Donald Trump

Fandango’s Provocative Question #170

Fandango36 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

This week’s provocative question is focused on something that might be more specific to Americans, but for those of you who live outside of the United States and who have an opinion or perspective on the topic, please feel free to weigh in.

The topic at hand is the House Select Committee Hearings investigation the January 6, 2021 attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol Building. I’ve been diligently watching the televised hearings this month and, to me, they have been riveting.

These hearings have exposed Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election, which was decisively won by Joe Biden, and which Donald Trump has yet to concede, having been stolen from him. They have also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump knows the election wasn’t “stolen” from him even as he continues to this day to publicly claim it was. The hearings have also demonstrated how Trump and a handful of his advisers have attempted by clearly illegal means, to overturn the election results even though they knew there was no legal basis to do so. And they have also made it completely clear that Donald Trump instigated the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6th, and, while watching the whole assault on the Capitol live on TV, Trump, like Nero in Rome, metaphorically fiddled while America burned.

So my multiple questions this week are:

Have you been watching, or at least following the news about, the Select Committee televised hearings?

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment of what has come out of the hearings thus far?

Do you think that Trump and others who took part in the attempt to overturn the election should be criminally charged and incarcerated.

Do you think that they will be criminally charged and incarcerated?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Who Won The Week — 06/12/22

Fandango24 Comments

The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

At the risk of being predictable, my Who Won the Week designation this week goes to the House Select Committee that is investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s MAGA-maniacis. The committee held the first of its public, televised hearings this past Thursday evening and it was must see TV.

Thursday’s hearing was the first in a series this month that will highlight the findings of the panel’s investigation, which included interviews with more than 1,000 people about how Trump and his team tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election on multiple fronts.

The committee played a compilation of some of the most disturbing footage from the January 6 attack. It showed some never-before seen material, including a birds-eye view footage from security cameras that showed the enormous pro-Trump mob as it started swarming the Capitol grounds.

The footage also showed how the crowd took its cues directly from Trump, with one rioter reading a Trump tweet on a megaphone for the other rioters to hear. In that tweet, Trump criticized Pence for announcing that he would not overturn the results of the 2020 election while presiding over the joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s win.

Supposedly 19 million people watched the prime time hearing on Thursday night and I can’t imagine how anyone watching could not have been moved and could have any remaining doubts whatsoever about the fact that Trump was behind a well-planned, organized, orchestrated, and deliberate attempt to interfere with the peaceful transition of power in the United States and to instigate what amounted to a seditious insurrection.

Unfortunately, Fox News decided to not cover the live hearing, and it’s Fox News viewers who really needed to watch it.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 10th

Fandango17 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 10th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 10 2017. It seems especially relevant today with the January 6th public hearings now underway.

SoCS — Admit It, Donald

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Dear Donald J. Trump,

Admit it, Donald. You’re totally unqualified to be President of the United States. As Hillary Clinton correctly assessed, you don’t have the temperament the position requires. You have never before held an elected position and you have no idea what it takes to be successful in government. Even your ardent GOP defenders like Paul Ryan and Chris Christie admit that you are “new to this job” and don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to how our government works.

Admit it, Donald. You have surrounded yourself with inexperienced, clueless sycophants who aren’t doing you any good because they only share with you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. And your shameless surrogates toe your line even when you undermine them by contradicting the lies they’ve told the media on your behalf.

Admit it, Donald. You are an insecure, thin-skinned, unhinged, megalomaniacal, egotistical narcissist. All you care about is yourself, your family, and your fortune. Based upon what you want to do with heath care, tax reform, and the environment, you clearly don’t give two shits about most Americans, even those you duped into voting for you. You are a con man and a fraud.

Admit it, Donald. You are a pathological liar and wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit you on your ample ass. You are a hypocrite who plays golf almost every weekend after criticizing Obama for playing golf a lot less frequently than you when he was president. You were the driving force behind the totally bogus birther movement.

Admit it, Donald. You blame everyone and anyone but yourself for your frequent missteps. You deny that Russia interfered in our election despite overwhelming evidence that they did. You are critical of many well-respected, highly-regarded world leaders while expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin and other autocratics.

Admit it, Donald. You tried to convince then-FBI Director James Comey to let the FBI investigation of Mike Flynn go, and when he wouldn’t, you fired Comey. You also asked the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and NSA Director Mike Rogers to try to intervene in the FBI’s investigation. You are guilty of obstruction of justice and high crimes and misdemeanors.

Admit it, Donald. You never expected to win the election. You never really wanted the job, which you since have characterized as being harder than you thought it would be. You said you miss your “old life.”

Admit it, Donald. You have diminished and devalued the presidency and it’s time for you to resign and return to your old life before you bring the whole country down in a constitutional crisis. You know that’s the right thing to do.

But then again, Donald, when was the last time you did the right thing?

This post is part of Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday and the topic for this week’s SoCS is “admit.”

FFfPP — #Hashtag

Fandango13 Comments

When Elon Musk pulled out of this $44 billion dollar purchase of Twitter, he decided to start his own competing social media company and he named it “#Hashtag.” Musk spent billions buying land and building a corporate headquarters campus for #Hashtag. At the entrance to the new corporate headquarters building, he had a giant golden hashtag erected, depicting the official corporate logo.

#Hashtag was about as successful as Truth Social, the social media company Donald Trump set up after he was permanently banned from Twitter. In the end, both Musk’s and Trump’s social media enterprises failed.

Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. Photo credit: Eberhard Grossgasteiger on Unsplash.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #164

Fandango31 Comments
FPQ

Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

As almost everyone knows by now, mega billionaire Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion. If his deal to acquire Twitter goes through, Musk said he would “reverse the permanent ban” of former President Donald Trump on Twitter and let him back on the social network. Musk said, “I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.” He added that it was “morally wrong and flat-out stupid” and that “permanent bans just fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter.”

My provocative question this week is…

How do you feel about Elon Musk’s intention to reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account and his rational for doing so?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.