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WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT.  President Trump Mid-Term Review. By John F. Bailey. July 29, 2018:

Perhaps  no president has dominated the nation as Donald Trump has.

Trump performance and his  chilling growth in popularity was analyzed by White Plains’  Frank Bruni who explained why Mr. Trump holds on to his support while confounding his critics. Bruni wrote in The New York Times last week:

“the volume and velocity of his offenses turn them into a blur, just as the alarms we in the media sound become white noise. This was true during his (Trump’s)  campaign. It’s even truer of his presidency, and it’s one of the most unjust, infuriating aspects of his endurance. His shamelessness is actually his saving grace.”

It’s the John Wayne affect. “The Man with No Name” effect:  tough guy attitude. The Bogey toughness.

Americans  like toughness and that is Trump’s great appeal to all those driftin’ cowboys out there.

The key to Mr. Trump’s business success was to make promises to banks and organizations he was dealing with.  When things weren’t working out, he’d say there’s no way i can do that, and with the banks and organizations and individuals on the hook for money big time, — they, rather then take an asset loss on their balance sheets, carried him. Trump is doing that now, getting his way with the world.

That’s  how bullies win. They threaten. Let them intimidate you to save face, the tough guy wins.

This week was “Walk on. Walk off. Walk Back Week at the White House, soon to be known as Trump House.

Mr. Trump rejected criticism that he committed treason in praising Russia by rejecting the findings by the FBI and intelligence officials that Russia had interfered in the elections. He said he would meet with Vlad the Impaler in Washington, then on Thursday the White House said that meeting won’t take place until “the witchhunt is over.”

He imposed tariffs on China hurting the american soybean market then gave a $12 billion bailout to farmers who might be hurt. (I hope that does not go to corporate-owned farms.) He embarrassed England’s Teresa May for failing to go through with Brixit then agreed to discuss with the European Union suggestions for tariff compromise.

Are you, beginning after 19 months, to see a pattern here in Trumpism?

So it goes. Day in day out.  Outrage tempered and glossed over by an “aw shucks i did not mean it,” and the offense is groped over and we all breathe a sigh of relief. He plays us. He is not stupid. He is Machiavellian.

Criticism of the president slides off him. He is made of something better than teflon it’s “Trumplon.”

As the president’s approval rating by Republican voters  and feckless Republican congressional members grows, and Trump’s  candidates continue to win in red states—the equally feckless democratic party is nowhere.

Democratic “leaders” keep flailing into the Trump Tarbaby and getting stuck. 

They look glassy eyed when trying to give reactions to the twist and turns, walk-outs, walk-backs and switcheroos of the Trumpster-In-Chief.

With three months to go before mid-terms, Democrats have failed to devise a dynamic message going into the midterms.

So late to the ball.

Where are the he-men democrats?

This lack of creativity ability to understand the Trump power to persuade and bring out the worst in people or feed the evil that lurks in Americans through his stream of demagoguery in 18 months has brought America to the brink of a dictatorship, strongman leadership.

It’s weighted to the rich, amoral industrialists who’d rather betray their country to bolster their stock prices, corrupt financiers and investment firms with constitution rights trampled by a feckless Supreme Court who will rule with the powerful every time.

There are no Judge Learned Hands today.

What is demagoguery? A demagogue and  demagoguery is defined as:

The central feature of the practice of demagoguery is persuasion by means of passion, shutting down reasoned deliberation and consideration of alternatives. Demagogues “pander to passion, prejudice, bigotry, and ignorance, rather than reason.” 

Do we recognize such a person like this today? Quick, anybody?

Mr. Trump is right in a league with Adolf Hitler  and Leni Riefenstahl  media mistress of the Hitler regime.

Mr. Trump just has more tools: Twitter, Fox News, his White House propaganda website, reporters underestimating him.

His success with his base, means that the midterms are not going to be pretty.

The Midterms are only 3 months away and the Democrats have nothing. No message. No hope. No candidates!

Only Democratic women are standing up and trying to turn the tide of Trumpism — Powered by Trumplon!

They have sadly, no Trumplonyte!

Because Trump has a plan and the Democrats don’t.

His plan is to take away the freedoms, the protection of the law and the courts  that once made America great .

He wants to make the powerful comfortable and the afflicted powerless, the poor poorer and the people who are not white out of the country.  His tactic: create enemies of the people and blame them for your unhappiness and failure to succeed.

He’s done a sobering, frightening job in 18 months. He’s going after first the press. Then congress then the courts, then your rights, then the military. That’s his plan.

This week, Kaitlin Collins of CNN acting as a pool reporter at a White House photo OP asked him four questions. They were not great or smart questions and would have been easy to answer with one word or two. He refused to answer them then had White House press officials prevent her from attending an open press meet and greet.

He would never have thrown a male reporter out. He threw her out because she was a woman.

Did the reporters, her colleagues  support her by not covering the meet and greet. Did the rest walk out?

