By Sean Yoes, AFRO Baltimore Editor, syoes@afro.com
“I’ve watched every State of the Union Address since I graduated high school in 1983. But, not this year,” is what I wrote in this column Feb. 3, 2018. And like Donald Trump’s first State of the Union, I did not watch his pernicious prime time broadcast from the Oval Office on Jan. 8, regarding ostensibly immigration.
Trump has been backed into a corner like an obtuse rat; he shot off his mouth during his meeting on Dec. 11, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, who is once again the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“I will take the mantle,” spewed Trump in the Oval Office as members of the media recorded every word, hand gesture and facial contortion of the 45th president and the two Democratic leaders. “The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down, and I’m going to shut it down for border security.”
After nearly three weeks (and counting) of the Trump government shutdown, which adversely affects more than 800,000 federal workers (who won’t get paid on Jan. 11), Trump is beginning to squirm on the hot seat. And true to form, the 45th president has shape-shifted from rat to weasel in an attempt to shift blame for the Trump shut down to the Democrats. So, hundreds of thousands of federal workers who haven’t been paid since before Christmas, who like many other Americans are struggling to make ends meet, won’t get paid until at the earliest Jan. 25.
Sean Yoes (Courtesy Photo)
Chaos and acrimony have been mainstays of this White House, but now millions will be directly and indirectly impacted by the Trump shutdown, all because of a fake border crisis, hitched to an imbecile’s campaign promise.
All of the networks opted to carry what turned out to be Trump’s wall of lies and for what purpose exactly?
Trump has told about 7,000 lies in two years according to the Washington Post and the consensus of most following his nine-minute speech was that nothing new was revealed, just more half-truths and whole lies. He has delivered more expansive versions of his xenophobic vitriol hundreds of times since he first descended the escalator in Trump Tower June 16, 2015.
Maybe the networks should have called B.S. on Trump, just as Nancy D of Baltimore has done.
Early in December as it seemed clear a second speakership was imminent for Pelosi, the Baltimore native began her methodical evisceration of the besieged 45th president.
“It’s like a manhood thing with him,” Pelosi said matter-of-factly, following the meeting on Dec. 11 when she and Schumer clowned Trump and he `took the mantle’ of the shutdown. “As if manhood can be associated with him.”
Trump has attacked thousands (literally) of people via Twitter for the slightest perceived disparagement, but when Pelosi attacked his manhood Trump didn’t tweet a mumbling word. The bumbling president has good reason to be reticent.
There is no American politician who possesses more guile than Pelosi; the daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., (the 39th Mayor of Baltimore, 1947-1959) and the sister of Thomas D’Alesandro III, (the 43rd Mayor of Baltimore, 1967-1971). American big city machine politics is literally in her blood and she took her Mobtown skill set and blazed a pioneering pathway of her own. She moved to San Francisco in the 1970’s and worked her way through the California political menagerie; she is currently the 17 term congresswoman representing California’s 12th congressional district, which consists mostly of the city and county of San Francisco.
On Jan. 3, Pelosi, the first and only woman to be elected to Speaker of the House in history, seized the House gavel for the second time. It is the first time that feat has been accomplished since the legendary Sam Rayburn of Texas did it in 1955. She has pledged Trump won’t get “one dollar” for his fanciful wall.
So, it is Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi of Baltimore and her unparalleled political pedigree and grit, versus Donald John Trump; the intellectually incurious (a “f—ing moron” in the words of Trump’s former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson), lazy, unfocused, flim-flam real estate developer and brand huckster from Queens.
My money and the hopes of millions are riding on Nancy D.
Sean Yoes is the AFRO’s Baltimore editor and the author of Baltimore After Freddie Gray: Real Stories From One of America’s Great Imperiled Cities.
