Donald Trump’s March to the Presidency

by Walter Brasch

      The near-impossible has happened, and Donald Trump is three months from being President Trump. From local elections to the presidency, this general election may have been the most vicious since Thomas Jefferson challenged John Adams in 1800. Both major candidates turned to attack ads to enhance their own campaigns.

      Donald Trump flourished on the seeds of hate planted by the Tea Party, and then played out the dictum of Joseph Goebbels that if you keep telling lies long enough and blend them with propaganda, they will turn into truth. From the moment he entered the presidential race until his final triumph, he kept hammering on two themes. The first strategy was to push the premise that under President Obama the United States had lost its greatness and only Donald Trump could restore it. To this concoction he then brilliantly added fear to the mixture. Name a fear—any fear—and and it was probably in Trump’s campaign rhetoric. The first part of that fear was immigrants bringing drugs and guns from Mexico and central America; the second part was that Radical Islamic terrorists were coming to America from the Middle East. He also instilled the fear that Hillary Clinton would take away the Second Amendment right if she became president, something no president could do under the Constitution. Finally he coated his campaign against Hillary Clinton’s with constant Benghazi and e-mail scandals and kept repeating it at every rally, and he had a product he force fed to a gullible public.

      Hillary Clinton improved her communication with voters near the end of the campaign, but for much of the campaign she was protected by a phalanx of assistants who kept her unapproachable except for photo ops. She should have shut down the e-mail and Benghazi scandals much earlier than she did; several Congressional hearings had already proved she was not at fault. The flip-flop press conferences by FBI director James Comey also led the voters to believe she may or may not have been at fault in both scandals.

       The Libertarian party cut into Trump’s base, and the Green Party cut into Clinton’s base, but neither was strong enough to cost either candidate the election.

      The Establishment Media at first dismissed Trump’s politics as just another sideshow. But, Trump kept making outrageous comments, and the media kept acting as his personal mouthpiece without doing much fact checking any of his rhetoric. Trump boosted his candidacy by using the media to attack what he continually called the lyin’ liberal media. He gained momentum with each tweet and every rally, proving he didn’t need the establishment media to arouse a fan base.

      The Voters allowed themselves to be led by Trump who appealed to their frustration with establishment politics and their alienation from government. Trump emphasized he was an outsider, even though he and the SuperPACs were more inside the beltway politics than most candidates. Trump’s core was white alienated males who didn’t have college degrees; Clinton’s core was college-educated men and women.

      Each candidate relied on the power of outside organizations to further gain traction in the race to the presidency. For Clinton, it was primarily organized labor; for Trump, it was the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA.

      By Nov. 8, almost all polls had predicted Clinton would win the presidency. There was one problem—they were wrong. They underestimated the strength of rural America and overestimated the weakness of urban America.

      At the end of the day Clinton had had more individual voters, but Trump had more electoral voters and the presidency.

      The next campaign began Nov. 9.

Race Issues Dominate White House Race

by Walter Brasch

(part 2 of 2)

Donald Trump says he watched the destruction of the World Trade Center, and saw “thousands and thousands of people [who were] cheering as that building was coming down.” Every non-partisan fact-checking site and news medium debunks Trump’s faulty recollection. But 9/11 burnished an image in his mind of terrorism by Muslims. His solution is to issue an unconstitutional moratorium against Muslims who wish to emigrate to the U.S.

He plays to the fears of Americans by declaring President Obama has plans to bring 250,000 Syrian refugees into the country, and says, “We don’t know anything about them.” But, we do know about “them” because the vetting process for admitting persons to the U.S. is about two years; the U.S. in fiscal year 2016 plans to admit only 10,000 Syrian refugees.

The extreme right wing denounce President Obama for attending an elementary school in Indonesia where, they claim, he was indoctrinated in anti-American propaganda and became a Muslim. For the past 12 years, the right wing has referred to the president as Barack HUSSEIN Obama, emphasizing his middle name. What they don’t emphasize is that the Founding Fathers were adamant that there is a separation of church and state, and that no one religion is included or excluded from persons running for any office. Nevertheless, the President was baptized in the United Church of Christ and is a Protestant.

