I woke up this morning to the cover of the NY Daily News report about how, once again (surprise?), Donald Trump was found to have engaged in the “Do as I say, not as I do” game of hypocrisy. The story detailed, under the clever plays on words (Hasta La Visa, Honey!, Wall in the Family), that his plan to deport those who come to the USA as undocumented workers would have applied to the woman he chose to marry. The request to see documents to prove otherwise will probably be met with the same stonewalling that requests to see his tax returns has been met with, but the question remains — did she get preferential treatment because he had his eyes on her?
Right next to that story was another headline to debunk the claims he has been making about Hillary Clinton in his latest stump speech (though it dates back to four years after she left office as Secretary of State, so it’s more about what Obama‘arranged’) — Donald’s Iran vid claim just plane stupid. His claim that he saw video of the plane delivering the money to Iran is bogus (there is no video that media outlets have been able to identify, other than the one of the Americans on the plane that left Iran, but even more importantly, the reason for the financial payback was explained in great detail by President Obama in his press conference yesterday. It had to do with Iran’s payment to the USA for weapons that were never delivered. When the Shah died and hostages were taken, the deal was nullified.
Iran went to the Netherlands international court with a claim it was owed some $10 billion, but Obama, apparently, made quite an artful deal, getting them to settle for a little more than 15% of that, with the final price tag looming at $1.7 billion. Of course there is a matter of timing, which coincided with the Iranian nuclear deal, and then the ‘nefarious’ use of a plane to deliver cash (necessitated by the lack of a banking relationship with Iran — note: the money was not in US dollars, but rather Swiss francs and euros). Since negotiations were going on about the deal, the Americans being held were brought up and the loose ends of issues that had been on the table for as long as 37 years were resolved in one grand bargain.
I caught Fox 5’s Good Day New York this morning and they were right on top of the Melania story. Ironically, their guest ‘authority’, was none other than Michael Wildes, who is Trump’s immigration lawyer for his modeling agency. He claimed there was no foul committed in Melania’s eventual green card, otherwise the immigration authorities would have found an irregularity from when she worked as a model using a visa. Wildes also claimed he was a Democrat who would be voting for Hillary Clinton, so he was not simply voicing an opinion consistent with whom he worked for. Kudos to Greg Kelly for his refusal to let those statements go unchallenged, as he correctly pointed out that people fall through the cracks all the time. Not to say that it happened, but one might wonder if the quid pro quo of the day might have been Donald Trump’s payment for services rendered to the immigration official!
So, which story will Trump be speaking of to his sycophants? Does it really matter? Those mindless supporters are fueled by his conspiracy theories and outrageous claims. Any negative press that reveals that Trump did not do what he says he will do with Mexicans to an immigrant in his own ‘family’ will be met with cries of press conspiracy theories. It reminds me of my favorite Krautrock album by AmonDüül II, Dance of the Lemmings. Lemmings are any of various small, mouselike rodents of the genera Lemmus, Myopus, and Dicrostonyx, of far northern regions, as L. lemmus, of Norway, Sweden, etc., noted for periodic mass migrations that sometimes result in mass drownings. The image is that of a massu of lemmings following one ‘leader’ lemming that causes them to go off a cliff into the abyss! Get the Picture?