“Do you think these people want to pick the carcass?”
That was the question former President Richard Nixon reportedly asked a supporter after he had been impeached and was facing indictments.
It’s not likely a question President Donald Trump is asking. He’s probably plotting his own revenge. While some Trump-haters want to see him sharing a cell with Harvey Weinstein, the president is likely working out a deal. He will eventually go quietly if he receives something in return.
Paul Wood, on The Spectator’s U.K. website, noted the Trump Organization is under investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., and offered this scenario:
“According to Trump, the art of the deal is to behave so unreasonably at the start of a negotiation that an opponent is desperate for an agreement on almost any terms. If Trump makes enough trouble now – in the courts or on the streets – could he extract a promise that he will remain a free man after he leaves the presidency?”
Trump has room to maneuver. The election was no landslide for Joe Biden. Trump even managed to win more votes this time than in 2016, despite the media’s four-year war against him.
Long-time Trump haters in the media may still want to pick his carcass. Not only may the pickings be lean, but there may not be a political appetite for retributive justice among Democratic leaders. Politics is a business with many unclean hands on both sides of the aisle.
Plus, attention is now focused on the U.S. Senate races in Georgia in January. Two Democratic wins could give the party a Senate majority. This is the party that has been pushing restorative justice – forgiving and forgetting of even violent, felony crimes. Setting the bloodhounds loose on Trump may distract from a Democratic victory in Georgia.
When President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, he spared the country a prolonged public trial of an ex-president. However, the pardon was publicly denounced and probably cost Ford the 1976 presidential race when he lost to Jimmy Carter. Ford later was awarded a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for the pardon because he placed America’s needs ahead of his own career.
Carter, in turn, would later serve only one term before being replaced by Ronald Reagan. That’s politics. A constant cycle of winning and losing.
Trump doesn’t walk away a total loser. He seated three justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. If President Biden has us all wearing masks for the next two years (who knows what other flu viruses are out there) we may look back on Trump’s positive thinking during his own COVID-19 experience and realize he showed the wisdom of Norman Cousins.
However, you can bet Trump never read Cousins’ “Head First: The Biology of Hope.” One of Trump’s greatest shortcomings was his dislike of reading and his over-reliance on his own opinions.
Among the ancillary losers in this election are America’s media and polling industry. They can’t seem to understand that the boxes they keep placing voters in may not apply.
Despite the effort, especially here in Oregon, to embrace the BIPOC acronym (Black, Indigenous and People of Color), the media and pollsters need to understand that not everyone with a little melanin in their skin is going to align themselves with other people “who look like them.” That expression also needs to go. Unless you have an identical twin, nobody looks like you.
Other potential losers: The folks in charge of fund-raising for ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Trump and the threats of what he might do made fund-raising easier for both organizations, which boasted of their financial gains.
Then there’s Sarah Cooper, a comedian who became famous for lip-syncing Trump. Will her career trajectory now resemble Vaughn Meader’s after John F. Kennedy was assassinated?
Ultimately, the saddest losers could be those who danced in the street after Biden’s victory was announced. That happy memory may be all that’s left if President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris don’t live up to the media hype. They probably won’t, anymore than President Barack Obama was able to deliver clean water to the residents of predominantly black Flint, Mich.
As for Trump, he will go down as one of the most famous U.S. presidents. Like him or not, he was fascinating. One hundred years from now, 200 years from now, writers and artists and historians will still be exploring the raw material of his life and presidency.
For a guy who didn’t like to read, Trump was Shakespearean. No mere celebrity, Trump is immortal. That might be his best revenge.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
A truly stellar column.
You nailed what the mass media either refuses or is afraid to see.
I am no Trump fan, and he shot himself in the foot, but Portland fascist “antifas” almost got him re-elected.
I voted for Trump. You’re right. He shot himself in the foot with his crazy behavior. He needs to negotiate a way out. If the media and Pelosi crowd go after him they better watch out. He’s unpredictable. He’s no Nixon.
I was reading a story on one of the history channels about the 1960 election. There are legitimate historians who think Kennedy lost. Chicago corruption and LBJ Texas vote pulling got him over the line. Stuff like 56 Votes cast from the address of an abandoned house. Winning isn’t everything. Kennedy won a bullet in the head.
I came across this line recently in a book review by Alex Preston: “(W)e are all living in history, all of the time.”
