The re-election of an out-of-office president, for the second time, brings to mind an oddity of the convention of the ordinal numbering of the United States Presidents — those under the Constitution.
George Washington was the first; John Adams the second, and so on the list runs until we get to the curious case of one man, Stephen Grover Cleveland, who is regarded as both the 22nd & 24th presidents. All because the 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, served between his two presidencies.
Now it is happening to Donald John Trump. He is listed as the 45th president of the United States, having served from 2017 through January of 2021. Now, re-elected after an “interregnum” of the 46th president, Joe Biden, Trump is slated to serve as the 47th president.
It is apparent that, according to this convention, what is being ordered with numbers is the presidencies, not the presidents as such. And it is assumed that a second (or third, or fourth) term in office is the same presidency as the first term of a president, unless broken in sequence by the term of another president.
Paul Jacob, in addition to writing columns five days a week on this website, is the chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. He recommends these resources to help increase understanding of an important issue on the ballot in eight states across the union.
ACV President Avi McCullah’s “Path To Citizenship”:
ACV-NC Director Kevrick McKain testifying before NC Senate Re-Districting and Elections Committee:
MO Treasurer Vivek Malek sets the record STRAIGHT on Noncitizen Voting:
Vote YES on Amendment 7 to Preserve Missouri Election Integrity!
GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Meet the Press:
Repeatedly we hear former president and current presidential candidate Donald John Trump accused of declaring he would be “a dictator on Day One,” and that, therefore, we cannot trust him to respect the Constitution.
Sure. He said it. No doubt. But the original statement was a bit of jesting with Sean Hannity:
Hannity had asked if he would ever use power as retribution against anyone, and Trump responded orthogonally, saying “except for Day One,” then clarifying: he’d close the border and “drill, drill, drill.”
He was answering a different question. This is quite clear. You have to be somewhat illiterate not to understand what Trump was doing here. So can we assume that they really object to is his border policy and petroleum production stance?
Bloodbath!
Trump is charged with threatening a bloodbath if he is not elected. And he did say the word. But the context was also closer to anodyne. He predicted a bloodbath if tariffs in automobiles from Mexico were not raised “100 percent,” which he promised to do:
Now, the ultra-protectionist policy Trump lays out here may be close to insane. But it’s not threatening-riots- or threatening-insurrection-insane. That is just a fantasy. Of his opponents.
It is worth remembering, also, that there is a difference between a prophecy (or prediction) and a threat (or dire promise).
It’s risky, covering the Trump Phenomenon so close to the election and mere hours after the Joe Rogan Experience dropped a much-awaited interview with the candidate.
But in the week following an over-hyped and rather lame October Surprise — the old accusation (from 2022) about Trump griping about not having loyal generals, as Hitler had — it’s worth mention that the most notorious accusations about Trump have fizzled spectaclarly.
And we’re not talking just about the Russia Collusion nonsense, which early could be spotted as made-up “oppo research” fantasy.
Consider just three:
“Very Fine People on Both Sides”
“Dictator on Day One”
“Bloodbath”
In each case we have something Trump actually said (there are few good reasons to be sure about the “Hitler’s loyal generals” comment), but taken completely out of context by his Democratic opposition and by the regular run of news “journalists.”
Let’s take the first accusation today: that Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the August 2017 Charlottesville protests, meaning neo-Nazis were fine and their counter-protesters were fine. Everybody’s fine! But, as Snopes.comexplained, Trump meant that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Confederate statueiconoclasm issue.
But we know this not just because Snopes said so. Watch Trump’s original statement, but let it run more than ten seconds:
As Snopes summarizes, “He said in the same statement he wasn’t talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be ‘condemned totally.’”
Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that he ran for the presidency primarily because of the sheer awfulness of Trump’s “very fine people” comment, and candidate Kamala Harris has repeated the calumny. While Joe may have a senility excuse, does Kamala?
Meanwhile, something was lost in the brouhaha: it was Trump’s comments on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that were most interesting.
Should we take down statuary of the first and third presidents because they owned slaves?
“What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?” Trump asked a reporter. “You like him?”
Trump was clearly more interested in the iconoclasm issue. But Democrats avoid rationally exploring that subject.
Tomorrow: “Dictator on Day One” and “Bloodbath.” And more!
Every election year rumors fly. Some are shot down.
A recent example? Scuttlebutt had it that presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy had “made a deal” with the Democrats:
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. refuted a Washington Post report from earlier this week that said he would drop out of the race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in exchange for a cabinet position if she wins in November.
During an Aug. 15 Latino Town Hall on TikTok, he told the moderators that the story is “fake news.”
“I didn’t ask for a cabinet position,” Kennedy said.
This story gets interesting, actually, when we consider what Kennedy goes on to say: that everyone complains about political divisions, but then complains when rivals talk to one another! And who has Kennedy talked to?
“I want to meet with all candidates about dampening down the rhetoric and unifying our country.”
Kennedy said candidates, including former President Donald Trump and Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Oliver, have met with him.
“Kamala Harris said she doesn’t want to [meet],” he said.
A multi-province illegal trade in cadavers has been uncovered in China. “Between 2015 and 2021, Li Zhiqiang, a doctor at The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, allegedly sold around 10 cadavers to Shanxi Osteorad, with the price ranging between 10,000 yuan ($1,395) and 22,000 yuan ($3,070),” The Epoch Timestells us.
“This is something very strange,” explains U.S.-based China commentator Tang Jingyuan, quoted in the article. “In theory, even if the cadavers were from organ donors, Li doesn’t have the right to decide what to do with them, they belong to the families.…
“What’s more, Li dismembered the bodies, froze body parts, and sold them illegally and in secret. Both the bodies and their death were suspicious. How did they die? Why there were no families to claim the bodies?”
But this appears to be not a story of just one culprit: “Between January 2015 and July 2023, Shanxi Osteorad Biomaterial Co., previously a state-owned company, and an affiliated firm, allegedly acquired more than 4,300 human cadavers from several funeral homes, a transplant center, and a medical university, to make bone grafting materials.”
Life may be cheap in China. But death apparently pays — third parties?
Note: Image, above, from Robert Wise’s 1945 motion picture, The Body Snatcher, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
