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Oprah for President? Why Not?

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Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama...
Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama at a rally (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Cecil B. DeMille Award is an honorary Golden Globe recognizing “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” first bestowed (upon its namesake filmmaker) in 1952. On January 7, Oprah Winfrey, the first African-American woman to receive the prize, accepted with a rousing speech that has fans calling for a 2020 presidential run. CNN Money reports that friends say she’s “actively thinking” about it.

Just a few short years ago, the idea of a president without prior experience in political office was nearly unthinkable. Prior to 2016, the last major party nominee, let alone president, with no political resume was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, you may remember, whipped Hitler in World War Two.

And then came Donald Trump.

Like Oprah, The Donald is a billionaire and a former television personality. It seems that being a sitting or former state governor or US Senator (or general) is no longer a requirement for the top slot in American politics (the only president ever elected from the House of Representatives was James Garfield in 1880).

Apart from what one might think of his actual tenure in office, it’s far from obvious that Trump is more qualified than Winfrey for the post.

He’s a billionaire. She’s a billionaire.

He inherited wealth generated by sweetheart government housing contracts and managed to parlay it into larger wealth by leveraging political favors and massive debt, fleeing his failures  the bankruptcy wolves neared their doors.

She’s the child of a poor single mother in Mississippi who turned her high school radio gig into Chicago’s, then America’s, top-rated talk show and successful careers in writing, publishing acting, and film production. She became the richest African-American of the 20th century and the world’s first black female billionaire in the world.

Prior to Trump’s presidential campaign, there’s little doubt which of the two was more politically influential. Trump occasionally addressed politics with off-hand one-liners and feints toward running for office, fairly obviously as a way of building his personal business brand recognition rather than as a serious approach to issues or policy.

Winfrey, on the other hand, consciously spent decades establishing herself as an opinion leader on issues ranging from acceptance of LGBTQ Americans to the US invasion of Iraq to animal cruelty. She turned out tens of thousands of rally attendees — and likely hundreds of thousands of voters — for Barack Obama in 2008, probably making possible his victory over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries.

She also enjoys an advantage in the Democratic Party to the extent that she doesn’t seem to have dragged herself and others through the mud in the 2016 party in-fighting. She’s likely more popular at the party’s center than Hillary Clinton, and nearly as popular as Bernie Sanders on all but its furthest left fringes.

In my opinion, Oprah would beat The Donald like a drum in a presidential contest. I disagree with both of them on too many issues to vote for either one, but I relish a contest to which representatives of the failed political establishment aren’t invited.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Fire and Fury: A Tale of Two Trump Lawsuits

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Two days before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States, a former contestant on his reality TV Show, The Apprentice, sued him for defamation. At issue was his public response to her allegations of unwanted kisses and forceful gropes. He had caller her a “liar” and claimed she was motivated by greed and/or politics.

Now the shoe’s on the other foot: Trump is threatening to sue publisher Henry Holt and Co. if they release a new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff. He claims that the book contains falsehoods that “give rise to claims for libel” and demands that Holt “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination of the book, the article, or any excerpts or summaries of either of them [and] … issue a full and complete retraction and apology …”

Go pound sand, the publisher replied, and moved the release date up from January 9 to January 5.

While I’m sure that the juicy details of both cases are very interesting, it’s not those details that I’m concerned with.  What’s bothering me is a noticeable shift in Trump’s priorities.

In early December, Trump’s lawyers argued in court that he was just too busy and that his job was just too important for him to be dragged into court by a mere reality show contestant. He was arguably immune while in office, they said. The case should be put off until (hopefully) 2025.

“The president is the person who runs the executive branch,” his attorney, Marc Kasowitz, claimed. “He needs to be available 24/7.”

Summer Zervos’s attorney, Gloria Allred, countered that “we can take a deposition down to Mar-a-Lago in between him going to play golf.” Then everyone had a good laugh and I don’t recall hearing about it since.

OK, so maybe Donald Trump is too busy and too important to be sued. Maybe he needs to be available to be president 24/7. And maybe we should even cut him some slack on the golf outings and other escapes from the White House on the assumption that they are “working vacations.”

But inquiring minds want to know: If he’s too busy and important to be sued, how can it be that he has the free time, the undiverted attention span, and the scratchable itch to to go around threatening to sue others?

No sues for the goose, no sues for the gander, I say.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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News Flash for Jack Lew: The US Government is Already Broke

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Hundreds (RGBStock)

Former US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is bothered by the recently passed “tax reform” package, The Hill reports. His problem? It is “leaving us broke.” “How,” he wonders, “are we going to pay for the deficit caused by the tax cut?”

Lew headed the Treasury Department under US president Barack Obama, from early 2013 until the inauguration of Donald Trump last January. This means he would have been involved in budgeting for 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

I don’t recall Lew complaining, at least in those terms, about 2014’s $485 billion deficit. Or 2015’s $438 billion deficit. Or 2016’s $585 billion deficit. Or 2017’s $666 billion deficit. That’s more than $2 trillion added to the national debt — more than one tenth of the debt as accrued over more than 200 years, in just four years with Jack Lew running the federal cash register. In fact, I distinctly recall Jack Lew raising the roof every time Congress hesitated for even a minute before  voting increases in his borrowing power.

As I write this, the national debt stands at more than $20.5 trillion, and per the president’s 2018 budget request, the US government continues to spend money at a rate of about $7.8 million per minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — about $850,000 more dollars per minute than it raises with taxes.

When Jack Lew refers to “us” and “we,” he  wants every American to assume responsibility for a “fair share” of that debt. Currently, such a share would come to nearly $63,000 per US citizen.

But “we” didn’t borrow that money. A few hundred politicians did. Yes, they claim that “we” are their co-signers.  But I don’t recall offering to cover their bar tabs. Do you?

As far as “broke” is concerned, the US government hit that point, and then some, long ago. It is bankrupt. Its accrued debt is greater than the US GDP. That is, the US government owes more money than is produced in goods and services in the US in an entire year. If every last one of us was taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t pay off that debt.

Nobody of sound mind expects the debt to ever be paid off. The holders of US government bonds are those who hope to make a killing before the carriage turns back into a pumpkin and (to mix metaphors) to find a chair just before the music stops. They just want the US government to take as much as it can, for as long as it can, out of our hides before the scheme collapses and the United States becomes Greece.

Vis a vis “paying for the deficit caused by the tax cut,” Mr. Lew, the answer is simple: Reduce spending to match revenues, just like every responsible household in the country does. No, that isn’t going to happen. Politicians of Mr. Lew’s party and Mr. Trump’s party are going to continue maxing out the credit card until it starts getting declined.

A time will come when the politicians repudiate the debt. And the time is long past for us to repudiate the politicians.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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