I realize that Donald Trump is a successful man, but it
is difficult for me to take him seriously.
First, there is the hair. .Whatever does he see when he looks in the
mirror? He cannot possibly see what the
rest of us see. Maybe that topper he
wears keeps sanity from seeping in, because for a man who has made gazillions
of dollars, he says some really crazy things.
Regardless of where you
stand politically, the birther nonsense the Donald continues to promote is too
fringe for the Republicans I count among family and friends. How much conspiracy would it take for a
mother to give birth to a son in Kenya, simultaneously convince a newspaper in
Hawaii to print a birth announcement on that very day that her baby was born in
Hawaii, and then keep all of this a secret until he decided to run for
president four decades plus later? There
are reasons to argue about things President Obama should have done and could
have done, but his not having been rom here has nothing to do with that.
President Obama finally caved into the birthers over
a year ago and did release his long form birth certificate. No other president has ever been harassed in
this manner, and I wish the president had just ignored them. I didn’t think it would change any of their
minds. Facts are of no concern to those
kinds of people. Daniel Patrick
Moynihan said it best: “You are entitled to your own
opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts?” But some of the fringe in
the GOP now choose to have their own “facts.”
If they were no longer to accept that people who once spoke Spanish
settled Florida and California, they would say, “Well that’s your opinion. We do not believe that.” Remember, one of
Romney’s campaign leaders proudly said that they were not going to be bothered
with fact checkers. Reality? No thanks.
In April, Trump tweeted the
following: @realDonaldTrump
An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.
A credible and, as always,
unnamed source who either does not exist or who is as crazy as the gullible who
buy what he is saying, regardless of facts—
The real birth certificate sows
that Obama was born August 4, 1961m in Honolulu’s Kapiolani Maternity and
Gynecological Hospital.
"I know that
there is going to be a segment of people for which no matter what we put out,
this issue will not be put to rest," Obama said. "But I am speaking
for the vast majority of the American people as well as for the press. We do
not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have
got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve."
By May 29, 2012, Trump said in a CNBC phone interview that
the document was not enough, and that "nothing has changed my mind."
In a CNN interview on the same day, the "Celebrity Apprentice" host
continued to press the issue, prompting Wolf Blitzer to say
Trump was
"beginning to sound a little ridiculous."
Trump upped the ante when he began to question President
Obama’s academic record. For the record,
Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School and earned his
Bachelor’s in international studies from Columbia. He is sure that some document will list the
President as a foreign student. Trump
has also implied that the President can’t be that smart. Even if affirmative
action played a part in Obama;s acceptance to either of these prestigious
schools, the assigning of Magna Cum Laude is only earned by academic
achievement. Obama was President of the
Harvard Law Review. This is an
unarguable fact. You do not have to
agree with his politics to accept that.
For some reason, Barack Obama’s academic achievement just sticks in the
craw of the Trumps and Limbaughs of this world.
Why is this? In one breath, they
accuse the president of sounding “too professorial.” In the next, men like John Sununu suggest
that Obama is lazy, or, in Sarah Palin’s view, the president “shucks and
jives.” Is this about anything but
race? About Obama’s being the other? One
not like us? I say it is.
Trump’s most recent rant borders on publicly extorting
the President of the United States. He
demanded that the president release his college records and passport
applications to see if they note his place of birth.
“Donald Trump criticized
President Obama on Thursday for not agreeing to release his college records and
passport application in return for a $5-million donation to a charity of the
president's choice.
“The real estate magnate
and TV personality announced last week that he was extending the offer to the
president, and that Mr. Obama had until Wednesday to comply. In the aftermath
of Hurricane Sandy, he extended the deadline to noon Thursday.
“After the deadline came
and went, Mr. Trump posted a video on YouTube calling it a "very, very sad
day for the United States of America." He suggested that the president's
snub prevented him from giving $5 million to a group such as the Wounded
Warrior Project, American Cancer Society or to the families of victims from the
embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya.
“’Someday those papers
will come out, and people will say, 'You know what? Donald Trump was right,'’
he said in a video.”
___________________________________________________________
Perhaps, Donald, someday
people will say, “You know what? Donald
Trump was nuts!”
The President has
maintained a sense of humor about all of this kerfuffle about his
legitimacy. When he appeared on The
Tonight Show, he joked that he and Donald Trump had had bad blood dating back
to their school days in Kenya. "We had constant run-ins on the soccer
field," the president said. "He wasn't very good and resented it.
When we finally moved to America, I thought it would be over." http://www.washingtontimes.com
Donald
Trump, you have a right to remain silent.
Anything you say can be used against you. If I hadn’t been brought up to be polite, I
might just say, “Shut up! You’re making
an ass of yourself!”