It is a mystery to me why so many women support a man who oppresses women, embarrasses them, and supports mysogynists and enablers of sexual assault in his administration.

This substance “trumplon” and trumpism is the right stuff apparently. Perhaps all political leaders have it.

Because Americans seem to be suckers for it. This time, the country we know may never come back the way it was.

Democrats. Republicans. Pay attention.Do not be afraid. Take a stand.

Don’t just fundraise.

Go out and work.

WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT–THE MIDYEAR REVIEW. By John F. Bailey. July 26, 2018 UPDATED 7/31 With News of WP Pavilion new design of their buildings raising questions:

Walmart told City Hall Tuesday they were not staying in White Plains and would close  August 10.

This is not good. The reasons that Walmart said publicly in previous published reports  originally were financial performance in the Main Street location and the desire to expand its footprint and the need for outdoor parking.

On Thursday afternoon, Phillip Keene, Walmart Corporate Spokesman issued WPCNR this statement when asked if any issues with the landlord prompted their departure after 12 years, and whether the company’s was up. Here is that statement:

Mayor Roach doesn’t seem to think there’s a problem filling the Walmart vacancy – if the building measures up to a top notch retailer’s qualifications.

The Mayor said:

 Nationwide the retail landscape is shifting rapidly and dramatically.  Fortunately, we have worked hard to reposition the city by bringing more residential and corporate presence into the downtown.  The building is a 50 year old former Sears store in the heart of downtown.  Anyone familiar with the real estate market in White Plains will realize that there will be no shortage of proposals for the site, which will better fit the demand in the downtown. 

I received the call from Walmart at 9:15 this (Tuesday) morning advising of their decision.  My immediate concern is for the workers who are losing their jobs.  

We have a very low unemployment rate in White Plains but this may also be an opportunity for those who wish to change their career path.  I contacted our Education Training Center, which is an innovative program that trains people for jobs where there is a shortage of qualified people, for example health care, culinary, and hospitality to name a few.  The ETC is willing to work with Walmart;  I conveyed this information to Walmart and we look forward to working with them to make this a reality. 

So ended the Mayor’s statement. But here’s the foreshadowing indicated by Walmart’s forthright statement.

However—White Plains is in a state of perpetual change.

If retail is in such flux, as the Mayor says, how can the many mixed use projects (the city has approved) attract the number of retailers/restaurants/services that will make the millennials being sought happy in the new apartments that are now in the way too distant future.

(Commentator’s Note: One week after Walmart walked out of White Plains, Lennar, developers of the White Plains Pavilion rebuild, announced to the Common Council, they could not get financing for the level retail they had envision for the project. Well, if Lennar, the number 2 home builder in the country can’t get retail or financiers to bite. Every project the city has right now is in big trouble. Every one includes retail to drive revenues for the city. The concept appears shattered.)

As Jim Benerofe has long said on the White Plains Week program, retail has been overbuilt in this country.

The sagging results in this county since the “recovery” began four years ago, show that. How long have we been in the money anyway?

Walmart departing is the judgment of a retailer who has been in that location 12 years through a bad recession. And now they move out? How bad are their financials there?

Now there is a big time retail drought for this new White Plains fiscal year right there.

Hopefully Sears will not depart the Galleria. Frankly I do not see how Sears survives on the sparse traffic that store generates in The Galleria. But they must know what they are doing.

But the more you watch corporate decisions, the more it seems that  they react too late to trends.  They keep wishing for the past. T

The more you watch city planners everywhere the more you get the feeling that they lack vision today and spot zone their cities. They  Suggest cookie cutter development after cookie cutter development. Like the proliferation of shopping malls in the 1960s and 70s. Like corporate parks along Westchester Avenue which have died.

In White Plains we are watching Metro North redo the train station with interior cosmetics, supposedly to give millennials our target lure amenities as part of their commute.

Metro North is not thinking big, and White Plains has not the spine to tell  them they have to think big. That train station could be something like the Union Station in Washington, D.C., the Richmond Station in Richmond Virginia or even Grand Central with all it’s restaurants.

The present station in White Plains is simply a glamorized elevated subway stop.

It needs something in it that generates revenue for the city—a hotel a convention center—maybe they cannot build it on the geography there, but no one has said that. It is a project conceived in the dark despite the city propaganda about it. Wi-fi in a railroad station is no reason to go to someplace to live.

The city has not yet revealed any responses for its request for proposals for its city owned lots on the east side of the train station, either. Probably more apartments filled with restaurants and open space.

But if you were a retailer would you commit and lease to go in there before the apartments were filled up? I don’t think so. That’s why the delay in this whole downtown transit district with its various makeovers could be years in the making, at least 10 years and the present snail’s pace on site plans and construction.

If Walmart walks, why would anyone come in to take that space?

Of course it would make a great place for a new city hall that property if the city bought it and the old City Hall could be turned into another luxury building with retail on the bottom. What vision.

You, too can be a planner.

Demographics, planners, please!