The Donald Trump Score Card

Kemp beat the Trump-endorsed Perdue by about a 50% margin.

 

The only counties that Hice won were the ones in the Congressional district that he represents.

 

Mo Brooks became angry when a Fox host told him the election wasn't stolen from Trump.

Brooks thinks that the courts aren't the final arbiter of election results and that narratives such as '2000 Mules' have the final say.


Mo Brooks gets into fiery exchange with ‘Fox News Sunday’ host over 2020 election | The Hill

excerpt:

“The congressmen and senators disagree with you, with what you just said,” Brooks told her. “Elections are going to be stolen if we don’t fix these problems.”

Smith and Brooks then talked over each other before the Alabama lawmaker told the journalist, “You just made a false statement.”

“The courts are not the final arbiter of who wins federal election contests,” he said before citing unproved allegations and discussing a controversial film about the 2020 election, “2000 Mules.”

 

Trump's supporters are still waiting for Lindell to file his earth-shattering election lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The last excuse he used months ago was that AG around the country were still editing it.

 

Trump rioter from MA pleads guilty to making 140 threatening 911 calls on his way to the riot.


Rioter Guilty of Making 140 Terrifying 911 Calls En Route to Capitol

excerpt:

"A Massachusetts man who has been charged for taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection has pleaded guilty to threatening a 911 dispatcher while en route to the Capitol. From a truck stop in North Carolina, Jonathan Joshua Munafo, 35, made over 140 calls to a dispatcher in Calhoun County, Michigan, the Department of Justice said. When the dispatcher refused to connect him to a superior since he didn’t have an emergency, Munafo said, “I’m gonna cut your throat. I’m gonna make you eat your f***ing nose.” He told the dispatcher he was “coming to y0ur door first,” adding, “it’s going to go way worse for your family,” the DOJ said. Munafo separately faces eight charges related to the riot, including allegedly assaulting a Capitol Police officer. U.S. Attorney Mark Totten said in a statement: “Emergency dispatchers do critical work, under stressful circumstances, to keep the community safe. No one, especially front-line public servants, should face threats of death or other physical violence.”"

 

This is one of these "fine patriots" I keep hearing about...

 

Wyoming GOP chair says he would run through barb wire for Trump.


Wyoming GOP chair, who was on restricted Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, speaks at Trump rally

 

Sounds like a good pay-per-view... When does he start?

 

Trump said he would erase the national debt in eight years.


Trump Added More to the National Debt Than Obama and Bush

excerpt:

"Donald Trump’s final tab is in. Legislation and executive actions signed by former President Trump added $7.8 trillion in ten-year budget deficits. When accounting for non-legislative budget savings, the total projected budget deficits expanded by $3.9 trillion over the decade.

These figures appear in my new report, “Trump’s Fiscal Legacy: A Comprehensive Overview of Spending, Taxes, and Deficits” which analyzes Congressional Budget Office data.

It begins with the ten-year (2017-2027) budget baseline that Trump inherited in January 2017, and then measures all subsequent changes to those ten-year estimates that occurred during his presidency. This includes aggregating every line-item of every bill he signed, as well as the deficit shifts driven by economic changes and the Congressional Budget Office’s technical re-estimates of existing tax-and-spending policies."

 

Trump suggested refinancing the national debt like how it is done in the corporate world.

Trump's supporters thought he might make a good president because of his real estate background. Such a background doesn't necessarily translate into sound government finance.


Donald Trump’s Idea to Cut National Debt: Get Creditors to Accept Less (Published 2016)

excerpt:

"Repurchasing debt is a fairly common tactic in the corporate world, but it only works if the debt is trading at a discount. If creditors think they are going to get 80 cents for every dollar they are owed, they may be overjoyed to get 90 cents. Mr. Trump’s companies had sometimes been able to retire debt at a discount because creditors feared they might default.

But Mr. Trump’s statement might show the limits of translating his business acumen into the world of government finance. The United States simply cannot pursue a similar strategy. The government runs an annual deficit, so it must borrow to retire existing debt. Any measures that would reduce the value of the existing debt, making it cheaper to repurchase, would increase the cost of issuing new debt. Such a threat also could undermine the stability of global financial markets."

 

Trump's muddled remedies for the national debt.


Donald Trump's Messy Ideas For Handling The National Debt, Explained

excerpt:

"The U.S. has $19 trillion in debt, and Donald Trump is upset about it.

Once upon a time, he said he would get rid of all of it in eight years. He walked that back, but his positions on how to handle that debt are still making headlines. Just a few days ago, it seemed like Trump wanted to renegotiate America's debt with the nation's creditors — a potentially disastrous policy. Then it seemed like he was offering a subtler solution. Then he said the U.S. government could print money to stave off default."