On the last day of the Democratic National Convention in July, Khizr Khan, the father of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in combat in Iraq, asked Trump if he “even read the United States Constitution. I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’” After pulling a pocket-sized Constitution from his suit jacket, he then asked, “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing—and no one.”

Some of Trump’s advisors claimed the Khans, who are Muslims who emigrated from Pakistan, could have been terrorists—Trump himself didn’t rebuke them for their comments—and then insensitively said he also sacrificed because he “created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” He also challenged Ghazala Khan, Capt. Khan’s mother who, he said, had stood mute besides her husband and had “nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.” Ghazala Khan responded in a commentary in the Washington Post that she told her husband she could not overcome her grief to speak because “hearts of pain can never heal as long as we live. Just talking about it is hard for me all the time. Every day, whenever I pray, I have to pray for him, and I cry. The place that emptied will always be empty.”

There is also a strain of anti-Semitism in the base of Trump’s hard core supporters. With Hillary Clinton increasing her lead over Trump, according to several polls, Trump replaced campaign chair Paul Manafort with Steve Bannon, who had been CEO of Breitbart News, an extreme right-wing online news site that promotes white nationalism and opposes immigration of individuals who would be part of minority cultures in the United States. Bannon’s ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, accused him of anti-Semitism during a child custody fight in 2007. In a sworn statement to the court, she said Bannon opposed sending their twin daughters to the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles. “The biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend,” Piccard said. She also testified that Bannon said “he doesn’t like the way they [Jewish parents] raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.” A spokesman for Bannon denied the truth in Piccard’s statements.

An individual created a print ad of a picture of Hillary Clinton, with a red Star of David over a stack of $100 bills; inside the Star in white lettering was “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” That anonymous person, who regularly posts anti-Semitic material, then posted the graphic on Twitter. Trump never disavowed the anti-Semitism of that graphic, and re-tweeted it to his 11 million followers. He later said it wasn’t a Star of David but a depiction of a sheriff’s badge, but sent out another tweet, this time with the words in a circle instead of the Star of David.

Several Jewish journalists who have covered the campaign and have written stories about Trump and his campaign report they have received anti-Semitic email from Trump supporters; Trump himself, while insensitive to Jews, may not be anti-Semitic.

A few of Trump’s advisors are Jews, and his daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism in 2009. However, most Jews are liberals who are willing to stand up for the rights of all minorities and are strong advocates of social justice. They see in Trump personality traits that that remind them of more than four millennia of anti-Semitism from numerous rulers, demagogues, and masses who believed their own problems were caused by Jews and other minority religions and cultures.

Hillary Clinton said Trump “is taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party.” She accuses him of being “xenophobic, racist, misogynistic,” and asked, “If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?” Trump’s response was to criticize Clinton and the Democratic party for using race-baiting and fear mongering tactics. At a campaign rally this past week in Jackson, Miss., he blurted out, “Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human-beings worthy of a better future. She’s going to do nothing for African Americans. She’s going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She’s only going to take care of herself, her husband, her consultants, her donors—these are the people she cares about. She doesn’t care what her policies have done to your communities. She doesn’t care.”

Most of the 13.4 million Americans who voted for Trump in the primaries are White middle-class individuals who believe they are alienated from the political and business worlds, and are willing to follow a billionaire businessman running for the presidency who can channel their bar-room hate. Of the 2,472 delegates to this year’s Republican National Convention, only 18 were Blacks. Trump never protested or even discussed how the Republicans should be doing more to get diversity within the party. Trump’s campaign rallies are dominated by Whites. No matter what he says or does, that isn’t likely to change.

When many of the extreme right-wing look into mirrors, they see Donald Trump.

[Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist, has covered government and politics at all levels for four decades. His latest book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Gain.]

Chewbacca and the World of Semi-Reality News Media

by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

      A Facebook video of a woman wearing a Chewbacca mask and laughing almost hysterically in her car has drawn more than 140 million hits from numerous sources in the past two weeks.

      Candace Payne, a 37-year-old mother of two from Grand Prairie, Texas, has had to hire a publicist to help field the numerous calls from the media—and, perhaps, wookies who want to have an affair.

      Why so many people have been intrigued by the three-minute video may be because people just need to laugh in a year in which political hate and the media have come together to annoy anyone with a temperature. It may also be because the people realize that the media have been abysmal purveyors of information, and the political conventions and what passes as TV news have become circuses of mediocrity.

      The presidential primaries are filled with candidates attacking each other, with lies and half-truths fogging the political debate, all of which are faithfully recorded, published and aired but seldom evaluated and challenged by the media.

      The mass media, especially television, have devolved from in-depth reporting to entertainment news, erroneously believing that’s what the public wants and needs. And so, TV leads off with whoever makes the most outrageous statements, with the opposition countering with even more outrageous statements. The media focus upon Trump’s outrageous statements and the protests by Hispanics and liberals at his rallies; for the Democrats, the media focus upon Hillary Clinton’s scandals, all of which are trumped-up exaggerations without facts.

      Only in the past few months has Sen. Bernie Sanders received any acknowledgement from the media. Still far behind in media coverage are Dr. Jill Stein (Green Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian party), Bob Whitaker (American Freedom party), Darrell Castle (Constitution party), Gloria LaRiva (Party of Socialism and Liberalism), Jim Hedges (Prohibition party), Mimi Soltysik (Socialist party), and dozens of other candidates who have ideas that America should at least have a chance to hear, but are placed into a black hole by the media, which believe they have no chance to win the presidency.

      Because the media have become the megaphones for outrageous behavior rather than communicators of information, Donald Trump has spent very little for print or electronic media advertising.  As long as Trump puts on a big enough dog-and-pony show, he gets coverage, forcing his rivals to spend ad dollars to match the free TV time he wallows in. But, after Trump and Clinton finally secure their parties’ nominations, their campaigns, the Republican and Democratic National committees, and dozens of Super PACs, all proclaiming they want to cut governmental programs and spending, by the November 8 general election will have spent more than $2 billion on political advertising in the mass media.

      The pretend-journalists who cover the campaign lean to insipid “objectivity,” afraid to challenge the candidates and terrified of delving into substantive issues. Many just don’t have the intellectual depth to know enough to challenge the lies and half-truths, so they lob easy questions at the candidates and then believe that by tossing bland questions to the public, they are getting “the pulse of the people” who fulfill the media expectations by responding with equally useless answers—“Uh, like, I kinda like him [or her] because he [or she] says what I believe and what I, y’know, want to hear.”

      For most reporters and their editors, there is the fear that if they get too intellectual, if they challenge the candidates, those candidates will not grant them access while their audience tunes them out, preferring the reality entertainment that now passes as political coverage. It is a reality where a woman in a Chewbacca mask makes more sense than the political candidates and the news media that cover them.

      [Rosemary Brasch is a former secretary, labor union grievance officer, and instructor of labor studies at Penn State and UMass. Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist, professor emeritus from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and author of 20 books; his latest one is Fracking America.]

      

Donald Trump: A Problem Even for Conservatives

By Walter Brasch

      The bully of the playground continued to be in the media spotlight and charging ahead to the Republican nomination for president.

