Online Public Relations Thoughts

This is no way to run a government, a corporation or a hotdog stand.  Businessmen need an amount of certainty to plan. With Trump, they're not getting it.  How do you communicate something that changes constantly?  

It's interesting that a solid majority of American voters, even Republicans, believe the President should follow court decisions even if he is opposed to them.  Judges are the last line of constitutional defense in citizens' eyes and that is good at a time when Congress has ceded its power to the executive branch.

It is clear from actions of Israelis that they consider the West Bank to be theirs to settle and they want resident Palestinians out.  This is an all too common incident lately.  The government is making no effort to protect Palestinians and as each village is destroyed by Israeli settlers the Palestinians are told to move elsewhere -- Jordan, Lebanon, anywhere but here. America has a parallel in Manifest Destiny in which white men were convinced that all the land between the East Coast and the West Coast was theirs to settle, indians be damned.  It was unfair and unjust then and now in the West Bank.  How do these ideas get started?  For America it was westward expansion.  For Israelis it is biblical.  Both movements have ensured long-term problems dealing with the oppressed.

The news industry is used to confrontation and controversy but now with a hostile White House, they are earning their keep.  The unanswered question is whether publishers will stand up or fold.  Already we have seen accommodations to President Trump.  Who will risk a lawsuit that ends in the Supreme Court other than the New York Times?  How willing are they to stand up for the First Amendment?  

If Elon Musk doesn't think this is a PR crisis, he's not as smart as people think he is. The public has turned against him.   

Chief Justice John Roberts has shown how to rebuke the President without mentioning his name.  Nicely done.  

The reactions to the Trump-Musk rampage through Washington are starting and Congressmen are bearing the brunt of anger.  Maybe they will learn from voters to hold the two of them accountable.  

Now the president is walking back his campaign promise to settle the Ukrainian war in 24 hours, especially since he hasn't done it.  He says now he was being "a bit sarcastic." How about another lie?  When is the public going to see through him?

Gold is like any other precious metal except that many trust its value and fly to it in times of financial distress.  There is no reason that it is a safe haven other than people believe it to be.  It's curious that other scarce metals like platinum don't react to market turmoil the way gold does. The psychology is interesting and it is worldwide, especially in countries like India where women buy gold jewelry to serve as family savings.  It is a quirk of human nature to place trust in it and not easily understood but accepted as a fact.  The same holds true for currency, especially the dollar, which is just paper but for the backing of the United States.  

This is embarrassing for Boeing, the builder of a faulty space capsule which stranded the astronauts at the space station.  With well known problems in its commerical aviation business and inept rocket construction, it is a picture of a proud company that has lost its way.  It will take years for Boeing to win its reputation back, if it ever does.  Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to forge ahead even with its latest rocket failure.  

Promise and performance.  How long will citizens put up with it and what kind of message will they send in the midterms?  Trump supporters might stay with him but what about independents?

Leave it to the secretary of Health and Human Services to espouse more nutritional bunk.  This time it is seed oils.  

 Any CEO will tell you that for the purposes of planning, there needs to be a stable environment.  One can forecast a year ahead, perhaps two years and put plans into action.  With chaos, planning becomes unpredictable and useless.  That is what is happening with President Trump's on-again-off-again imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico.  No one knows what to do nor how to read his vacillating mind.  His message is unclear and hopelessly contradictory.  The best that business can do is to hold on and take short-term action that scrambles logistics and marketing.  If Trump is a pro-business president, he's not demonstrating it.  

The astronauts stranded on the space station for months have refused to play along with President Trump's claim that he will rescue them after the Biden administration abandoned them.  Give them points for honesty. 

It has come to this that the news media need to fact check a President when he speaks.  All Presidents have to some degree exaggerated and made things up.  This one is arrogant about it and proud of his alternative facts.   

Ukraine and Zelenskyy don't deserve this and the US will go down as a fickle ally.  It is the opposite of MAGA.

 Republicans who previously supported Ukraine are now aping Trump's disdain of Zelenskyy. They flipped a switch from support to opposition.  Call it spineless for that's what it is.  As for Trump, dressing down Zelenskyy in public was a deeply disrespectful act that no President should have done.  The message to the world is that the US is no longer a reliable ally.