Too bad we don’t pay more attention to what is happening while it is happening, but we don’t. Too many distractions and diversions. The media now advocate more than inform. They don’t hesitate to tell us if our beliefs and voting practices place us on “the wrong side of history.”
We will probably never know the truth about the Kennedy-Nixon election except that Kennedy won.
I dunno. Trump’s every move was scrutinized. Shit like the Obama-Iran deal: did anyone outside of his inner circle look that over?
I will never understand how Holder didn’t manage to imprison the cop in the Big Mike case.
Anyhow Trump was a good president: slowing the border flood, slowing the lynching of males under Title IX, slowing and perhaps stopping the race hate indoctrination at the federal level and in the armed forces. No new wars. China is finally seen for what it is.
I could go on, but wont.
I came home from the Coast Range tonight. Practicing with a Remington 870, a .44. a 38, and 9mm. A homeless druggies was reordering his rucksack off my porch. A porch upon which the delivery guy set a package atop a wicker table for all the world to see.
He was looking at my porch, saw me walk to the door and so he walked off, after a while.
Just fuck these people, these progressives. I never owned a gun until my mid to late 50s.
Drugged out zombies roam the town night and day. Racists take over our streets and destroy public and private property and menace or attack citizens.
An open border generated tsunami of uneducated low-income non-English speaking immigrants whose traditions we must honor will really, really buoy the economy. Help the civil life of the polity, too. Gotta get them kids out their cages.
Stacy Abrams, Don Lemon, Joy Reid, and anyone doing news for NPR . . .speaking truth to power you betcha
Trump will probably be judged more fairly with the distance of time. The accomplishments you list are a fair assessment and certainly more than Obama accomplished in eight years.
I voted for Obama twice and was chatting recently with friends who also voted for Obama but couldn’t stand Trump. I asked them what they thought Obama’s legacy would be. They were sad to say his greatest accomplishment was probably being a mild-mannered black man who got elected president. His health care plan was borrowed from Republican Mitt Romney and seems to work best for the wealthy and the poor but not the middle class.
Trump’s loss was quite respectable considering how close it was and how viciously the media pursued him. In 2016, he didn’t expect to get elected and wasn’t prepared. This time around, he really wanted the job and didn’t want to lose. Trump is a Social Darwinist and likes winners.
We could use a few more Social Darwinists. Right now we are catering to that man on your porch. As environmentalists are fond of saying, that’s not sustainable.
It’s hard to understand how anyone can look at all our problems and decide that reforming police and ending “systemic racism” are the primary issues.
I have been a gracious loser. My daughter, a gracious winner. Of late, her enthusiasm has chilled.
“All the people he’s appointing have been in Washington for years,” she said of President-elect Biden’s cabinet and staff.
Yes, the swamp was never in danger of being drained. Career bureaucrats and media made sure of it.
I was just reading the latest posts at The Spectator’s U.K. website, and journalist Freddy Gray noted how approving Barack Obama is of Biden’s selections. (Gray also noted that Obama is now promoting his third book of memoirs; all he writes about is himself.)
When the new cabinet appointees were introduced, they took turns spouting “grandiose yet meaningless statements. … Insiders all know what these platitudes mean: Washington’s political class has reoccupied its rightful place on top. The swamp is back, baby. The Washington Post rather gave the game away this week when it published a gushing report under the headline: ‘Washington’s aristocracy hopes a Biden presidency will make schmoozing great again.’ The online editors promptly changed ‘aristocracy’ to ‘establishment,’ but the slip was revealing.”
Because Why? TRAGEDY, FARCE, COMEDY:
https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/11/25/black-portlanders-are-killed-crossing-the-street-at-three-times-the-rate-of-white-pedestrians/
White people!
What I liked best about that story were some of the comments. It’s encouraging when readers talk back and call out an absurd assumption when they see it. Had the story appeared on OregonLive, there would have been no way to immediately call out the reporter for such knee-jerk reporting.
Yes, surprisingly the comment at Willamette Week are often sensible or derisory in a good way…
Here’s one that might have some truth in it:
https://www.takimag.com/article/california-secedes-from-black-america/
Also, I thought over the years that Sidney Powell might have a touch of the Barbara Jordon in her. I’m confused. Jordon made the Watergate hearings.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2020/12/03/exclusive-oregon-gave-antifa-your-cares-act-covid-relief-tax-dollars-during-the-riots-wait-it-gets-worse-n1034431
Most Oregonians have no idea what Reimagine Oregon is or that $62 million has been handed to black Oregonians because they are black. I noticed the reference in the link to the Somali organization and its windfall.