      In the 11th Republican debate, Donald Trump, bold and arrogant as always, kept up the attack against his three remaining opponents. To the man who once delighted in being called The Donald, Sen. Ted Cruz was “Lyin’ Ted,” a reference he made more than just a few times. However, several political fact checkers over the past three months have dismissed Trump’s claims as little more than half-truths, exaggerations, and lies. Politifacts, which checks candidate statements, revealed that about three-fifths of what Trump said during the campaign are incorrect. Among some of the errors Trump has made are that some of the families of the 9/11 suicide crews were in the U.S. prior to taking the lives of almost 3,000; that five detainees at Guantanamo Base, Cuba, whom Obama released were back on the battle field attacking Americans; that Mexico sent its citizens, especially criminals, into the U.S.; that the U.S., under the nuclear ban treaty with Iran, would be required to defend that nation if there was an attack by Israel; and that several polls show him ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Several times over the past two decades, Trump has flip-flopped on issues,  and then later claimed he hadn’t.

      Sen. Marco Rubio, said Trump during the debate, was “the little man.” Rubio, however, got in a penetrating remark about Trump’s small size of his hands possibly being the size of another part of his body. There was no fact-checker present to verify if Rubio was accurate on that statement.

      Sens. Cruz and Rubio, both far-right conservatives and political rivals, have banded together to denounce Trump, each hoping for the Republican nomination, each facing a storm of Trump’s blustering that has led voters to place him firmly in command of getting that nomination.

      Ohio Gov. John Kasich, more moderate than each of his three rivals and sharper on foreign policy than them, has tried to remain above the bickering, but the debate and the campaign have deteriorated into little more than a bar room brawl, with name-calling dominating a voice on issues and Trump, Cruz, and Rubio interrupting and talking over each one numerous times. In contrast to the Democrats’ debates, which focused upon issues, this one in Detroit was more like a heated session of TV’s “The View” than a true debate, with Trump’s profanity-laced debate points duplicating his profanity-laced campaign speeches.

      A few hours before whatever the Republicans wanted to call it, Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ nominee for president in 2012, called Trump a phony and a fraud. “If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession,” said Romney who argued that Trump’s proposal of a 35 percent tariff-like penalties “would instigate a trade war and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.”

      Turning to foreign policy, Romney plainly stated, “If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.” Romney said that Trump, who believes he’s “very, very smart,” is not “very, very smart.” In response, Trump numerous times before, during, and after the mock-debate called Romney a loser, adding that Romney’s campaign was a “catastrophe” and “an election that should have been won by the Republicans.”

      One part of Trump’s not so smart knowledge of the issues was when he declared he could save $300 billion from the federal budget solely by a regulation of drug prices, an outlandish claim with no substance. However, there have been numerous examples, other than his demeanor, of Trump not being qualified to become the president.

      Although he blares constantly about his $10 billion bank roll and how smart he is as a businessman and entrepreneur, while refusing to release any documents to substantiate his business income, Trump has declared bankruptcy of properties four times. Several of his companies—among them Trump Airlines and Trump College—have failed.

      Before his campaign Trump ostentatiously claimed that President Obama was born in Kenya not Hawaii and questioning Obama’s right of the presidency. The truth, upheld by newspaper notations, a birth certificate, and the federal courts, proved Trump and the “birther movement” wrong, but yet they have been consistent in throwing out their nonsense. He claimed that Sen. John McCain, subjected to torture by the North Vietnamese, was not fit to be president because of that imprisonment. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” said Trump.

      During the campaign, Trump mocked New York Daily News reporter Serge Kovaleski’s muscular disorder; he mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearance.

      He has HHH  unleashed numerous policy proposals, most of which have little foundation of reality.

      He has repeatedly stated that if he was president he would build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and require Mexico to build that wall. However, he never addresses how he will get Mexico to fund that 2,000 mile wall. He has claimed that President Obama plans to allow about 250,000 Muslims from Syria to emigrate to the U.S., a claim that is about 11 times larger than reality. More important he doesn’t publicly look at the expense of additional border patrol agents and staff to patrol that wall, or how to keep illegal immigrants from tunneling under the wall, or going around the wall by boat or air, especially since he has proposed no new budget for the Coast Guard.

