Donald Trump

Wednesday May 13, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday May 13, 2020

Bryan Adams’s Instagram post draws rebukes from Chinese-Canadian organization, social media users

A prominent Chinese-Canadian activist says she is shocked, disappointed and angry about an Instagram post on Canadian singer Bryan Adams’s official account that she and others say is racist.

January 29, 2020

The post contains a snippet of Adams singing his hit song Cuts Like a Knife. An accompanying description expresses his frustration that COVID-19-related restrictions have led to the postponing of three shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England.

“Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the @royalalberthall, but thanks to some f–king bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold,” the post read.

“My message to them other than ‘thanks a f–king lot’ is go vegan.”

Amy Go, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice called the post racist and believes it could stoke hatred of Chinese-Canadians.

“People look up to public figures. He is seen as an idol by many,” Go said. “It justifies this racist hatred against Chinese … This is so irresponsible and just so, so, so, so racist.”

Coronavirus cartoons

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, many have raised concerns about growing anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism in Canada, with reports of anti-Asian hate crimes on the rise in Vancouver, including physical and verbal attacks. 

But on Tuesday morning, the singer issued an apology on Instagram “to any and all that took offence” to his post. He said he just wanted to rant about “animal cruelty in the wet-markets being the possible source of the virus, and promote veganism.”

“I have love for all people and my thoughts are with everyone dealing with this pandemic around the world,” he wrote in the post. 

As of 10 p.m. PT Monday, his original Instagram video had received more than 1,500 replies. 

Many of the comments expressed love for his music and dismay he would not be touring, but dozens of others accused Adams of racism. (CBC)



 

 

Tuesday May 12, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 12, 2020

White House directs staff to wear masks after officials contract coronavirus

The White House on Monday directed all people entering the West Wing, where the daily operations of President Donald Trump’s administration are carried out, to wear masks after two aides tested positive for the coronavirus, administration officials said.

May 5, 2020

The new guidelines, released in a memo to the president’s staff on Monday afternoon, reflect a tightening of procedures at the highest levels of the U.S. government over fears that Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence could be exposed to the virus.

Trump’s military valet and Pence’s press secretary both tested positive for the coronavirus last week.

The 73-year-old president said on Monday he did not think those cases suggested the White House system had broken down.

“I felt no vulnerability whatsoever,” Trump said, adding he felt the situation was controlled “very well.”

Still, the president said he would discuss maintaining some distance from Pence, perhaps by communicating with him by phone, for a period of time. Pence worked at the White House on Monday, but did not attend a news conference held in the Rose Garden. Officials who attended wore masks, and speakers used a different podium from the one used by Trump.

Trump himself did not wear a mask while speaking, and ended the briefing after a terse standoff with a reporter.

Wednesday April 29, 2020

ABC News first reported about the memo, which also said unnecessary visits from other parts of the White House complex to the West Wing area, which includes the Oval Office and work space for senior advisers, are being discouraged.

Officials who work near the president have been getting tested for the coronavirus, but previously had not been wearing masks on a regular basis.

“Common sense has finally prevailed,” one senior administration official told Reuters.

Trump has been resistant to wearing a mask himself and has not put one on in public, though he said he tried some on backstage during a visit to a mask factory in Arizona last week.

On Saturday he met the top leaders of the U.S. military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and members of his national security team in the White House Cabinet Room. The officials did not wear masks, but had been tested for the virus in advance, a Pentagon spokesman said, adding that social distancing measures appeared to have been met. Secret Service agents in the room wore masks.

The president is in the age group that is considered high risk for complications with the coronavirus, which has killed more than 80,000 people in the United States alone and ravaged countries and economies worldwide. (CBC)



 

Tuesday May 5, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday May 5, 2020

The President Is Unraveling

The country is witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of Donald Trump.

December 20, 2016

In case there was any doubt, the past dozen days have proved we’re at the point in his presidency where Donald Trump has become his own caricature, a figure impossible to parody, a man whose words and actions are indistinguishable from an Alec Baldwin skit on Saturday Night Live.

President Trump’s pièce de résistance came during a late April coronavirus task-force briefing, when he floated using “just very powerful light” inside the body as a potential treatment for COVID-19 and then, for good measure, contemplated injecting disinfectant as a way to combat the effects of the virus “because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on them, so it’d be interesting to check that.”

But the burlesque show just keeps rolling on.

December 16, 2000

Take this past weekend, when former President George W. Bush delivered a three-minute video as part of The Call to Unite, a 24-hour live-stream benefiting COVID-19 relief.

Bush joined other past presidents, spiritual and community leaders, front-line workers, artists, musicians, psychologists, and Academy Award winning actors. They offered advice, stories, and meditations, poetry, prayers, and performances. The purpose of The Call to Unite (which I played a very minor role in helping organize) was to offer practical ways to support others, to provide hope, encouragement, empathy, and unity.

In his video, which went viral, Bush—in whose White House I worked—never mentioned Trump. Instead, he expressed gratitude to health-care workers, encouraged Americans to abide by social-distancing rules, and reminded his fellow Americans that we have faced trying times before.

April 7, 2001

“I have no doubt, none at all, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and well in America,” Bush said. He emphasized that “empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery.” And America’s 43rd president asked us to “remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat.”

“In the final analysis,” he said, “we are not partisan combatants; we are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.” Bush concluded, “We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise.”

That was too much for Trump, who attacked his Republican predecessor on (where else?) Twitter: “[Bush] was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history!”

March 26, 2019

So think about that for a minute. George W. Bush made a moving, eloquent plea for empathy and national unity, which enraged Donald Trump enough that he felt the need to go on the attack.

