of scholars and experts on the Presidency, is a true disaster, and to think he will get out of the basement and pass the four Presidents above him, is truly delusional!

Donald Trump And Libel Laws: Massive Number Of Lawsuits Could Be Lodged Against Him For His Constant Libeling Of Critics And Opponents

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Yesterday, Donald Trump called for a massive overhaul of America’s libel laws, so that anyone who lies about someone else, says or publishes untruths, can be sued for libel and be forced to pay large financial damages.

This would be done to silence critics in their public statements, and news media, journalists, and authors from freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Any person or entity, including this author and blogger, could be hauled into federal court, costing vast amounts of attorney expenses, to defend the truth and veracity of his or her statements or publications.

Is there anything more unconstitutional or more a violation of basic civil liberties and the Bill of Rights, than this utterance by an authoritarian, fascist oriented disgrace of a human being?

It would effectively silence any exposure, revelation, or accountability for an abusive government leader, the kind of treatment one finds in authoritarian nations, such as Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines, Iran, and other nations around the world, and historically in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy.

It would destroy our democracy and rule of law, and promote intolerance and suppression of differing views of government as it affects the American population.

Ironically, though, Donald Trump could face thousands of law suits for all of his unsubstantiated attacks on his critics in the Republican Party during the 2016 election campaign, as well as while he has been in the White House, as well as Democrats, and all the news media and other critics who have correctly called him out for his abuse of power and his divisive, hateful rants in public rallies, in the White House and on Twitter.

Donald Trump has lied incessantly, an average of five times a day, over 2,000 lies since he announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015.

He should be sued under his own definition of libel for every one of these two thousand plus lies, and his defamation of individuals and institutions, and it would leave him impoverished after financial payments were imposed on him.

He is the last person who should bring up the issue of libel, and he could be, as a result, “hoist with his own petard”!

Donald Trump’s Full Scale Attack On The First Amendment, While Endorsing No Limit On The Second Amendment, A Danger To America

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Donald Trump has mounted a full scale attack on the First Amendment freedom of speech and press, while endorsing no limit on the Second Amendment, despite the recent Las Vegas Massacre, and is therefore a danger to America.

If it were left up to Trump, many cable TV channels, such as CNN and MSNBC, would be denied licenses to operate, but thankfully, no such mechanism exists to suppress the First Amendment.

Also, Trump wishes to suppress freedom of speech for National Football League players to protest the treatment of African Americans and other minorities by police.

And he seems to think that everyone MUST stand for the flag and the National Anthem, while the Supreme Court has declared that the flag need not be obeyed, and in fact, can be burned in protest, something much more extreme than bending the knee for the flag.

The case on this is Texas V Johnson (1989), with Justice Antonin Scalia, certainly the most conservative Justice in a century, writing the majority opinion.

What Trump is doing was denounced by principled conservative Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who has been against Trump from before the election. He said yesterday that Trump is violating his oath of office by refusing to defend the Constitution, which includes the Bill of Rights, and that Trump had, therefore, committed an impeachable act.

Trump sounds more like Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, or other totalitarian dictators than the leader of a democracy, and he is a clear and present danger to all Americans, as a result.

The possibility of moving toward impeachment is starting to grow, as Sasse joins Senator Bob Corker in warning against the threat that Trump clearly presents the nation.

Trump seems to be unraveling, as reported by journalists who have contacts within the staff of Donald Trump, reminding us of the last days of Richard Nixon.

But if anything, Richard Nixon was far less dangerous than Donald Trump is, as Trump has been collaborating with Russia, while Nixon understood the threat presented by Russia.

Also, Nixon was not out to destroy all domestic reform of the previous hundred years, as Trump is in the process of doing, with ObamaCare, the environment, consumer legislation, and government regulation of business.

And Trump is also out to destroy the Iran Deal, go to war with North Korea, and destroy all areas of our foreign policy with other nations.

So the need for prompt action, before Trump must be wrestled for control of the nuclear codes, is real!

Trump’s Constant Attacks On Journalism Will Lead Some Crazy Trump Supporter To Perpetrate A Crime Against A Journalist!

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The Founding Fathers understood the role of Journalism.

Abraham Lincoln understood the role of Journalism.

The same situation existed for Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and every other President before and since FDR, until now we have a President, Donald Trump, who wishes to curb the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.

No President, and no public figure likes when he or she is criticized, attacked, exposed, for one’s shortcomings, and sometimes illegal acts.