      He now says he had spoken out against invading Iraq after the 9/11 attack, but the facts are clear that he never supported going into Iraq. He claims he has seen thousands of Muslims on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River cheering when the planes from Al-Qaeda, but again, experts and eyewitnesses dispute those claims.

      He says he wants a moratorium on all Muslims entering the United States, which is allowable under the Constitution, but doesn’t negate innumerable arguments of the logic or morality of banning those who pose no threat to the U.S. nor why he is singling out one religion other than the fact that some radicalized Muslims, less than .001 percent of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, pose any clear and present danger. He also doesn’t address how to fund an increase in the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and staff to enforce stricter immigration rules set by executive decree.

      He was slow to renounce the endorsement of David Duke, former hrand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

      Although he viciously attacks his last three opponents, he has thin skin. When anyone challenges his opinions for any reason he bellows back in superheated hyperbolic attacks. When Fox News anchor Megan Kelly posed tough questions to him, his response was to refuse to show up for a debate that she later hosted. This past week he dropped out of as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting, unwilling to accept the few boos and jeers that would surely be sent to him, and not needing C-PAC for support.

      Several Republican leaders have spoken against Trump; many conservative talk show hosts agree, hoping for a Cruz or Rubio nomination. But this time they are solidly in the minority as Trump, using a $100 million campaign of misinformation, has unleashed his inner soul of demagoguery upon voters, to make them believe that a billionaire is just like a lower middle-class citizen who does go to bars, has a few drinks and sometimes engages in verbal profanity to argue his position.

      If the Republicans have a contested convention or if Trump has captured enough delegate votes to be the nominee it could mean a continuing decline of the Republican party that would diminish the prospects to retain their Congressional majority and also affect local races.

      [Dr.  Brasch is an award-winning journalist, professor emeritus of mass communications, and author of 21 books, His latest book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit. The book is available through www.greeleyandstone.com or amazon.com]

‘10 Commandments Judge’ Running for President

by Walter Brasch

           

    

The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was removed from office for defying the Constitution and a federal court order is one of 14 major candidates running for the Republican nomination for the presidency.

            Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary unanimously had ordered Roy S. Moore removed from office in November 2003 after he refused to remove from the judiciary building rotunda a 5,280 pound granite monument to the Ten Commandments. Around its base were extracts from the Declaration of Independence, quotes from the Founding Fathers, and the National Anthem. The three foot square by four foot tall monument was funded by private contributions.

            As circuit judge, Moore had placed onto the wall of his courtroom a wooden Ten Commandments plaque he had carved, and opened each court session with a Protestant prayer. He also had defied a Circuit Court ruling to remove the plaque and to cease prayers. A suit filed in the Alabama Supreme Court was dismissed for technical reasons, and Moore said he would continue to hold prayers before court.

            His campaign for Chief Justice, supported by the Christian Family Association, was to return “God to our public life and restore the moral foundation of our law.” On July 31, 2001, about six months after he was inaugurated as chief justice, Moore personally supervised the installation of the granite monument, stating that the Supreme Court needed something grander than the wooden plaque in the Circuit Court. In the subsequent lawsuit, Glassroth v. Moore, the chief justice, using the words of the Alabama Constitution, argued  “in order to establish justice we must invoke ‘the favor and guidance of almighty God.’” The Ten Commandments, he said, are the “moral foundation” of American law; the presence of the monument recognizes “the sovereignty of God.” What Moore didn’t state is that Exodus and Deuteronomy have different versions, and subsequent Christian religions have at least three versions. It is a Protestant version that was carved into the granite.

            The federal court ruled that placement of the monument, and Moore’s repeated statements that the monument represented God’s sovereignty over all matters judicial and moral, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. That decision was upheld by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

            With strong popular support, Moore said not only were the courts’ rulings illegal, but that he would continue to defy them. Moore frequently cited the Alabama Constitution that justice was determined by “involving the favor and guidance of Almighty God.” The message sent to the citizens was that it’s acceptable to disregard two centuries of legal history that gave the federal constitution supremacy over states, and to violate federal law if you disagree with it. For a citizen to do so carries penalties; for a judge to do so carries removal from office.

