I can’t imagine what the Hillary Clinton supporters are going to do when Donald Trump is sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2017. They are in such denial about the election that they aren’t making sense.

It never occurred to Hillary Clinton that she might lose, nor did it occur to her supporters. And it wasn’t only her core team, which you would expect to be confident of a victory, but it was most of her supporters, and they were so convinced that Hillary Clinton would win that a whole lot of Trump supporters were convinced she would win also. In fact, according to the polls, most people in the country thought that Hillary Clinton would win.

This is not hard to understand. Among those hardcore Clinton supporters were the reporters and editors, producers and newsreaders for just about every media outlet there is. Even Fox News, which some people consider conservative simply because it is not wildly liberal, wasn’t in the tank for Trump. Megyn Kelly clearly hates Trump and evidently she carries a lot of weight at Fox. From what I’ve seen, Kelly would be more confortable at one of the major networks than at Fox, which is more conservative than the major networks and certainly more conservative than CNN or MSNBC.

The major networks are going to need folks who at least know some Trump people since they are going to be running the country. Republican administrations are huge problems for the mainstream media because they don’t know, like or hang out with conservatives. The mainstream media types can get stories from a liberal administration simply by talking to their friends. But most of the mainstream media types probably don’t know anyone who voted for Trump. They have to go out and try to make some new friends, and it’s tough to make friends with people who you not so secretly think are idiots.

*****

Maybe under Trump the Republicans will do something they should have done under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush, which is completely defund National Public Radio (NPR).

NPR is nothing but a liberal propaganda machine and there is no way in the world that with a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate NPR should get one dime of federal money.

If NPR continues to get federal money than the Republicans in Congress should also fund Rush Limbaugh, because he is no further right than NPR is left.

I admit I mostly quit listening to NPR before the election because, when I listened to it on the way to work, it ruined my morning. The audacity of the news team funded by the taxpayers to denigrate Trump at every turn and elevate Hillary Clinton to the level of some kind of demi-god was obscene.

It is perfectly acceptable for any privately owned and operated radio station to express any opinions they want. But NPR is not privately operated. It is paid for with government funds. And the idea that it only receives a small amount of government funding is bunk. It may only receive a small amount of direct government funding, but it receives government funding from all of the government-owned radio stations that pay for its services. It also receives bundles of money from foundations. That money is not taxed because it is supposed to be used for good causes, not so it can be used for Democratic propaganda machines.

I don’t know what the actual figures are for government versus private donations, but it should be 100 percent private donations. Let the liberals pay for their own radio station and, in many cases, for music that not enough people want to hear to make it a viable option to be on a commercial station. It’s as absurd for the government to fund music that only a few people, mostly well educated and economically well off, want to hear as it is to fund liberal propaganda.

One of the things that annoys me along with the blatant liberal slant of the so-called news is when they have their commentary, which is where opinions are supposed to be expressed. NPR will have people from three news organizations give their opinion on the current news, so they have a reporter from The New York Times, The Washington Post and maybe The Daily Beast, Time, Newsweek or some other liberal news organization. Where is the guy from The Washington Times, Breitbart or a producer from Rush Limbaugh to give a conservative opinion? Most of the time there isn’t one. It is three liberals from liberal news organizations giving different liberal opinions on the news. It gives the illusion of differing points of view because even liberals look at the news from different areas of left field. But there is no one there from right field that might have an entirely different view of the news.

In fact, because an editor from Breitbart did a live interview with NPR that upset a lot of their listeners, they aren’t going to have conservatives interviewed live anymore. Evidently Breitbart’s senior editor at large, Joel Pollak, got the best of his interviewer and that simply cannot be tolerated on the supposedly unbiased NPR.

Any conservative who would agree to a taped interview is insane because their words will be twisted to the point that either they sound like a fool or worse.

Look at the number of Republicans who didn’t sit down for interviews with the News & Record this go round. It’s for the same reason. Republicans have learned that the only reason the N&R invites them in is to get ammunition to use against them. But in the N&R’s defense, it is a privately owned company and can express any views it wants. The problem is that the views expressed by the N&R and NPR are pretty much the same, and they shouldn’t be.

Half of this country voted for Trump. Where are their views on the radio network they fund? The answer is nowhere.

*****

Here is an interesting fun fact. According to the people in charge of giving President Barack Hussein Obama his daily security briefings, he often cancels them and claims to read them on his iPad. He reportedly says he will call with questions. He rarely calls with questions, which either means they are the best, most comprehensive briefings ever written or he doesn’t read them very closely if at all.

Trump is now getting the same briefings as Obama. Assuming that Trump doesn’t skip his briefings like Obama, Trump could know more about what is going on in the world than Obama does in a few weeks.

*****

Trump has, of course, been criticized by the mainstream media – which still can’t see their computer screens through their tears over the completely unforeseen win of Trump (or completely unforeseen to them) – for his handling of his Cabinet appointments. But it appears that Trump is going to appoint real experts to key positions.

The key position in the Obama White House is held by Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, who had no experience in foreign affairs, the military or the federal government, with the exception of how to get affordable housing grants before coming to Washington. Despite her lack of experience, Obama said he ran every decision past Jarrett.

Trump is choosing people with a vast amount of experience, and so far he hasn’t named an old friend who knows nothing about the job of president to be his chief advisor. No doubt the liberal media will criticize Trump for not having an old friend who was in business with people now in jail to be a top advisor because, according to the mainstream media, the way Obama has done things is by definition the way things should be done. In fact, to suggest that Obama has made a single mistake while in office means that you are a racist, since the only possible reason for being critical of Obama is because of race, according to the mainstream media.

