Donald Trump and his incoherent babble to the United Nations.

Opinion letters published in The New York Times:

In the stumbling address Donald Trump tried to give to the United Nations General Assembly, he questioned whether the U.N. should exist. His own remarks provided the answer.

Dear Nations of the World: On behalf of the American people, I apologize for the words and behavior of our president at the United States. He does not represent our beliefs. 

By asking,“What is the purpose of the United Nations❓” — and telling world leaders, “Your countries are going to hell”  —  Trump showed precisely why the U.N. matters.

The United Nations remains essential as a forum where nations can challenge authoritarian impulses and defend shared norms. Without this global venue, weaker states and civil society would have no platform to confront great-power unilateralism or to uphold international law and human rights.

The United Nations is not perfect. Security Council vetoes and limited enforcement power are real obstacles. But the remedy is reform, not retreat.

Donald Trump's dismal display didn’t diminish the U.N.’s relevance. His clumsy speech only underscored the need to strengthen it. 

From Jordan Ryan in Decatur, Georgia (The writer is a former United Nations assistant secretary general).

To the New York Times Editor: An objective observer might have found Donald Trump’s United Nations talk astonishing, whether because of the rudeness of his words — the insults, the braggadocio, the disparaging of the leaders of so many other countries — or his appropriation of nearly four times the time allotted to him to speak. (What an ass ❗)

Sadly, most of us ceased being astonished years about Donald Trump. 

In fact, the Trump's stumbling United Nations talk is an extension of his constant sources of shame and embarrassment.

From Peter Larson in Milwaukee Wisconsin

How is it possible for Republlicans to continue ignoring Donald Trump's arrogance towards the Constitution

Trump is acting with little regard for laws and with no apparent accountability | Letters

Echo opinion letters published in the Milwaukee State Journal and on Yahoo.com news.

Americans are asking about some of the egregious actions taken by Trump's Republican administration. As reported in the May 5 article “Trump unsure on upholding the Constitution,”  (Milwaukee Journal) when asked during an NBC interview whether he had a duty to uphold the right of due process and the Constitution, the president replied, "I don't know.”

So apparently he wasn't paying attention to the words he recited while taking the oath of office — twice. I hope, for the sake of our country, that the job description is clear now: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

From Peggy Creer, in Whitefish Bay Wisconsin

Authority of U.S. government is not conferred on a sovereign ruler

It's obvious Donald Trump acts with little regard for laws and with no apparent accountability. One man's decisions are tearing apart the matrix of our politics and our economy.  

Why have institutions if office-holders will not abide by them❓ 

Why have a CEO if the rules of the office don't matter❓ 

Why have a congress and courts — our safeguarding system of checks and balances — if those institutions stand mute and brush aside their obligations❓ Why have a justice system that immunizes another branch? Why have a government if it doesn't work❓

On paper, our government is "of the people," meaning it derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. 

That's not what's going on. We are on the receiving end of a litany of executive orders- too many to keep track of, deliberately confusing❗ Some of our businesses, universities and the legal profession are caving (kow towing❗)  to those executive orders.

The security of our unalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — was embedded in a government created by our Founders. The authority of our government is solely with our consent — it is not divinely conferred on a king, a sovereign ruler or a benevolent dictator to whom the rules or an oath of office have no consequence. That is our evolution.

We need to get this train back on the tracks while it can still be done.

From Gregg Kishline, in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Trump is an old man who cannot even give a teleprompter speech

Echo report published the Daily Beast by John Mulholland

Until the last part of the last day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the event could not have gone much better for Republicans. Then 🥱came Donald Trump’s boring speech.

Donald Trump’s Speech Wasn’t Just Bad and Mad. It Was Boring

“If Fidel Castro were alive today, he would have told Trump that it’s dragging on a bit long.” That was the view from a trenchantly anti-Biden, conservative publication, National Review.