But the right of the people to know the facts, the truth, and be aware of investigations of their public officials, is sacrosanct.

In a totalitarian dictatorship, the first thing that disappears is freedom of the press, and in many such nations historically, journalists become victims of crooked and corrupt leaders.

By Donald Trump attacking journalists as “bad” people, as un-American, as people who are lacking in patriotism, he is endangering all journalists and bloggers, as there are unstable people in society that hang on every word of a demagogue, such as Trump, and are ready to “mete out justice” against such “criminals”, meaning stalking and harming them, with the purpose of murdering them as their mission to help their “devoted” leader.

If any journalist in the Trump Administration time period is harmed, Donald Trump is responsible for it by his inciting of whackos who believe he is God’s gift to America, and he should be held accountable, as an accessory to the crime if such evil event occurs.

Let us hope and pray that we survive the Trump Era without more loss of life as at Charlottesville, Virginia!

Trump-Putin Summit Meeting A Clear Sign That Putin Has Trump In His Grasp, Undermines Trump Legitimacy As President

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The Trump-Putin Summit Meeting yesterday at the G-20 Summit is a clear sign that the Russian autocrat has our President in his grasp, and has undermined Trump’s legitimacy as our President.

All the intelligence agencies are absolutely certain that Russia intervened in our 2016 Presidential election, and helped Trump to win.

Trump has been unwilling to agree to the reality and the facts, calling it “fake news”.

Different versions of the meeting by the Russian Foreign Minister and our Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have emerged from the meeting, and the question is whether Trump really pressed the issue with Putin, and whether he will simply accept their version that they did NOT interfere in our election. A “robust” and “lengthy” discussion, as depicted by Tillerson, apparently was a distortion of the meeting, another lie of the Trump Presidency!

The idea that we had a summit meeting with only Tillerson as an observer, with his close past ties with Russia when he was head of Exxon Oil, is an outrage, when we should have had H. R. McMaster, the National Security Adviser, and or James Mattis, our Secretary of Defense, in the meeting. Between Trump and Tillerson, we had a grand total of 12 months experience in diplomacy, compared to many decades of experience by Putin and his Foreign Minister. This is an outrage that everyone should be alarmed about, and one can be sure many Republicans and conservatives in and out of Congress are truly alarmed!

IF Trump does not continue to challenge Putin and resist their propaganda, he will be permanently harmed, and we will have to worry that he is in league with them to help promote his fortunes, by their planned interference in our midterm elections in 2018 and the Presidential Election of 2020.

Can one even imagine the reaction if Barack Obama had colluded with Russia, or George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton?

Can one imagine how the far Right conservatives and the evangelical Christian Right, which have embraced Vladimir Put as a “Friend”, based on support of guns and opposition to gay rights, would have reacted if, in particular, Obama had done what Trump has done, promote a “bromance” with a man responsible for deaths of journalists and opponents, as revealed by Richard Engel in a one hour special on MSNBC last evening, part of a new series titled “On Assignment”?

The idea that men and women who profess religion could unite with a totalitarian dictator such as Putin only shows the corruption of right wing evangelicals, such as Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham! The idea that right wing commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin, among others, would just accept that Putin is no danger to America, is also a true example of how lacking in substance these characters are, only concerned about making as much profit as possible on their propaganda, and no concern about American national security!

The way things look now, Donald Trump is truly the “Manchurian Candidate”, and we are permitting the Russians to infiltrate and undermine our political system with equanimity, instead of with alarm!

Donald Trump: Most Accessible Presidential Candidate, Least Accessible President!

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Donald Trump was just about the most accessible Presidential candidate, when he was running for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2015=2016, including phone interviews, and innumerable appearances on Cable Television.

But now, as President, he has only had one press conference in February, and has not been at all accessible in a direct fashion, to answer questions of journalists.

Instead, he attacks news media as “Fake Media”, and his Press spokesmen, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have often refused to meet the media on television, and nave perpetrated lies and outrageous defenses of their boss in a way that has undermined their credibility.

So Donald Trump has become the most inaccessible President, and has declared the free press to be “the enemy”, reminding us of totalitarian dictatorships of the Left and the Right throughout the past century of world history!

Trump sounds and acts more like a Third World Dictator than the leader of the “Free World”, and seems to have no scruples at all in wreaking destruction of the cherished First Amendment!

The Media Created Donald Trump, And The Media Will Destroy Him, With The Truth About His Corruption And Malfeasance!