*****

After every close presidential election people usually on the losing side, but not exclusively, complain about the president being elected by the Electoral College rather than directly by the voters.

Those who are in favor of doing away with the Electoral College should first petition to do away with the US Senate, because both are based on the same premise. Wyoming, with about 600,000 people, has two senators, just like California, with close to 40 million people. It doesn’t make a lick of sense unless you believe that states have sovereignty. If states do have sovereignty then the Electoral College makes all the sense in the world.

If the Electoral College were done away with and the presidential candidates were elected by a simple majority of voters in the country, then the candidates would be foolish to spend any time campaigning anywhere other than New York, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and some major cities. They would never come to North Carolina or South Carolina. We don’t have the population centers they would need.

The Electoral College makes even little states like New Hampshire important if it is a close race.

*****

Although by far the worst news for the Clintons this year is that Hillary Clinton lost by a considerable margin to Trump in the presidential election, that isn’t the only bad news. The donations to the family business, the Clinton Foundation, are down 37 percent.

It’s no wonder that donations are down. With Hillary Clinton on the outside of government power for at least four years, and more likely forever, the main reason for donating to the foundation is gone.

Then there is the FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation. So who would want to make a big donation knowing that will give the FBI a reason to start asking questions about the donation? But the fact that donations are down is also evidence that the Clinton Foundation is not what it purports to be, which is a charitable organization. If the goal were simply to do good work around the world, why wouldn’t the donations continue?

If the goal was to buy favor with the Clintons, then it makes perfect sense for donations to be down. Why would Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Algeria and Australia donate to a foundation whose main goal appears to be to make certain that the Clintons live in the style to which they have become accustomed? The answer is, of course, they haven’t and won’t. It was a pay-to-play scheme and the evidence of that would be sufficient to convict practically anyone else, but not the Clintons. Or at least not so far.

Obama will probably pardon the Clintons for any wrongdoing associated with the foundation before he leaves office, not because he particularly likes the Clintons but because it would reflect badly on his administration for his former secretary of state to be charged with influence peddling.

The fact that the people associated with buying and the selling to Russia 20 percent of the US uranium production made donations to the various arms of the Clinton Foundation totaling $145 million is pretty good evidence that something untoward was happening.

How could it possibly be in the best interest of the US to have Russia own such a large percentage of US uranium production? It simply can’t be good for the US but it was really good for the Clinton Foundation, since it put $145 million in its account.

The good news is that what happens next is out of the Clintons’ hands. President-elect Trump and President Obama will get to make those decisions.

Obama may not be angry enough to dirty the history of his own administration, but he probably is angry enough to let the Clintons worry until the middle of January. Who knows, with all the drug dealers that Obama is currently pardoning his pen might run out of ink before he gets to Hillary Clinton.

Or maybe he’ll be really sneaky by pardoning Hillary and Bill Clinton but not Chelsea, and let their daughter take the fall. Imagine, with all they have done, Chelsea Clinton going to jail for buying her wedding dress with foundation money.

*****

The Democrats should be angry at Hillary Clinton because she lost the party’s core. The blue collar worker had been the Democrats stronghold for decades, and Hillary Clinton allowed Trump to waltz in and steal it right from under her nose.

The story is that Bill Clinton warned Hillary Clinton that she was losing the base but she didn’t pay any attention to him. Trump also reportedly did better with black and Hispanic voters than Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain.

It is no wonder that Trump did better with black voters than his Republican predessors, but it may be that Hillary Clinton did worse than hers because it would be shocking if, a white woman, did as well with black voters as a black man. But Hispanic voters surprised most of the pundits. Then again, the entire election surprised most of the pundits.

Somehow the Democrats and the Clinton campaign never realized just how angry the average working American is at the federal government.

American workers don’t like the fact that healthcare costs keep going up. They don’t like the fact that the Obama “recovery” hasn’t resulted in more money for them, and they are tired of seeing more and more of their tax dollars going to people who don’t work.

Trump over a year ago saw something that the pundits and Hillary Clinton hadn’t seen by this fall, and that is the rejection of current federal government policies by the average working class American.

*****

The fact that Trump had a long meeting with Mitt Romney says it all about the way that Trump plans to govern. Trump didn’t have to meet with Romney, who made fiery speeches about what a disastrous candidate Trump was and how bad he was for the Republican Party. Romney never backed down from those statements and never supported Trump.

Trump is supposed to be considering Romney for secretary of state. I’m not sure I understand that one. The former governor of Massachusetts certainly looks like a secretary of state but seems to be lacking in the international experience you would expect Trump’s pick for secretary of state to have. Although Trump may have a lot of experience building and doing business in foreign countries, but there is a difference between building a golf course or a hotel in a foreign country and handling the diplomatic affairs for the US. Maybe that’s the point. Trump wants someone who hasn’t been sullied by the current policies.

Most of the real work is done by long-time State Department employees anyway. Something that both Trump and Romney know. While Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the long-term bureaucrats got four years off because they didn’t have to negotiate any major treaties or trade agreements. All they had to do was greet Hillary Clinton when she arrived, arrange for some photo ops of her with foreign leaders and then be thankful she wouldn’t be back for a while.

Trump is going to need a secretary of state who is used to doing real work and negotiating, which could be why he is considering Romney, who may not have a lot of experience in foreign relations but has a tremendous amount of experience negotiating deals.

*****

Fans of Under the Hammer need not worry, I looked all through the list of possible Trump appointments and didn’t find my name even under possible White House dishwashers and grass cutters. So it looks like I won’t be moving to Washington any time soon.