Number of Trump's 'false claims' (or lies) nears 5,000, The Washington Post reports

Cartoonist Dave Granlund lampoons President Trump's reaction to an anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times written by a senior administration official. 

From cartoonist Taylor Jones: Federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh wouldn't be pinned down at his confirmation hearing last week on whether he believes Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling giving women the right to an abortion, is settled law.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail in the run-up to the Nov. 8 congressional elections, and President Trump's lies accelerated over the summer.

Those were only two of the developments in another week packed with news from the White House and the media Trump has been warring with since he took office.

"Buckle up," The Washington Post's Fact Checker said on Friday. "President Trump is on the cusp of making 5,000 false or misleading claims since his inauguration [on Jan. 20, 2017].

"In fact, things have accelerated sharply this summer. In June, 534 claims. In July, 448. In August, 469."

Meanwhile, "in a sprawling, highly anticipated book by Bob Woodward, the White House is depicted as an often-out-of-control operation where former aides stole papers from the president's desk and derided the commander-in-chief," The New York Times said.

In an appearance in California, Obama joined the front lines of the Democratic battle to take back Congress, describing the coming election "as a pivotal moment for a divided nation and a chance 'to restore some sanity to our politics,'" The Times said.

The former president urged Democrats to vote.

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News portrays Trump as a rabid dog.

Cartoonist Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin shows Trump's reaction to excerpts from the Bob Woodward book and the anonymous op-ed piece in The Times.

A glimmer of hope from latest Dem defeat as national media call Trump a serial liar

Cartoonist Dave Granlund suggests Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, is conning the American people again with the latest version of a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News in New York State calls the bill a shell game that will end health-care coverage for 23 million people.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Democrat Jon Ossoff's loss in a Georgia run-off election was billed as a referendum on Donald J. Trump's early months in office, but voting data tell a far different story.

Unlike other races, most notably the Nov. 8 presidential election, "it wasn't because Democratic voters didn't show up," according to Politico.com:

"More than 259,000 votes had been tallied as of [last] Wednesday afternoon, considerably more than the 193,000 in the first round of voting in April.

"In fact, turnout was much higher than for other off-year special elections in recent history," typically between 100,000 and 225,000 voters.

"John Anzalone, Ossoff's pollster, said the Democrat's campaign succeeded in turning out votes -- but they were swamped by Republicans who came out in numbers that ended up dwarfing previous high-profile special elections..." in a district that has favored GOP candidates for decades.

The sky-high turnout drove Karen Handel, the GOP candidate, to a nearly 4-point victory [last] Tuesday, "despite most pre-election surveys showing Ossoff with a small-but-shrinking lead." 

So, even though Ossoff lost, his campaign offers a glimmer of hope for future elections.

He showed Democrats can be motivated to turn out, and not get snookered as they did when polls predicted Hillary Clinton couldn't possibly lose to a racist, con artist and tax dodger who boasted of molesting women.

Trump's lies

On Friday, The New York Times Opinion section published the "definitive list" of Trump's lies since he took office.

But they won't stick, just like The Washington Post's Fact Checker hasn't made much of a dent in Trump's image among his supporters.

In fact, as a counterpoint to these lists of lies, national TV reporters continue to interview white people who voted for President Trump, and still show up at his rallies, and none of them have any second thoughts.

No surprise. They were delusional then, and they remain delusional.

These TV reports continue to ignore that Trump was swept into office by a tide of racism and misogyny unlike anything we have seen in modern American history. 

Another weird edition

The Sunday edition of The Record of Woodland Park is another weird one.

The lead Page 1 story reports the so-called millennial generation prefer city life, so does that mean North Jersey traffic congestion has reached its peak and we might actually find a seat on a rush-hour bus or train?

What appears to be a local front-page story about a Hackensack man actually discusses "crime and corruption in Georgia state prisons."

A sports column about a baseball player named Judge runs at the bottom of Page 1.

Roger Stone

On Saturday's front page, that position was taken up by a long, meandering Mike Kelly column on "political dirty trickster" Roger Stone, Trump's former adviser.

The column went on and on, and sounded like a rewrite of other pieces that have appeared in the last decade.

For example, "The Dirty Trickster" was the headline on a New Yorker profile of Stone way back in the June 2, 2008, issue.

The two photos of Stone in The Record show him wearing a custom-made suit, shirt, tie and shoes, and either laughing or smirking, as if he doesn't have a care in the world.

You'd never know Stone is a "person of interest" in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

2016 election

During the presidential campaign, Kelly, who has been banging out his column for about 25 years, interviewed unemployed factory workers who appeared to favor Trump, and in the process, the reporter took several pot shots at President Obama's record.

He has a second column on the front of today's Opinion section under this headline:

"Why the Democratic Party is such a mess"

His first paragraph refers to Ossoff's loss in Georgia, but the column is actually about "Shattered," a book he read about the Democrats, whom he calls "the once inspiring party of FDR, JFK and LBJ" (1O).

Kelly calls Hillary Clinton "a bitter loser, incapable of admitting her mistakes."

Many other observers say Clinton lost because the news media allowed Trump, Governor Christie and other Republicans to demonize her over everything from Benghazi to her emails.

And while GOP racists and misogynists went to the polls in large  numbers, many registered but apathetic Democrats stayed home on Nov. 8, throwing the election into the antiquated Electoral College.