            Reflecting upon the case, Moore told rockthecapital.com that even eight years after his removal from office, he “would still make the same decision.” The role of government, says Moore, “is to secure those rights that [a Christian] God has given us.”

            He says that while he supports religious diversity, the “source of our morality stems from our belief in a god, and a specific god.” However, in his Dec. 13, 2006, column for WorldNetDaily, Moore stated that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim, should be denied the right to hold office because “in the midst of a war with Islamic terrorists we should not place someone in a position of great power who shares their doctrine.”

            Roy Moore says he is running for the presidency because “there’s a need for leadership in the country,” and neither President Obama nor the leaders of both parties in Congress are providing that leadership. “Petty politics,” he says, are taking precedence over the needs of the country. “We can’t get anything done,” he says, “because decisions are [made] not what’s good for the country but what is good for the party.”

            Moore identifies a weak economy as “the foremost problem today.” The nation “is going the wrong way,” he says. He acknowledges that much of the problem came under the Bush–Cheney Administration, “but was increased by Obama.” Although the Republicans propose cutting critical social programs rather than raising the debt ceiling, every Congressional leader, Democrat and Republican, voted to increase the debt ceiling during the past decade, with the highest increases under Republican presidents: Ronald Reagan (189%), George H.W. Bush (55%), and George W. Bush (86%). In Bill Clinton’s two terms. The debt ceiling was increased only 37 percent; Barack Obama is asking for a 35 percent increase.

            Moore, a “states’ rights” advocate, shares the views of most conservative candidates for the Presidency. Among those views are:

            ● the federal income tax should be abolished.

            ● Abortion, for any reason, should not have federal funds because not only does it “contradict the right to life contained in the organic law of our country,” it violates the 14th Amendment.

            ● People should “have the right to choose their own employment,” instead of having to join unions. Therefore, says Moore, all states should have “right-to-work” laws. If Moore’s vision is enacted, these laws would effectively cripple unions from representing the workers.

            ● Same sex marriage, says Moore, violates the will of God. In one case, while he served as chief justice, he argued that homosexual behavior is “a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it.”

            However, on a couple of issues, his views lean closer to those of liberals. He opposes the nation’s entry into war without Congressional authorization. Moore is a graduate of West Point, who became an MP company commander at the end of the Vietnam War, and then graduated from the University of Alabama law school. He opposes the U.S. intrusion into Libya on both military and legal grounds. “It’s very easy for a president to be sucked into global wars,” he says, “but it’s not our goal to go over there [Libya] and take out a leader just because we don’t like him.” Unlike many Republicans, he acknowledges that the Libyan attack, like the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the Bush–Cheney Administration, should have had Congressional approval under the War Powers Act of 1973.

            Moore, who owns horses—he once spent a year as a cowboy in Australia working for a fundamentalist Christian—believes that the dwindling population of wild horses and burros in the Southwest, and all wild animals, should be protected. Both the Bush–Cheney and Obama administrations have failed to do so, often influenced by the cattle and meat industry.

            Moore, near the bottom of the pack in the polls, probably won’t become the Republican nominee. But, unlike some conservative candidates, he doesn’t parade his religious beliefs to gain votes. He lives the life of his religious convictions, and isn’t afraid to make sure everyone knows what they are, especially when they provide the base for his political and judicial views.

            However, it’s one thing to be religious, and to have your religion be a part of your life. But the Founding Fathers were specific in their belief that religion should be separate from government. They had seen the evils of a religious-based government, where one specific religion dominates the daily lives of all.

            They didn’t want to eliminate religion. They wanted to assure that Americans had the right of being believers of any religion—or no religion if they wished.

            And that’s why there is strict separation of church and state, something Roy Moore, as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, didn’t fully understand in his open defiance of the Constitution. And that’s why he should not be considered for the presidency.