After four days of an expertly choreographed and at times brilliant production—the presence of the Gold Star families on Wednesday was a devastating political hit on Biden—the wheels, as they do with Trump, came off.

He was the worst part of his own convention.

It wasn’t just the length of the speech. Yes, it was long (at a record-breaking 93 minutes), but it was also rambling, chaotic and, after some perfunctory remarks about uniting the nation, he went on to sow the usual seeds of division and grievance.

Worst of all, he committed the cardinal sin of being boring.

(Also, can we all now put aside the absolute nonsense that was peddled about a new, transformed Trump in the hours after Saturday's shooting? It always looked like disingenuous, political bullshit. Turns out it was 💩.)

Yawn! The Trump rapture fest in Milwaukee pointed out a tale of two speeches—the opening, scripted remarks, and then frequent forays where he veered wildly from the teleprompter into a stream of consciousness.

One’s heart went out to the teleprompter. On center stage, it had prepared all week for its big moment in the spotlight—and then was casually cast aside, ignored and eclipsed by the wayward ego that is Donald Trump.

Maybe expectations were set too high. Trump was touted all week as the headline act that would close the event on a high. He was paraded like a heavyweight boxer about to enter the ring. The knockout would come Thursday.

Only it didn’t. Trump ended up getting in his own way.

The ground had been prepared by his team: Expect New Trump. A changed man. A call to unity. On Monday, the man himself told The Washington Examiner that instead of a planned “humdinger” of a speech, he would rewrite his convention remarks to focus on unity and togetherness.

“He understands there’s a moment,” Chris LaCivita, Trump’s campaign manager, told an audience in Milwaukee this week, “If there’s one person I know who’s capable of meeting the moment… it’s him.”

Only it wasn’t.

How did Governor DeSantis ever get elected in Florida? He is a terrible politician.

Echo opinion by Robin Abcarian published in the Los Angeles Times: 

The most depressing thing we learned about the 2024, Republican presidential candidates last week when they met for their first onstage encounter in Milwaukee is that most of them would vote for former guy President Trump, even if he is a convicted criminal by election day.

Most would probably follow him to hell, too.😈

This was supposed to be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ breakout night. After all, he is the front-runner among candidates not named Trump. But he didn’t make much of an impression on most commentators. To use one of his favorite insults, he was more a listless vessel than a breakout star.

It turns out that DeSantis is not very good at debate, at least not the kind that prefaces a presidential election. He managed to repeat and contradict himself, promising twice to “send Joe Biden back to his basement” and once to not let Biden “hang out in his basement this time. We’re going to run him ragged around this country.” Make up your mind, Governor!

Florida's Ron DeSantis has "absolutely zero" charisma. In other words, "a charisma deficit disorder".

DeSantis burst onto the national stage during the pandemic, demonizing public health officials like Anthony Fauci; picking pointless fights with Disney, his state’s most important economic driver; and striking out at anything he deemed “woke,” which his own general counsel defined as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” 

How radical!

Repeatedly touting his state on the campaign trail as “the place where ‘woke’ goes to die,” DeSantis did not utter that word once Wednesday night, which tells us that he finally grasps that it’s a dumb rationale for a presidential campaign.

Nor did he mention Disney, which has become such a thorn in his side that the man whose campaign bus proclaims “Never Back Down” has gone wobbly. 

Now, DeSantis professes to have “moved on” when the feud with Disney comes up.  In fact, DeSantis urged Disney to withdraw its federal lawsuit, which claims DeSantis violated the company’s 1st Amendment rights by retaliating for the company’s objections to Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law.

DeSantis has been falling in polls, with 38-year-old tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy ascending. I think DeSantis’ debate performance helps explain why he’s flailing.

First, as has been noted extensively, the man has exactly zero charisma. As we have seen in the past couple of months, he walks among voters wearing a grin-and-bear-it grimace. He wipes his nose, then shakes hands. He scolds and hectors children.

