As anyone who follows politics knows the two have been debating each other for years, even though most of the time the current president attacked the former president without using his name.

Today we begin a new weekly column by crisis management expert and professor of leadership and communication Helio Fred Garcia. The column will excerpt passages from his new book on the failed U.S. response to COVID-19 and lessons for leaders: The Trump Contagion: How Incompetence, Dishonesty, and Neglect Led to the Worst-Handled Crisis in American History.

In a hearing purportedly on the source of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be imprisoned for “crimes against humanity.”

Today I’m wondering if that surreal 34 counts of felony convictions against former President Trump is going to be synonymous with incredulousness, skepticism, and doubt. 

The recent unanimous decision by a New York jury finding Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 presidential election has laid bare the stark perception gap between the left and the right in the United States.

What will make the 2024 GOP Convention different from past gatherings is that it will most likely be built on two major falsehoods, that the 2020 election was stolen from this year's presumptive nominee Donald Trump and that President Biden is behind all of Trump's legal woes.

Ineffective or malign leaders often fail to rise to the challenges before them and almost always make matters worse.

For the first time in 28 years, Chicago will host the Democratic National Convention. 

To followers of the political news, Groundhog Day is every day, because if a person decided to abstain from watching cable political news for a week and then resumed watching the program of choice, it would seem as if they hadn’t taken the hiatus.

If we ever needed a reminder, we are getting a schooling from President Biden on the importance of communications.  

“In this world of uncertainty, one thing is constant: With scant exception, the news delivered by cable broadcast channels will either be incomplete, misleading, prejudicial or outright lies.”

For some PR professionals it was a close-mouthed “hmmm.” Others perhaps muttered a variation on, “Oh, well that explains it.” 

Journalists gearing up to chronicle next year's Presidential election face a special challenge.

If Mr. Chaucer was around today, he might have included the proverb in a yarn titled, “ Better Late Than Never: The Sorry Saga of Hypocritical Republicans Opposing Donald Trump Who Are Attempting To Save Face Because They Supported Him For Years.”

Regardless of the situation or profession, individuals who wield power, or are in the spotlight, often refuse to admit that it’s time to call it a career.

Former U.N. Ambassador Haley showed herself to be strong, intelligent, articulate, and informed, clearly someone to be taken seriously as a potential presidential candidate.  

By the time the judge unsealed the grand jury indictment and then kicked the press out of the courtroom, it was late on Monday night August 14. Officials then said it would take one to three hours for the indictment to be made available to the press and the public.

There’s no need for students of public relations to read the chapter on media relations in expensive text books because every day since former President Donald Trump announced that he was running for president in 2015 his actions have provided a Master’s Class in how not to act when dealing with the media.

The continuing unhinged actions of former President Donald Trump is the saga favored by lovers and haters of a criminally-indicted, twice impeached individual who has been successfully sued for sexual assault and running a fake university.

Many new valuable “not to do” PR lessons will emerge, as they have since the beginning of the various civil and criminal investigations of Mr. Trump began.