Still, how can Kelly call Clinton "a loser"? Remember, she won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, even though so many Democrats stayed on the sidelines. 

If Ruskies did help elect Trump, then now is the time to 'Lock him up! Lock him up!'

A cartoon from Jeff Darcy of Cleveland.com portrays the warped mind of President Trump, who is shown equating Nordstrom "killing" daughter Ivanka's fashion line to President Putin killing thousands of civilians in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war and in Ukraine.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The New York Times is reminding readers that President Trump "has still refused to answer questions about contact between his campaign and Russia," and an Op-Ed columnist called that "an unacceptable silence."

Meanwhile, a Times editorial notes:

"President Trump may have thought the departure of his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, would end the controversy over his administration's involvement with Russia, but the damning revelations keep on coming.

"The whole fiasco underscores the dysfunction and dishonesty of his White House and how ill prepared it is to lead the nation."

The New York newspaper has taken the lead in reporting Trump-Russia contacts, as is evident on the front page of The Record, where a USA Today story quotes The Times:

"The New York Times reported that law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted calls and phone records showing Donald Trump's presidential campaign aides, as well as other associates, having repeated contact with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the [Nov. 8] election" (1A).

As evidence mounts of Russia's role in electing Trump, many recall how The Record of Woodland Park and news outlets across the country demonized his opponent, Hillary Clinton, without any evidence her private email server endangered national security or broke the law, as Republicans claimed.

They also recall how our very own GOP thug, Governor Christie, whipped the Republican National Convention into a frenzy of calls to "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

So, now may be the time for Trump critics to start chanting, "Lock him up! Lock him up!"

The FBI is calling

Also on Page 1 today, Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports:

"FBI agents have been calling Syrian refugees in New Jersey and asking to meet -- alarming advocates who say they fear the visits could be a first step toward surveillance at a time when refugees have been cast as a suspect group" (1A).

Christie was the first, in November 2015, to advocate barring Syrian refugees, including children, from New Jersey and the rest of the country.

Then Trump incorporated that Syrian refugee phobia into his controversial travel ban, which has been suspended by a federal appeals court.

Local news?

Gannett's editors have put readers of local news on a starvation diet.

That's the only conclusion you can reach after looking at today's Local front and seeing a story on who will pay for replacing "the high school's aging synthetic turf field" in tiny Waldwick, population 9,839 in 2013 (1L).

News media could have done a lot more to prevent the election of Donald J. Trump

Cartoonists R.J. Matson, above, and Mike Keefe, below, commenting on President Trump's travel and refugee bans, which are largely affecting Muslims from seven countries, including Syria.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The headline on my post today contains a fundamental flaw:

Even if the The Record of Woodland Park and other news media had tried harder to prevent the Nov. 8 election of wacko racist Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States, the effort would have been met with a great deal of skepticism.

The conservative Newsmax.com says, "Only 18 percent of Americans trust national news and just 22 percent trust local news, according to the Pew Research Center."

When I checked PewResearch.org, I found trust in such social media as Twitter and Facebook was far lower, only 4 percent.

So, that might explain why none of the widely reported scandals -- attacking a Gold Star Muslim family, dodging federal taxes, boasting of grabbing women's private parts and so forth -- stuck on Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Still, The Record and other news outlets can be faulted for never setting the record straight when Trump was a candidate and now that he is president.

Travel ban

Screaming headlines in the Woodland Park daily today and Monday report protests and outrage over Trump's executive order that bans people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

All refugees from Syria also are banned, which Governor Christie recommended right after the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. 

But many experts agree our no-fly list has done a great job of keeping terrorists from entering the country since the 9/11 attacks on America.

And, they say, we should fear home-grown terrorism far more, as shown by the massacres in Orlando, Fla., and Sacramento, Calif.

Illegal immigrants

When Trump pledged to deport illegals who committed crimes, The Record and other media never reported President Obama expelled 2.5 million illegal immigrants -- more than any other president.

Since Jan. 20, when he was inaugurated, Trump has ordered construction of a wall on the Mexican border and renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.

But the new factories American and foreign companies built in Mexico have improved the economy to the point where Mexicans returning to their country outnumber those immigrating to the states. 

Voter apathy

Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million, but he got an unseen boost from legions who were so apathetic they didn't even bother to exercise their right to vote.

Voter turnout in the Nov. 8 presidential election was the lowest since 1996, when 53.5 percent of voting age citizens turned out, CNN reported on Nov. 30, when election officials were still tabulating ballots.

Only about 55 percent of voting age citizens cast ballots in the contest between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

The Record's Charles Stile and other reporters who focus solely on state and national politics -- instead of issues -- are responsible for much of the apathy shown by voters (see Stile's column on 1A today).

That's how Christie was re-elected in 2013, despite the lowest voter turnout in the history of a gubernatorial election.

And that's how Trump's supporters -- including racists and misogynists -- prevailed on Nov. 8. 

Voter suppression

Oh, in the first version of this post, I forgot to mention I.D. laws and other forms of voter suppression in states controlled by Republicans.

In 2013, Christie vetoed a bill to allow early voting in New Jersey, but when Clinton criticized him in 2015, the GOP thug denied he ever did any such thing.

And let's not forget Russian President and war criminal Vladimir Putin's interference in the presidential campaign on behalf of Trump.

It's not for nothing Trump is considered by many to be an illegitimate president.