Must Meet One or Both of His Traits As Finalist
(Otherwise
Go Home — You're Fired)
I had to condense the following fine AP article as
much as possible without losing any context to fit the blog … the whole entire
and complete piece is worth reading and it is exceptional - can be seen fully here The AP
Introduction: For all
his errant swings at the facts, President Donald Trump sometimes gets it just
right. “There's been no first year like this,” he told a Florida rally last
month. Were truer words ever spoken?
This (The AP's) “Department
of Corrections” has certainly never seen a first year like this. Falsehoods and
exaggerations have tumbled relentlessly out of Trump's Twitter account,
speeches and interviews, the vast majority in service of his ego. [Sure] other presidents have skewered
the truth — George W. Bush on the pretext for the Iraq war and Barack Obama on
the benefits of “Obamacare” — but Trump is of a different order of magnitude.
The
president routinely presents his intended actions as achievements (“Obamacare”
is dead, money is “pouring into NATO”), and he inflates the significance of
what he's done (calling his tax cuts the biggest ever and his accomplishments
unrivaled in history — neither one is true).
He
exaggerates the problems he inherited (roads and bridges are in “total
disrepair and disarray,” and the “border was wide open”), then he lays out
fanciful goals (6% economic growth) – and he doesn't learn from mistakes.
Instead he repeats them. Moreover, Trump often bypasses the vast
information-gathering apparatus that reports to him in favor of getting his
reality from TV, or just his gut.
(I note that
even today it was announced we are under 3% growth (2.6% to be precise).
Some trends
and highlights in his misstatements since taking office:
THE ART OF THE BIGGEST BESTEST:
Trump doesn't do big tax cuts. He does the biggest ever. He doesn't win
an election. He scores a “landslide.” He doesn't just make the Veterans Affairs
Department run better. He drives out the “sadists.”
In fact:
— The
December tax overhaul ranks behind Ronald Reagan's in the early 1980s,
post-World War II tax cuts and at least several more.
— His 2016
win ranks as the 13th closest of the 58 presidential elections in U.S. history,
according to a tally by Claremont McKenna College political scientist John
Pitney. It was no landslide. His winning percentage in the Electoral College
was just under 57 percent, narrower than both of Obama's wins (61 percent in
2008 and 62 percent in 2012) and all but two of the last 10 presidential
elections. Also, he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
— Despite
his boasts that incompetent VA employees are being swiftly removed, and enactment
of a mid-year law that expedites that process, more VA employees were fired in
Obama's last budget year than in Trump's first.
MISSIONS UNACCOMPLISHED: Trump sees things the way he wants
them to be and presents them as if that's how they are. “You know, we have
factories pouring back into our country. Did you ever think you would hear
that?” And, “'I urged our NATO allies to do more to strengthen our crucial
alliance and set the stage for significant increases in member contributions.
Billions and billions of dollars are pouring in because of that initiative.”
And, “'Jobs are pouring back into our country.”
In fact:
— Factories
are not pouring “back” into the country, nor are they sprouting up domestically
in big numbers. When he made his claim, in December, spending on the
construction of factories had dropped 14 percent over the past year, continuing
a steady decline since the middle of 2015. As for jobs “pouring back into
our country,” Trump hopes his tax overhaul will make that happen, but it
hasn't yet. The economy added about 170,000 new jobs a month during Trump's
first year. That was slightly below the average of 185,000 in 2016.
Manufacturers stepped up hiring, adding 196,000 jobs in 2017, but they added
more in 2011 and 2014.
— Money
isn't pouring into the NATO organization and it won't be. What Trump really
means is that he's pushing NATO members to increase their own military budgets
so the U.S. won't carry such a heavy load. NATO members agreed during Obama's
presidency to increase their military spending in the years ahead. Whether
Trump has accelerated that remains to be seen.
THE APOCALYPSE:
Trump makes the state of the union look better under his watch by making
the past look as dark as can be. Before him, the U.S. “left our own border wide
open. Anybody can come in.” The U.S. armed forces were all but in ruins.
The health
law he inherited and has tried to dismantle is a disaster that “covers very few
people,” and is essentially “dead.” Previous presidents “put American energy
under lock and key.”
Actually:
— The border
was far from porous before Trump took office. The number of arrests of illegal
border crossers, the best measure of how many people are trying to cross
illegally, was at a 40-year low before Trump's border policy was felt.
FYI: The government under presidents
George W. Bush and Obama roughly doubled the ranks of the Border Patrol in the
past decade or so. Obama was derided by pro-immigrant advocates as “deporter in
chief” for the hefty numbers of people he sent home before easing deportations
of certain groups later in his presidency.
— Obamacare
was covering about 20 million people when Trump described the numbers as “very
few.” The majority is from the law's Medicaid expansion. The other driver of
coverage, plans sold in the subsidized individual insurance market, drew
roughly 9 million signups for 2018 despite a much shorter enrollment season,
and cuts in the ad budget and federal payments to insurers. The new tax law
ends the Obamacare fine for lacking insurance, starting in 2019. That repeals a
major component of Obama's law, but other critical parts of the law remain in
place.
