The Donald Trump Score Card

Why Trump lost his battle against the trade deficit

excerpt:

"As President Donald Trump enters the final month of his reelection campaign, it’s increasingly clear that he has failed at one of the signature goals of his presidency: reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

And critics of his trade policy argue Trump’s “magical thinking” created little chance for success.

New figures out Tuesday show the U.S. trade gap is on track to exceed $600 billion this year. That would be the highest since 2008, just before the global financial crisis.

The monthly deficit in U.S. goods trade with all other countries set a record high in August at more than $83 billion.

Trump has blamed the trade deficit on bad trade deals negotiated by his predecessors and unfair trade practices by other countries, but most economists disagree with that explanation."

 

Why Trump lost his battle against the trade deficit

excerpt:

"“Short-term fixes like tariffs don’t work,” said Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and professor of economics at Syracuse University. “It’s magical thinking.”

The large U.S. trade deficit is fundamentally driven by larger economic factors — like the fact Americans spend more than they save and have to borrow from abroad to finance the difference, Lovely said.

Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut in 2017 contributed to that problem by running up the U.S. budget deficit. This year, Congress has approved more than $3 trillion in additional spending to help the U.S. economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic, tripling the budget deficit to $3.3 trillion and pulling the trade deficit along, she said."

 

...

 

"Take that, liberals!"

 

Mussolini-wanna-be standing on the deck of the Japanese aircraft carrier JS Kaga, wishing the Japanese Navy "happy Memorial Day."



Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

 

What a stupid fucker!

 

Trump used the excuse that the Secret Service wouldn't allow him to visit the cemetery to honor war casualties. He used the same excuse for his Jan. 6 riot when he said they wouldn't let him march with his protesters to the Capitol.

 

Trump is blasting the military-industrial complex. But he's one of its biggest boosters.

excerpt:

"Since becoming president, Donald Trump has overseen historic increases in defense budgets, fawned over military equipment, installed a number of defense industry insiders in top Pentagon positions and made a major push to sell weapons overseas.

But on Monday, Trump said leaders at the Pentagon “want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

Trump’s backers compared his comments to those made by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who closed out his time in office by warning of a permanent national security apparatus that guaranteed money would keep flowing toward arms manufacturers.

Yet Trump’s record tells a different story. All three of his hand-picked defense secretaries had ties to the defense industry: Jim Mattis was a member of the General Dynamics board of directors, Pat Shanahan was an executive with Boeing, and Mark Esper was Raytheon’s top lobbyist. Mattis also returned to his board position shortly after leaving the Pentagon, showing the revolving door between industry and the Defense Department.

Nearly half of senior Defense Department officials are connected to military contractors, according to an analysis by the Project on Government Oversight."

 

My uncle was killed in the Korean war, so stfu!

 

Trump telling his protesters that he would march with them to the Capitol gave more of them a reason to march. Some of his rioters later said that they were hoping to see Trump at the Capitol.

It was another dirty trick by Trump.

 

After the 2020 election, Trump's press spokesperson was correct when she made a sketchy remark that Trump would be making many calls and meeting with many unspecified people.

He was orchestrating a coup with the help of people like Meadows, Giuliani, Flynn, Eastman, and Lindell.

 

"we did great in Georgia"- Donald J. Trump
What a fucking moron.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/trump-cheney-2024-strategy-spite/

excerpt:

"I suppose you could argue there’s a rational strategy behind Trump’s actions: Like the mob boss he has so often resembled, he must make an example out of a disloyal underling, so nobody else gets any ideas. The trouble is that one candidate after another has endured Trump’s fury and won anyway. The far-right clowns he endorsed in governor’s races in Idaho and Nebraska both lost. In Georgia, he targeted the incumbent Republican governor and secretary of state because they declined to steal the 2020 election for him; both won their primaries easily.

That doesn’t mean any Republican could successfully challenge Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination; his grip on the party remains too strong. But what kind of case can a politician so consumed with spite make to the general electorate?"

 

What ever happened to Trump's message to the down-and-outers?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/trump-cheney-2024-strategy-spite/

excerpt:

"When we look back on the bizarre spectacle of the 2016 election, we sometimes forget that amidst all the vitriol, Trump had an argument that was compelling to many Americans embittered about what had happened to them and their communities. The story of the past few decades, Trump said, is that the game was rigged. Manufacturing declined, jobs went away, and now you struggle to make ends meet with little hope for the future.

There was a lot Trump left out of that story. He didn’t mention how much worse his own party made those same people’s lives by waging war on labor unions, keeping wages low, and hampering access to health care and good schools. The message also was wrapped up in xenophobia and misogyny. But at least part of Trump’s diagnosis — that both parties had failed to bring millions of Americans along through tough economic transitions — was basically true, and resonated powerfully.

And in true Trumpian style, he promised the people left behind that he would wipe their problems away and deliver them to a nirvana of wealth and spiritual triumph.

Four years later, the promise had worn thin. While the economy continued on the robust path it had set out on during the Obama years, Trump didn’t bring back all the manufacturing and coal jobs he had promised. The people who nodded their heads when he told them the deck was stacked against them were no better off than they had been before, even before Trump mishandled the coronavirus pandemic."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/trump-cheney-2024-strategy-spite/

excerpt:

"But there’s still power in one of the central rationales Trump offered to his supporters: There are people you hate — immigrants, racial minorities, uppity women, gays, liberals of all kinds — and I hate them, too. I will be your weapon against them. His core supporters still thrill to that message. Some will even stand in line to hear him rant and rave about how the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Others notice, though, that despite Trump’s four years in power, the United States is still full of immigrants and growing more diverse every day. Social change on issues of sexuality and child-rearing has not been reversed. And it turned out you can put an Internet troll in the White House to spend every day owning the libs, but it won’t turn your struggling town into a paradise.

Trump no longer has a story to tell about America that ends with a better future. That’s not to say it’s impossible he wins in 2024. As we’ve seen again and again, elections are often determined by unforeseeable circumstances; a well-timed recession or crisis can change everything."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/trump-cheney-2024-strategy-spite/

excerpt:

"If and when Trump runs again, his bid will have all the anger and hate of his past two campaigns, but none of the optimism he had in 2016. He has been distilled to his bitter, resentful core. The result could be a race even uglier than what he subjected us to before."

 

Trump and the GOP still haven't accepted this fact for states like GA, TX, and AZ. Their tactic is to stifle the votes of the diverse groups in those states as much as possible under the guise of 'election integrity' and try to install corrupt people in election-sensitive offices who are able to overthrow the results of elections they don't like.