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7/13/25

7/13/2025

IF TRUMP CALLS SOMEONE 'VERY EVIL' & 'BAD,' IS HE TALKING ABOUT HIMSELF?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, in white hat, speaking in Texas; First Lady Melania Trump is at left, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. PHOTO CREDIT: White House video screenshot

IF DONALD TRUMP TOLD THE WORLD that you were “a bad person” and “a very evil person” should you take a day – maybe an entire week – to think about that assessment and consider the implications?
Because if there’s one subject in which Trump is truly expert, it’s what goes into being "very evil" and "bad."
Last Friday, Trump made that kind of a diagnosis during the visit he and the First Lady made to the Hill Country of Texas, where nearly 300 people may have died in the catastrophic July 4 flood.
It happened this way:
Wearing a “USA” baseball cap, Trump presided over a “round table” of Texas and federal officials, who variously mourned the tragedy and praised the ongoing rescue and recovery operations.
At one point, the session was opened to reporters, one of whom asked this question:
“Several families we heard from are obviously upset because they say those warnings, those alerts didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?”
Trump’s first reply:
“Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances.”
And then, instinctively, the president of the United States remembered that Job One is not reflection about how well government serves the country, but character assassination, public humiliation and reputation destruction.
Like a judge pronouncing the death penalty, Trump intoned:
“Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
A Texas Congressman, Republican Rep. Chip Roy, chimed in, according to The Daily Beast:
“For all of the media clamoring to ask that ridiculous first question and try to point fingers, the governor (Greg Abbott) said it best when he said pointing fingers is for losers.”
None of the news stories I ran across took Trump’s assessment of the reporter’s character to heart, noting that his attack was one of his standard “distraction” ploys, saying something personal and mean about someone, instead of addressing the question.
Indeed, most stories didn’t name the journalist at all, identifying her simply as “the reporter,” since it’s no longer news that any media type who asks a bothersome question could get that kind of response from the one person in America capable of blowing the world to bits.
But I wondered how the reporter – any reporter – would feel to be labeled “bad” and “very evil” on national television.

MARISSA ARMAS PHOTO CREDIT: Armas' Facebook page

A SUPERFICIAL SEARCH of the Internet found one story that identified “the reporter” – aired by the Texas TV station she’s worked for since earlier this year, KTVT Dallas-Fort Worth, which refers to itself as “CBS News Texas.”
She’s Marissa Armas.
According to a Texas blogger, Armas has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s in journalism from Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado.
She’s worked as an anchor and reporter at stations in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, and at NBC Digital and Latino. At Columbia, she was chapter president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She’s a native of Denver.
My quick scan of the Internet found no journalist defending her, nor any echoing Trump’s smear.
Armas posted a short mention of the incident on her Facebook page:
“Friday, I asked President Trump about whether there were sufficient warnings to people in Kerr County before the devastating floods, and this was his response.”
She posted a video clip of Trump’s comment.
Later, Armas was back at being her “bad” and “very evil” self, covering a vigil a week after the flood.
“With flowers and candles, in front of a large wooden cross, the Kerry County community mourned,” she said, and held up a microphone to Ava Vanwinkle, who said: “It’s very devastating to happen to such a small town; nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“As tears streamed down their faces,” Armas' narration continued, “community members looked at the photos attached to a growing memorial wall, showing the faces of the dozens of people who were killed and are still missing, a week later.”
So, Armas did what journalists are supposed to do, just kept on doing her job, while letting Trump’s rudeness speak for itself, Maybe she took Trump’s attack as a badge of honor, the way people used to brag about finding their names on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”

BUT HURTFUL WORDS have meaning and real-world effects.
If reporters seem to laugh off Trump’s attacks, are they still wounded? I also wonder whether some reporters – the real ones, not the sycophants who also roam the White House press room these days – tone down or even skip pointed questions, not wanting to trigger the commander-in-chief’s venom.
And more to the point, how many people who respect and follow Trump have added “the reporter” to their own encyclopedic lists of people to despise and disparage?
Trump’s long war against the press is far more serious than his schoolyard taunts against Melissa Armas.
He’s seeking to defund NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), with a House-passed bill pulling back money for two of the nation’s most trusted news sources. The measure could reach a critical Senate vote this week.
He’s bullied ABC and CBS into offering spurious “settlements,” hurting both organizations' bottom lines and credibility, while Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, seems determined to weaken that great newspaper, ostensibly to cozy up to Trump.

BECAUSE TRUMP SEEMS TO BE A NARCISSIST, thereby thinking of himself first , it’s possible that when he calls people names, he’s really talking about Donald J. Trump, and not you, me or Marissa Armas.
A case can be made that he’s at least a second-hand murderer.
By canceling most of the USAID program, he’s condemning millions of foreigners to early deaths from treatable diseases; his big, beautiful bill will cause millions of Americans to lose medical care, and some will die early.
His pull back on efforts to combat climate change could devastate the planet. His immigration “policies” rip apart families and deport people to dangerous countries. His tariffs threaten the economy and the well-being of people in our own and other countries. His foul, mean and dehumanizing language increases the possibility of political and cultural violence.
Talk about bad and very evil.