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The news media created Donald Trump, giving him lavish coverage and publicity, and enabling him to gain public support with his over the top proposals, which any sane person could have realized was political hype at its worst.

Donald Trump has become the worst con man in American political history, but it is the news media that will bring him down, ultimately, through their thorough, hard hitting exposing of his corruption, and his collusion with the Russians, with more evidence every day of his transgressions.

Plaudits are due to the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, and many other media sites and journalists, who are doing the detective work that will help the Special Counsel Robert Mueller collect the dots that will force Trump out of office sometime next year.

Trump is running scared, acting guilty, and his continued assaults on the news media are a threat to American democracy, but he will not win out in the end, one can be assured. He has degraded the Presidency, and it will take time and healing to recover the prestige and dignity of the office after he is forced out.

Just as Richard Nixon had his “Waterloo”, so will Donald Trump, as long as people understand it will take time and patience, but that it will happen, whether the Republican Congress wants it or not, as the American people will demand transparency and action as the evidence grows toward the inevitable step to remove Trump. One author, Frank Rich, in New York Magazine, has said we are in July 1973 in the Nixon crisis, and that in about another year, as with Nixon, Trump will be forced out.

We survived earlier constitutional crises in the Civil War era, and the Watergate era, and we will survive once again, with media having a large share of the credit, utilizing the term–“The truth shall set you free!”

And for those who fear Vice President Mike Pence becoming President, there is no question that he would be the most extreme right wing President in history, but the removal of Trump will help to temper him in his actions and statements, particularly once a Democratic House of Representatives becomes his “watchdog”. And even if we have a continued Republican Senate, which is highly likely, not much will be accomplished, with the reality that the House of Representatives controls all money bills.

As much as Pence is a problem, he is not mentally unhinged and unstable as Donald Trump has proved to be, and the way he comes to power will make it more difficult for him to accomplish many of his goals, as long as the Democrats gain the 24 or more seats needed to win control of the House, and that must be the goal in the next 16 months until the midterms in November 2018.

Danger Of Civil Unrest And Violence Growing, And The Blame Is On Donald Trump For Inciting It!

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We have to fear now for the future of our nation, as Donald Trump has sowed what he incited: civil unrest and violence, reaching its peak with troubles in Chicago, causing the cancellation of a Trump rally last night.

Donald Trump has promoted violence and division with his rhetoric, including calling demonstrators names and having them evicted, with some being beaten up by hoodlums in the crowds, particularly if one is African American or Latino.

Journalists have also been mistreated and abused by Trump people, and Trump seems unconcerned about the chaos and anarchy he is promoting.

This blogger has written on thehill.com and on History News Network of his concern that all of this turmoil, encouraged by Trump but also the Republican Party with its refusal to give support and respect to Barack Obama over the past seven years in a way unseen in the past by any political party, will lead to the danger of assassination of Trump or some other Presidential candidate.

Assassination is NEVER the answer to any political disagreements, but we know that Huey P. Long was assassinated in 1935 and George C. Wallace paralyzed for life in 1972 by assassins, stirred by their demagoguery, so Trump is treading dangerous ground.

A reminder that Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 of my book cover the stories of these two tragic events surrounding Long and Wallace!

We must all pray that civil order reign, and that Donald Trump recognize his responsibilities to lower the temperature of political debate, but it looks as if we are gearing up for a tumultuous year surrounding the Presidential Election of 2016, unmatched since the Presidential Election of 1968!

News Media And American Political Parties And Presidential Candidates: Meant To Put Candidates’ “Feet To The Fire!”

Ronald 27 Comments

The job of the news media–radio, television and cable, print, internet—is to expose the hypocrisy and shortcomings of our political parties and leaders, and particularly their Presidential candidates!

It is NOT the job of news media and journalism to “cozy up” to any public figure, but rather to hold their “feet to the fire!”

Only in a dictatorship are news media the lackeys of the government and its leaders!

So if a politician at any level or a Presidential candidate cannot handle being exposed and shown for what he or she really is, tough on them, and if unable to handle it, then the answer is to withdraw from competition to be our leaders.

So there is no sympathy or empathy that should be visited toward Donald Trump, Dr. Benjamin Carson, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or any of the multitude of other Presidential candidates.

And anyone who, somehow, believes, that Barack Obama has not faced the same scrutiny is a liar and a propagandist!

So, in summary, if one “cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!”