Donald Trump

Fandango’s Provocative Question #195

Fandango40 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.

The former U.S. president, Donald Trump, announced last week an online store to sell $99 digital trading cards of himself as a superhero, an astronaut, an Old West sheriff, and a series of other fantastical figures. He made his pitch in a brief, direct-to-camera video in which he audaciously declared that his four years in the White House were “better than Lincoln, better than Washington.”

These digital trading cards, which Trump says are similar to baseball cards, are actually nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, that effectively allow a person to claim ownership of a digital file. They’re to baseball cards what Bitcoins are to paper money. Revenue from the sale of these cards will go to Trump personally under a licensing deal. None of the proceeds will be provided to his 2024 presidential campaign.

So my question to you is simply this:

What do you think of Trump’s digital trading cards? Do you think it reflects a sound business and/or political strategy? Do you think it’s ridiculous and is something undignified for a former U.S. President (and 2024 presidential candidate) to do? Or do you have no opinion one way or the other?

Just so you know, Trump’s “limited edition” collection of digital trading cards sold out in less than a day, generating $4.5 million in sales for him. Did any of you, by any chance, buy one?

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 — 10/16/22

Fandango18 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.

This week’s recipient of Who Won the Week recipient is the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The committee unanimously voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump. It’s about time!

So now that the congressional committee has subpoenaed him, you have to wonder what the former president’s next move will be. Will he or won’t he comply. And if he chooses not to comply, what might the consequences — if any — be?

The first thing Trump did after learning about the subpoena was to send a rambling 14-page letter to committee chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson. He started off reiterating the Big Lie when he titled his letter, “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” It was not.

Trump did not say whether he would comply with the subpoena. Instead, he repeated various long-debunked election claims. But it seems unlikely that he will actually testify.

In his letter, Trump claimed that he “fully authorized” National Guard troops to be present at the Capitol before Jan. 6, but that Democrats, including Pelosi, refused the authorization. However, there is no record of Trump authorizing National Guard troops to be at the Capitol before the attack, and no evidence that Democrats denied such a request.

He also bragged about the size of the crowd that he had summoned on Jan. 6, claiming that it was a very big one, far bigger than anyone thought possible, and that it was “one of the largest crowds I have ever spoken to before, a very wide swath stretching all the way back to the Washington Monument.”

He went on to complain that the “massive size of this crowd, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your Committee, nor has it been discussed by the Fake News Media that absolutely refuses to acknowledge, in any way, shape or form, the magnitude of what was taking place.” What the hell does crowd size have to do with charges of instigating insurrection and engaging in seditious activities? It’s only meaningful to a sick egomaniac like Donald Trump.

Anyway, congratulations to the House Select Committee for voting to Subpoena the criminal Donald Trump. Now let’s see if anything comes of it.

So 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.

Now I Understand

Fandango11 Comments

It has always baffled me how an ostentatious, megalomaniac billionaire like Donald Trump could be idolized by the masses, particularly the poor, undereducated people who seem to hang on his every word and believe every lie he tells. How could they vote for and continue to support him even though everything he stands for and does is against their own interests.

And then I came across this, an old Turkish proverb, and it explained a lot.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — September 23rd

Fandango27 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 23rd) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on September 23, 2017.

Relevance is Relative

Image result for irrelevant

“One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

What one person finds relevant, another finds irrelevant. In other words, relevance is not absolute. Relevance is relative.

Let’s take Donald Trump as an example. Donald Trump is a liar. That is an absolute, indisputable truth. Yet to many people — to too many people — the fact that he is a liar is irrelevant. It’s not that they don’t know that he’s a liar. They do. It’s just that they don’t really care. They are not bothered by his lying. To his supporters, his being a liar is irrelevant.

To others, me included, Donald Trump’s lying is highly relevant. It means that you can’t trust anything that he says (or tweets) to be the truth. And he’s the President of the United States.

Some people claim that all politicians lie, so the fact that Trump lies is irrelevant. They point to Obama’s promise that “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” as the illustration of a lying president. Yet most people under Obamacare were able to keep their doctors. I was.

But everyone knows that Mexico is not going to pay for “the wall.” Most people, even Donald Trump, know that Russia interfered in last year’s presidential election. Most people don’t think that climate change is a hoax.

But to Trump supporters, it just doesn’t matter. To them, it’s irrelevant. Because relevance is relative.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “irrelevant.”

Truthful Tuesday — Traditions

Fandango21 Comments

Di, host of Pensivity101, is once again standing in for Melanie, of Sparks from a Combustible Mind, for today’s Truthful Tuesday prompt. This week Di pointed out that the world watched the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II yesterday and throughout the country’s state of mourning, there have been some protests and comments against the monarchy.

She added that she’s not asking her overseas readers how we feel about the British monarchy, but she wants to know…

How do you feel about your own country’s traditions and customs? Do you think they still hold a place in modern times?

Sadly, I don’t recognize my own country anymore. Not since 2016, when Donald Trump was, with the help of Russia and other dark, anti-democratic forces, elected — not by popular vote of the American citizens, but by the Electoral College — to the office of POTUS.

Now, with the radicalization of the Republican Party, American traditions like the peaceful transfer of power after an election, having the person who lost an election graciously concede to the winner, free speech, equal justice under the law, no person is above the law, acceptance of diversity, compassion, kindness, decency, religious freedom, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have fallen by the wayside.

If Donald Trump (and his MAGA maniacs) had his way, he would establish an American monarchy and declare himself to be King Donald I, rename the White House to Trump Palace and Mar-a-Lago to The Winter Palace. He would disband Congress, get rid of the U.S. Constitution, and become an absolute, authoritarian ruler, modeled after Vladimir Putin or Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

So, in answer to Di’s question about my country’s traditions and customs and how I feel about them, I’d say that most of America’s traditions and customs that made me proud to be an American no longer exists, and that saddens me to an extent that is almost incomprehensible.