“Before the debate,” said a report in the New York Times, “Mr. DeSantis’s aides had predicted that he would be the center of attacks. So much for that. Rivals mostly ignored him.” In politics, that’s a fate worse than forgetting which federal departments you want to abolish.

Republicans are on the far wrong side of women's reproductive health

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/30/opinion/gop-abortion-common-ground/

A troubling reality for the GOP: No middle ground on abortion
There can be no consensus when you are taking rights away, and Republicans know it. Echo opinion by Joan Vennochi Boston Globe Columnist.

On the same day the Republican presidential candidates gathered for their first debate last week — minus Donald Trump — the members of the all-male South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a state law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion by a 4-1 vote.

Even those justices who supported the new law that bans abortion after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected — around six weeks — acknowledged what that meant: “To be sure, the 2023, Act infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” Justice John Kittredge wrote for the majority. The lone dissenter, Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty, drove that point home even harder: “The result will essentially force an untold number of affected women to give birth without their consent. I am hard-pressed to think of a greater governmental intrusion by a political body.”

During the Republican candidates debate in Milwaukee, Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, who calls herself “unapologetically pro-life,” tried to carve out “consensus” around some comforting middle ground that would be somewhat safe from such extreme governmental intrusion. 

But, up against the autonomy that is being taken from women — and freely acknowledged by those who are taking it — there isn’t any consensus or middle ground. Not right now.

Former Vice President Mike Pence and former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley in Milwaukee

In the runup to the 2024, presidential election, Republicans will try their best to make this election about President Biden’s age and the business dealings of his son. But in the end, it won’t be about that, or even about the pileup of criminal indictments against Trump. It will be about personal freedom and the eagerness of Republicans to strip it away, especially when it comes to a woman’s body.

And Republicans know it. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the abortion issue has been an electoral disaster for its opponents. In Kansas, voters defeated a constitutional amendment that would have denied a right to abortion. In Ohio, voters defeated a measure earlier this month that didn’t specifically mention abortion but would have made it harder to amend the state constitution; because of that it was supported by abortion opponents. As Mona Charen, a conservative columnist and policy editor for The Bulwark writes, “It’s time for the pro-life movement to face reality: The attempt to limit abortions through the law is a failure.” She urges antiabortion activists to switch their focus from placing legal restrictions on abortion to supporting women with crisis pregnancies.

They won’t — and that means the politicians who desperately want their vote won’t, either. This was also evident in Milwaukee, when Haley’s call for consensus was immediately shot down by former vice president Mike Pence. 

In Trump's ceaseless quest for votes from antiabortion evangelicals, Pence called Haley’s consensus talk “the opposite of leadership.” 

Yet, all Haley was proposing was that since it would take 60 Senate votes — a difficult hurdle — to impose a nationwide abortion ban, Republicans should coalesce around some basic points of agreement. Such as: “Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? 

Can’t we all agree that contraception should be available? And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”

Pence and the other Republicans on the stage couldn’t agree with that, even as they babbled about a 15-week national abortion ban. And, to be honest, neither will abortion-rights activists. When I asked Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Reproductive Equity Now, whether anything Haley said about abortion had merit, she was quick to say, via email, “I don’t.” She added, “We should not be playing ‘consensus’ with basic human rights. A 15-week abortion ban is an abortion ban, plain and simple. People need access to life-saving health care and must be able to make personal decisions about their bodies, lives and futures. 

If we’re to talk about ‘consensus,’ the consensus is clear; people overwhelmingly support abortion access.”

In his newsletter, “Arguable,” my colleague Jeff Jacoby argues that with language like that, the left sounds as intractable as the right. The problem for the right is that polling shows that a majority of Americans believe in the concept of “access,” which antiabortion extremists want to completely eliminate. In this heated political climate, with states already putting extreme abortion bans in place, even some of those who might someday share Haley’s quest for middle ground are going to be on the side of abortion access and the personal freedom and autonomy it represents. There can be no consensus when you are taking rights away.

And that is bad news for Republicans.