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7/4/25

7/4/2025

3 Comments

AS TRUMP TRIUMPHS,
SOUNDS OF HOPE
FROM A SMALL STATE

FADED and tattered, the flag is ready for another Fourth of July

ARE YOU FEELING AS OVERWHELMED as I am by Donald Trump’s string of “successes” in his hideous crusade to destroy our country – drowning the rest of us in his sewer of misery and shame?
At the same time, because I live in the nation’s smallest state, I'm inspired that such a tiny place has a loud and eloquent voice, encouraged, perhaps by the state's motto, “Hope." More about this later.
First, let me acknowledge that the nation is at a truly awful place, and that it’s possible that we are actually doomed.
For example, Trump today gets to play Robin Hood in reverse, with the Republican Congress passing his hideous mega-bill that will take away food and health care from millions of Americans, while tossing a few extra bucks to the ultrawealthy.
Trump had wanted – and got – the legislation enacted just in time for this year’s Fourth of July – turning the holiday into perverse betrayal of its noble founding principles.
You’d think the president’s enablers would have been wary of the timing, since somebody might actually read the Declaration, and discover the contrast between its eloquent vision of democracy and Trump’s racist, cruel and authoritarian agenda.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Trump’s just getting started: pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists, along with a bunch of other criminals; sending masked thugs to round up immigrants and tossing them into a growing gulag of detention centers; bullying universities, law firms, media companies and other countries; accelerating the destruction of the environment; betraying Ukraine freedom fighters and declaring war on scientists.

IS THERE NO END OF IT?
There must be. After all, Donald Trump, however repulsive, is merely human, so there be limits, counterforces,the same mortal vulnerabilities that frustrate and ultimately trip up the rest of us.
But it doesn’t seem to be working that way.
Everything we’ve learned about justice and fairness seems broken. None of the inspirational phrases and clichés seem to be working:

What goes around, comes around.
The pendulum swings both ways.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Nope, not happening, at least not so far.

DISPIRITING AND DISCOURAGING as Trump’s successes have been in his first five-plus months, I cannot accept that the future is as hopeless and bleak as it feels this Independence Day.
Yes, we could be hurtling toward our own version of the Fall of the Roman Empire. And just because we won the Revolution, the War of 1812, survived World War II, the Cold War, Watergate, McCarthyism and all the other contests of good over evil, there's no guarantee of a safe landing this time.
But I am inspired by my perspective from my tiny corner of the cosmos, Rhode Island.
Really, it’s a nothingburger as a state, which almost doesn’t deserve to be one. Rhode Island is almost impossible to find on a national map, measuring only 37 miles wide and 48 miles long, with just over a million-plus souls.

RHODE ISLAND is the little red dot. CREDIT - Wikipedia

But here's the thing, which I do mention a lot in these posts: the state’s motto is “Hope.” It was one of the original 13 colonies; and 249 years ago, two Rhode Islanders signed the Declaration of Independence.
These days, tiny Rhode Island has lots of big mouths, and during The Dark Times, they keep making me proud.
For example, Rhode Island has an exceptional Congressional delegation, including Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a U.S. Senator, a former U.S. attorney, and a former state attorney general, and who understands a thing or two about corruption.
In a floor speech while the Senate was debating the awful bill in the Capitol, Whitehouse said :

This place feels to me, today, like a crime scene. Get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten racket. This bill, cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers with huge handouts to big Republican donors.
It loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine.
When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust.

Another eloquent "local" voice is Tom Nichols, who is a writer for the Atlantic magazine, and formerly was on the faculty of the Naval War College in Newport.
Nichols lives in the town next to us, and he wrote this recently about Trump’s sour view of America, which often depicts our country as being no better than Russia and other bad actors:

… when Trump depicts America as an unending nightmare of crime and carnage, he’s not only trying to trigger a cortisol rush among his followers; he’s also creating a narrative of despair. It’s a clever approach. He tells Americans that because the world is nasty, all that “shining city on a hill” talk is just stupid and all that matters is making some deals to get them stuff they need...
... some people support Trump because they want certain policies on immigration or taxes or judges. Others enjoy his reality-TV approach to politics. Some of his critics reject his plans; others reject everything about the man and his character. But none of us, as Americans, have to accept Trump’s calumnies about the United States. We are a nation better than the dictatorships in Moscow and Beijing; we enjoy peace and prosperity that predated Trump and will remain when he is gone.
We live in an America governed by Trump. But we do not have to accept that we live in Trump’s America.

EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY, during the afternoon commuter rush, the Newport Democratic City Committee and other groups hold a “Bridge Brigade” demonstration at the intersection connecting the ramps to and from the Newport Bridge.
It’s largely an older group – some people are there with canes, others bring chairs – but they are boisterous, waving U.S. and Ukraine flags, with homegrown signs, big “RESIST” and “NO KINGS” banners, and they ring cow bells and yell and wave a lot.
The inspiring part is how many cars honk their horns when they see the group, which this past Wednesday numbered 35 people. With every blast of a car or truck horn, the demonstrators went crazy, shaking their flags and signs and hooting and hollering.
And maybe it was just me, but I felt that this past week, the exchanges between the demonstrators and drivers were louder, more joyful and more inspired, despite – or maybe because of – all the terrible successes Trump is enjoying.
Hey, it was just one protest in a small place – but the voices and horns were loud, happy and full of hope.
And maybe that’s how democracies are saved.

3 Comments

7/13/25

IF TRUMP CALLS SOMEONE 'VERY EVIL' & 'BAD,' IS HE TALKING ABOUT HIMSELF?

7/4/25

AS TRUMP TRIUMPHS,SOUNDS OF HOPEFROM A SMALL STATE

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AS TRUMP TRIUMPHS,
SOUNDS OF HOPE
FROM A SMALL STATE