What a news day and week, as Obama says good bye, the chosen cabinet members get grilled, the President Elect holds a contentious press conference, and news outlets get called out. Wow. Let’s take them one by one.
Obama gave his farewell speech and as you knew he would, he claimed victory. “Yes we can” became “yes we did”. His audience believed him. We gave our grades last week and Monday. In our opinion, no he didn’t.
He’s not going away, and unlike past presidents we expect Obama to be vocal and attacking the administration. He is dedicated to what he thinks America should be.
The hearings are hard to watch. The sacramoneous attitude of those opposing nominees like Jeff Sessions for attorney general is sickening. Watching Cory Booker break precedent and testify as an active senator against another was simply a disgusting political act. He offered nothing except stories of the civil rights movement and nothing on Sessions. He did it for political purposes, an early start for his 2020 presidential run, and turned the hearing political. What a shame, such far cry from when we had statesmen in office.
I watched them grill Rex Tillerson, too. Will someone explain to me why a businessman who made deals with Russia and other countries to grow his business, drive growth and increase profits is so disturbing to Democrats and liberals? Is it because the top eight (8) of Obama’s appointments had only 5 years business experience (but a full government one)? Tillerson had 41+ years in business alone. We elected a businessman and want a change. As Obama said when he won, “elections have consequences”.
Trump’s news conference certainly says buckle up for four years of media battles. The conference opened with his new PR secretary attacking the CNN and Buzz Feed story that alluded to Russian tapes on Trump, that he denied. VP Elect Pence then repeated some denunciations and introduced Trump. Then it got really interesting as Trump battled the press. He called out CNN big time and it got nasty. The conference was set to explain his business decisions (he is exiting and his sons are running it, as well as turning profits from international travelers to his hotel over to the federal government). But the media was far more interested in anything Russian. Trump supporters will love his actions at the conference. The anti Trump people will think he was arrogant and probably naive. It was different for sure, and the next four years will be wild. The big loser today was CNN.
Stay tuned, the news is interesting and we’re still nine days to inauguration.
How many hardened terrorists will Obama release this week from Guantanamo? Where is the coverage on this travesty and the fact so many he has released are back in battle? Who wants to be the one to tell a Mother her son was killed because Obama wanted Guantanamo closed?