 

Donald Trump's Messy Ideas For Handling The National Debt, Explained

excerpt:

"DT: I think, look. I've borrowed knowing that you can pay back with discounts. And I've done very well with debt. Now of course I was swashbuckling, and it did well for me, and it was good for me and all of that. And you know debt was always sort of interesting to me. Now we're in a different situation with a country, but I would borrow knowing that if the economy crashed you could make a deal. And if the economy was good it was good so therefore you can't lose. It's like you make a deal before you go into a poker game. And your odds are much better.

That bolded bit, about making a deal on debt, caused mass freakout in the financial press, and for good reason. Suggesting that U.S. creditors accept haircuts on U.S. debt (that is, accept lower payouts than they agreed to) would be an unheard-of, potentially disastrous policy proposition."

 

Donald Trump's Messy Ideas For Handling The National Debt, Explained

excerpt:

"But then his meaning got muddier. Anchor Becky Quick asked him twice if he really meant he wanted to renegotiate debt. On his second answer, he seemed to change positions:

BQ: You're not talking about renegotiating sovereign bonds that the U.S. has already issued.

DT: No, I don't want to renegotiate the bonds, but I think you can do discounting. I think depending on where interest rates are, I think you can buy back. I'm not talking about with a renegotiation, but you can buy back at discounts, you can do things at discounts. I'm not even suggesting that we don't borrow money at very low rates long term so we don't have to worry about when they come due."

 

Donald Trump's Messy Ideas For Handling The National Debt, Explained

excerpt:

"What's the fuss?

If the government asked investors to accept less on the dollar than they are owed, it would be phenomenally bad for the economy.

"There are no merits to it," Strain said. He added, "The extent to which U.S. Treasurys are kind of the foundation on which the global financial system is built is really hard to overstate."

For one thing, it would send interest rates on Treasurys soaring and destroy the U.S. Treasury's risk-free status. That's what Strain means by "foundation"; right now, everyone knows and trusts that U.S. debt is a safe investment. Treasurys are used in all sorts of financial transactions worldwide. They're in many people's retirement accounts as a low-risk asset. Rattling faith in that Treasury would introduce massive amounts of uncertainty into the economy.

Plus, it would cause interest rates on U.S. debt to soar. That would mean higher borrowing costs for the U.S. government — making the very fiscal situation Trump is worried about even worse.

All of this could dry up credit markets, as the uncertainty could make banks far less likely to lend money. Cut back on borrowing and lending, and you deliver a huge blow to the economy.

It's not even clear how this idea would work, says one financial expert — creditors wouldn't have much of an incentive to take the deal, with the U.S. currently on firm financial footing."

 

He's the consummate con artist, he's been doing it his entire life.

Not paying contractors for work performed or negotiating the price down claiming the work was shotty, deliberately devaluating his property on his taxes, you name it he's done it.

 

Trump mistakenly thinks trade deficits cause national debt.


Trump just made a humiliating economic error in front of South Korea’s president

excerpt:

"The United States has trade deficits with many, many countries, and we cannot allow that to continue ... with South Korea right now, but we cannot allow that to continue. This is really a statement that I make about all trade: For many, many years the United States has suffered through massive trade deficits; that’s why we have $20 trillion in debt."

 

Trump just made a humiliating economic error in front of South Korea’s president

excerpt:

"Running a trade surplus — that is, exporting more to the rest of the world than you import from it — is no defense against incurring debt, which has to do with how much the government spends compared with how much it takes in from taxes.

“It would be easy to imagine a country with a trade surplus that ran large budget deficits — that's clearly happened in the past,” Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, told me. “My guess that right now Germany has a small budget deficit even though they're running big trade surpluses.”

Major events in recent history have made it difficult to resolve the mismatch between how much money the government raises and how much it spends.

“A big chunk of the national debt was incurred because of the economic crisis,” Bivens explains. “As the economy just cratered in 2008, 2009, and 2010, tax collection just cratered along with it, and [then with spending on] automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance, food stamps, and some legislation like the Recovery Act, there was a large increase in the national debt over those years.”"

 

Trump just made a humiliating economic error in front of South Korea’s president

excerpt:

"The accumulation of debt isn’t just something that happens to the economy — it’s also the product of policy decisions. Prior to the Great Recession, US debt skyrocketed because President George W. Bush implemented huge tax cuts for the rich while spending trillions of dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The simplest way to reduce the national debt would be to close tax loopholes on income for corporations and the super wealthy. But right now Trump and his party are looking to do just the opposite — they want more cuts for the rich through both health care legislation and comprehensive tax reform."