— Energy
production was not imprisoned under previous administrations. It was unleashed,
particularly during Obama's presidency, largely because of advances in
hydraulic fracturing that made it economical to tap vast reserves of natural
gas. Oil production also greatly increased, reducing imports. Before the 2016
presidential election, the U.S. for the first time in decades was getting more
energy domestically than it imports. Before Obama, Bush was no adversary of the
energy industry. Despite Trump's rhetoric about U.S. energy production, one of
his most consequential actions as president has been to open the U.S. to
another source of foreign oil, with his approval of the Keystone XL pipeline
from Canada.
GOING WITH HIS GUT AND TV:
Trump forms instant impressions about what he sees on TV (mostly FOX) or
otherwise hears about and shares those views, just as the average person does
on social media or over coffee. The difference is that a president stands at a
bully pulpit and his visceral reactions can change the world.
— Trump
strained relations with Britain by retweeting videos spread by a far-right
British fringe group that purported to show Muslim extremism. His re-tweet:
“Muslim
migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” he said in an introduction to one
video, which showed a young man attacking another who was on crutches. The
attacker was not a Muslim migrant. He was a Dutch-born citizen who was arrested
and sentenced for the crime. “Facts do matter,” the Dutch Embassy in Washington
said in a tweet directed at Trump.
— Trump puzzled
people last February when he told a rally that immigration is spreading
violence and extremism in Sweden, pointing to “what's happening last night in
Sweden.” Nothing extraordinary happened in Sweden the previous night. It was
what Trump saw an analyst talking about on Fox News.
But he soon
claimed vindication of his statement anyway, telling Time magazine the next
month: “I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a
massive riot, and death, and problems.” That wasn't right, either. Two days
after his rally, a riot broke out in a largely immigrant neighborhood after
police arrested a drug crime suspect. Cars were set on fire and shops looted,
but no one was killed. Attacks in the country related to extremism remain rare;
the biggest surprise for many Swedes was that a police officer found it
necessary to fire his gun.
— When an
Amtrak train hurtled off the tracks in Washington in December, killing three
people and injuring dozens, Trump's first impulse was to make a plug for his
infrastructure plan. Only after that did he offer thoughts and prayers for the
victims and thanks for rescuers. His opening tweet: “The train accident that
just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted
infrastructure plan must be approved quickly.
Seven trillion dollars spent in
the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble!
Not for long!” Although he jumped to his conclusion within a few hours of the
crash, it's taking investigators months to reach a conclusion that is informed
by the facts. But this much was obvious right away: The train was making its
inaugural run along a fast, new route, not a crumbling line of the type that
would be a priority of a national infrastructure plan. And the train was going
over twice the speed limit.
IT'S WHO YOU KNOW, AND DON'T: Trump has claimed to know certain
people well, only to circle back to say he hardly knew them all. His
familiarity with them has varied according to political circumstance.
So it was when George Papadopoulos, a
Trump campaign adviser, pleaded guilty in October to lying about his Russian
interactions. “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer,” Trump tweeted
in response. However, after naming Papadopoulos to his campaign's foreign
policy advisory council in March 2016, Trump called him an “excellent guy” and
tweeted a photo of his council meeting with Papadopoulos among several
advisers.
Steve Bannon
got such treatment months before his ouster last year. Trump said he had known
him for “many years” when Bannon became his campaign chief in August 2016. When
Bannon's tenure as White House strategist was getting dicey in April, Trump
said “I didn't know him” when Bannon was named campaign CEO.
Trump and
Bannon had known each other for five years when the Republican candidate, a
month after accepting the nomination, made him campaign chief. David Bossie, who was deputy campaign
manager, told AP he introduced them in 2011 at Trump Tower and they grew to
know each well, as Trump appeared multiple times on Bannon's Breitbart radio
show. Bannon interviewed Trump at least nine times in 2015 and 2016 and members
of his family and campaign on many other occasions. “They believe in each
other's agendas, which is why they have grown so close,” Bossie said.
My B/L with Trump (even
if a bottom line is anywhere in sight) is pretty simple: Just like the Dutch Embassy in DC responded
to Trump’s false statement about a migrant beating up a boy on crutches: “Facts
do matter.”
I would add “Facts do matter, as a matter of fact.”
Now
everyone knows, including those worldwide that Trump is a habitual pathological
serial liar (all three clinical words combined into one phrase I know) and yet
he may not even know it himself since it’s ingrown in him – probably his whole
life.
Finally, the one word we all hate to use is “liar” but
with him fits – it is in vogue with him and he doesn’t seem to care as the next
lie will cover that last one – spoken sometimes only minutes, hours, or days
apart – the worst part: he expects people to keep believing and trusting him
and his 30% or so seem to oblige, too.
Never in my lifetime have we seen or had a man in office
of this low standard and poor quality. He as a one man has basically wrecked
our entire system and yet he has still has three more years to go and is also gearing
up for a 2020 run as if the past does not matter – to him, it probably does not.
He has big money already rolling in and growing for 2020.
The only question
facing the country right now is in great big old letters is: How much longer can
we tolerate this man in office? Time will tell – but time is running out, too.
Thanks
for stopping by.
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