Colin Powell can’t stomach Trump
It looks like Donald Trump is in very good physical shape.
That’s taking into consideration that at 70 years of age, he might become the oldest person ever elected to the U.S. presidency on election day.
Of course, Trump made sure that revelations about his good health were rolled out Trump-style – on national TV.
He’d undergone an extensive examination the week before, and he sprung the findings on America, while appearing with Dr. Oz on his show last week.
He’s probably happy, though, that he didn’t have his blood pressure checked the morning he appeared with Dr. Oz.
That morning, some nasty, leaked emails were released that could have sent his blood pressure skyrocketing.
Former National Security Advisor/Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell – a staunch Republican – had some mighty harsh things to say about Trump in those emails.
According to Powell, Trump is a “national disgrace,” who’s also an “international pariah.”
It’s no secret that Powell jumped party lines to support President Obama in 2008 and in 2012.
But he never trashed John McCain or Mitt Romney, when he endorsed Obama.
Because he also had some unkind things to say about Hillary Clinton in a few of his emails, it’s unclear who he’ll support in November.
One thing is for sure, he simply doesn’t like Donald Trump one bit.
In fact, he may have publicly criticized him, but he felt that, “To go on and call him an idiot just emboldens him.”
So he seethed, quietly. Especially about Trump’s call to have Obama produce his birth certificate.
“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote.
Powell left no doubt about who he feels was behind that “birther movement.”
“When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim,” he wrote in an email to a journalist, who’d also been his former aide.
And he said what many Americans said when Trump tried implied that the Christian Obama is a secret Muslim. Powell asked, so what?
“As I have said before, ‘What if he was?’ Muslims are born as Americans everyday,” Powell wrote in one of his emails.
Powell is highly regarded among Republicans and Democrats.
He’s seen as a straight-shooter.
So it’s not surprising that he even blasted Hillary Clinton for her handling of the email controversy, calling her “dumb.”
He claims the whole thing would have gone away if she’d handled the email controversy honestly.
“She should have done a ‘Full Monty’ at the beginning,” he wrote.
But he did defend Clinton when it comes to the never ending Benghazi controversy. One that has produced eight congressional committee investigations.
In an email to his fellow former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, he called the Benghazi matter “a stupid witch hunt.”
Trump might be in tip-top shape, but that’s probably not because he does any form of conventional exercising.
Instead, he must feel like he’s on a political treadmill, every time he thinks he’s making headway.
Whenever he claims that the economy is bad, and it’s bad because of the “Obama/Hillary Clinton” economic policies, he finds himself running uphill.
The facts keep getting in the way.
When President Obama campaigned for the ailing Clinton last week at a rally in Philadelphia, he must have given Trump a little heartburn.
Obama boasted that the U.S. Census Bureau finds that average household incomes leaped to $56,500 in 2015.
That’s a 5.2 percent higher than for 2014. And it’s the highest jump in household incomes since 1967.
And while Trump repeatedly claims that the entire country is poor, and getting poorer, the Census Bureau finds that the nation’s poverty level dropped from 14.8 percent in 2015, to 13.5 percent in 2015.
That’s enough to give Trump a severe migraine.
And worse (for Trump), according to the latest Washington Post/ABC polling, Obama’s job approval is at 58 percent.
Despite all of Trump’s frequent attacks on Obama, he keeps getting high job approval numbers.
That could be giving Trump a serious case of insomnia?
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net