Perhaps you have heard that Kayse Jama, a Somali refugee who fled his country’s starvation and war to find a home in Oregon, is hoping to be appointed to state Sen. Shemia Fagan’s legislative seat now that she has been elected Secretary of State.
Jama is a “community organizer” who quickly figured out how to monetize his skin color in white Oregon. His organization is ironically called “Unite Oregon.” I’ve heard him speak a couple of times. Naturally, he’s an expert on “systemic racism.” I think that his area of expertise is actually tribalism.
Contemporary progressive thought is pretty easy in that it is the inverse of the claim, title, or goal asserted. “Unite Oregon.”
See, simple.
My earlier email linking to the fellow reflecting up on the meaning of the California rejection of the bias law supports what I have thought for a long while.
Other more dynamic minority, racial, ethnic or what have you groups will supplant the white majority.
They will not have any real interest in you Black Americans claim of ineradicable handicap. They just wont. And, they don’t care to than linger in the dripping shade of the snivelers. They will advance themselves and contribute to what seems to be the voluntary marginalization of popular black leaders.
Rather sadly, The Constitution is pretty soon to go as well. It just gets in the way. Regard for it is vanishingly thin right now and it ain’t gonna get better as long as we stop transmitting the “wisdom” of the white male past.
No surprise, but it appears that Kayse Jama might be a shoo-in for that senate seat appointment. There were three other candidates — two women and a white man, Rep. Jeff Reardon. On Saturday, Reardon issued a press release bowing out and supporting Jama.
Who knows — or cares — what the backstory is. I suspect most Oregonians cannot tell you who their state representative or state senator is.
tina kotek. jama is nearly as disheartening.
The ascription of virtue or ability according to race, gender, ethnicity and what not is well, it is the opposite of what is currently claimed on its behalf.
I have been surprised at the Indian immigrant’s fairly common enthusiasm for destroying American civic life. Perhaps it is the years in sympathy with Soviet sponsorship… I don’t know. Believe the woman who catalyzes much of the mischief in Seattle is a first generation from the subcontinent.
I know Ayaan Hirsi Ali could never get elected in any progressive constituencies.
Not much online from local media about the Immergut decision. I mean, that isn’t behind a paywall.
I have respect for her dating from her federal attorney days and the start of the Patriot Act. Struck me as a restrained adult thinker. He reason for not impeding the 62 million dollar racist giveaway is not clear to me yet.
OPB gave plenty of space to antifablm horseshit regarding the Mississippi eviction. Am I mistaken or did some of that family’s earnings or government handout go to a felonious child’s defense?
Back to the 62 million theft. I’ve know many Oregon working poor and small business people. Most are not black. Not even close.
This country might just find itself with a low level but bloody insurgency in which no ones wins but that the Progressives have created.
I refuse to give Therese Bottomly my money because she and the other nannies who run the show at The O hold readers in such contempt. It’s revealing the stories they put a dollar sign on.
If you have a library card, you can access The O through a backdoor, so to speak. Or, I occasionally access The O with the log-in of a friend, who loathes what Bottomly has done to that paper.
William Kinney III pleaded guilty in 2002 to felony hit-and-run and a couple of other charges for killing Frederick Goetz, 83. Goetz was an outdoors writer and once owned Cameron’s Books & Magazines. Kinney was driving with three friends to Cleveland High when he blew through a stop sign. Goetz’s wife was also seriously injured.
Kinney’s family refinanced their house to pay for a criminal defense attorney. Bad decision. Sometimes the best thing you can for a loved one in that situation is to hold them accountable.
Kinney entered the Oregon Youth Authority in 2002 and was later transferred to the Department of Corrections, where he remained until 2007. He almost immediately got into more trouble — illegal driving while under the influence of drugs. He got into more trouble in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
His license was revoked for life, but he later got it reinstated. He also changed his name to William X. Nietzche. Would you believe that William X. Nietzche has a suspended license?
Noelle Crombie’s story in The O lays out all of his prison violations, etc. and shows how unremorseful Kinney/Nietzche has been. Everything that has gone wrong with the Kinneys is because of their skin color. Who taught them this?
The media.
As for the $62-million, race-based giveaway that Judge Immergut had no problem with, the money is being handed out now and has to be spent by the end of this month. So … if the case is kicked to a higher court, which overturns it, guess what? The money is gone. You can bet no one will try to get it back.