But there’s more. On the same weekend that he attacked Bush for making an appeal to national unity, Trump said this about Kim Jong Un, one of the most brutal leaders in the world: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!”

Then, Sunday night, sitting at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial for a town-hall interview with Fox News, Trump complained that he is “treated worse” than President Abraham Lincoln. “I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said.

By Monday morning, the president was peddling a cruel and bizarre conspiracy theoryaimed at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a Trump critic, with Trump suggesting in his tweet that a “cold case” be opened to look into the death of an intern in 2001. (Continued: The Atlantic)



 

Wednesday April 29, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Unpublished Wednesday April 29, 2020

US a Washed-up Empire

April 23, 2020

There was a time when the slick American propaganda held the world in thrall as if it were true. Many nations once gullibly looked to the US for leadership. Not any more.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed presumed US global power as a hollowed-out caricature. America’s response to the disease is abysmal. It is the world’s leader in the numbers of deaths and infections, unable to cope because of the woeful lack of an organized, functioning public health system. How damning is that?

April 18 2020

Another factor in why the US has been hit so badly by the pandemic is due to the parlous conditions for tens of millions of its workers who live on the brink of poverty with little social safety net. That speaks to the real undemocratic nature of American society as opposed to all the arrogant delusions of “exceptionalism”.

This appalling disaster is against a backdrop of Washington spending trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons and maintaining hundreds of thousands of troops in military bases all around the world backed up by legions of warships and warplanes.

April 7, 2020

US presidential historian Douglas Brinkley is quoted by Politico as saying: “The United States was once known for its can-do culture. We built the Panama Canal and we put a man on the moon. And now we can’t get a swab or a face mask or a gown and we have no real chain of command.”

March 26, 2020

Brinkley added: “We are not leading in the pandemic response, we are trailing other countries by a long shot. This is a crippling blow to America’s prestige around the world.”

China, South Korea, Germany, Russia and other nations, even US-sanctioned Iran and Cuba, have been much more effective in managing the COVID-19 crisis than the US. Why? Well, simply because they are not broke like the US is from its monstrous militarism and imperial overstretch. (Merely printing money is no solution.)

The calamity of the disease unfolding in the US is proof that its presumed global empire is all washed-up. Fitting the end of era mood, the country is being “led” by a president who thinks that injecting household bleach into the human body could be a cure for the virus. Trump increasingly sounds like mad Roman emperors Nero or Caligula.

American economist Joseph Stiglitz says the real state of US society is akin to a “third world country”. (Continued: Sputniknews.com) https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202004271079111624-us-a-washed-up-empire/

 

Tuesday April 28, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 28, 2020

Conservatives are struggling to make their mark in the midst of a crisis

It’s been a rough six or seven weeks for most Canadians. Politically, it’s been especially tough time for the Conservative Party and its outgoing leader, Andrew Scheer.

Andrew Scheer Gallery

While the House of Commons has been shuttered for weeks due to the pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been holding daily press conferences, as have some of his most important cabinet ministers. While the House has resumed reduced operations — a once-weekly in-person sitting and two virtual sittings — the stage is not nearly as large as it was before.

That hasn’t kept Scheer from taking to the airwaves. Unlike most provincial opposition leaders across the country (Alberta’s Rachel Notley being one notable exception), the Conservative leader has been holding regular press conferences of his own.

While Scheer has tried to use that platform to lay out his criticisms of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has at times been knocked off-message — for example, by questions about comments made by Derek Sloan, a Conservative MP and candidate for the leadership of the party, regarding the loyalty of Dr. Theresa Tam, the country’s chief public health officer.

Most provincial opposition leaders have kept relatively low profiles, with adjourned legislatures limiting them to press releases, email and social media to get their messages out.

Those efforts are unlikely to boost their popularity — particularly in the face of polling that suggests provincial governments have widespread support for their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.

But it doesn’t seem that Scheer’s more active approach is doing him or his party any favours, either. (CBC) 

March 27, 2020

Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called anti-lockdown protesters at Queen’s Park on Saturday “a bunch of yahoos” and said they were being “selfish” and “irresponsible” for demonstrating against provincial emergency orders in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Scores of people gathered on the Ontario legislative grounds on Saturday afternoon to call for an end to the shutdown of many services, businesses, activities and public spaces across the province amid the pandemic. At its peak, the protest drew about 200 people.

Ontario has been under a state of emergency for 40 days and much is closed as the number of COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and cases continues to rise. 

Ford, when asked by a reporter at a news conference about the protesters, blasted their actions. 

“These people that are absolutely irresponsible, it’s reckless to do what they’re doing. Personally, I think it’s selfish,” Ford said. (CBC) 

Meanwhile, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre took aim at the Liberals’ coronavirus stimulus programs on Sunday, saying that while his party supports compensating Canadians amid the pandemic, the measures are not working as intended.

“These massive programs will be like a gigantic experiment in freakonomics because in many cases they are having the opposite of their intended effect,” he told reporters. (Global) https://globalnews.ca/news/6870332/coronavirus-freakonomics-conservative/

April 23, 2020

Meanwhile, President Trump’s public statements about using disinfectants to potentially treat the coronavirus have put him in the company of pseudoscientists and purveyors of phony elixirs who promote and sell industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for autism, malaria and a long list of medical conditions.

The president’s comments, at a White House briefing last week, have already prompted widespread incredulity, warnings from health experts and a spike in calls to poison control centers around the country. The makers of Clorox and Lysol urged Americans not to inject or ingest their products. (New York Times)