Frugal Ron is passionate about numbers. If something can't be quantified, how can it be discussed? He loves questioning those things that others hold sacred.
If Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, I predict he and his Vice President, JD Vance, will be dead within 18 months of their inaugurations.
I expect Trump will suspend the Constitution on Day 1 of his presidency, just like he promised. He has also stated he will invoke the Insurrection Act. This allows him to use the military against “the enemies within”. Trump will believe he is untouchable. He won’t be.
Dictatorships aren’t all they are hyped up to be. The problem with a dictatorship is, if citizens want to get rid of a blundering dictator, their options are limited. Typically, incompetent dictators meet an unfortunate end.
The Supreme Court gave Trump enough rope to hang himself, literally. Without guardrails, Trump will create a disaster. John Bolton, one of Trump’s first term National Security Advisors summed things up well when he noted, “Donald Trump is too stupid to be a dictator”.
Trump sows violence and hatred and he will reap the harvest. Trump may be assassinated by a military or law enforcement person (or persons) that swore to uphold and protect the Constitution. Or, it could be any number of people impacted by Trump’s hatred.
Suspending the Constitution will make Trump a “dead man walking”. His domestic and foreign blunders will speed the process.
Before going further, Frugal Ron abhors violence and is not advocating Trump’s assassination. I’m merely predicting it.
Food riots?
Of all the dumb things Trump has said, written and done, his mass deportation plan is the absolute stupidest and most dangerous. Put simply as an equation: No undocumented immigrants = No food in grocery stores. Illegal immigrants are the foundation of our entire food production and processing system. Forget about blaming President Joe Biden for high grocery prices. Deport all undocumented workers and deal with no food.
Undocumented immigrants plant, weed and harvest almost all the food we eat. No one else is going to do the backbreaking hand harvest from dawn to dark in the heat, sun, and rain of crops like strawberries, lettuce and a long list of other foods. These crops have a narrow harvest window. If they aren’t harvested when ready, they’ll rot in the field.
“Mexican” immigrants busy selling drugs and plotting to rape and murder white women.
Crops like carrots and potatoes are more mechanized. But, they are still dependent on illegal workers for cleaning and processing. Even super mechanized crops like corn and soybeans rely on seasonal undocumented workers for planting, and especially harvest. Regardless of the crop, whenever there is a miserable, dirty, dangerous and demanding job, illegal immigrants are doing it.
Presently, some seasonal workers can legally work in the US using the H2A program. In the interest of racial purity, I expect Trump will compound his problems by abolishing that program.
Meat and cheese eaters
If your diet revolves around meat and dairy, get used to change. Turkey, chicken, beef, pork and sheep processing plants are reliant on illegal immigrants. These jobs have high turnover and need a steady influx of new migrants to keep operating. Deport the immigrants they employ now, and these plants shut down.
If Trump is elected, it will be ironic when large dairy operators with huge “Trump In ‘24” signs look up after the election and see INS agents surrounding their operations and hauling off 95 percent of their labor force . The lesson here; be careful what you vote for.
Even with a “flood” of illegal workers, fast food restaurants are constantly dealing with labor shortages. Imagine if illegal immigrants are gone?
Undocumented immigrants are essential throughout our economy. If they are deported, who is going to empty Aunt Mabel’s bed pan in her nursing home? Who is going to clean your hotel room? Who is going to drive the taxi or Uber that picks you up at the airport?
Trump plans on building giant camps to concentrate immigrants before deporting them. Good luck finding construction crews in the south-west if illegal immigrants are excluded. I haven’t a clue how many other industries are dependent on undocumented workers. After they are deported, we’ll find out in a hurry.
How can I be so sure undocumented workers are doing these miserable jobs? That’s easy. In a full employment economy like we have now, if workers are here legally and have decent English skills, they are doing something else.
Eventually, most of the jobs that disappeared when immigrants were deported will be filled. However, farmers and others won’t hire legal citizens for anywhere near what they pay undocumented immigrants. This will increase inflationary pressure.
Bring on Trump’s Recession II!
Besides doing our worst jobs, illegal immigrants take the money they earn and buy goods and services. Buying stuff creates more jobs. Deport construction workers and companies layoff workers that make everything from lumber to drywall. When these workers have much less money to spend on goods and services, more people are laid off in a ripple effect. This is just reversing what happened over the last four years as the Biden economy surged by adding consumers (illegal immigrants) that created more jobs.
If illegal immigrants were wrecking our economy (as Trump and Vance claim), we wouldn’t have…
Far above average GDP growth (In contrast, Trump’s inflation adjusted GDP growth was the lowest since records were kept.)
The largest number of people working in US history along with far above average increase in job creation. (Trump is the only president that lost net jobs during his term since records were kept.)
The largest number of people employed in history.
The highest stock market ever.
The highest inflation adjusted average wages ever.
Conversely, take 11-21 million consumers out of an economy and you just created a recession.
It gets worse
Trump and Republicans want to make America white again. So, getting rid of brown skinned illegal immigrants is a priority. However, I’ve lived and worked around Republicans most of my life. Republicans’ real passion is making life miserable for Black people.
Republicans will tell you there is no such thing as racism. The problem is that Black people are too lazy to work and instead perpetually live off government welfare, paid for by white taxpayers.
Note: A quick fact check. People cannot receive welfare benefits indefinitely. Federal programs have a 60-month lifetime limit and some states have shorter limits. Recipients are expected to find work within three years of starting to receive benefits. Single parents must work at least 30 hours/week and two parent families must work at least 35 hours/week. According to the Urban Institute, about half of families leave the welfare system in one year, 70 percent within two years and almost 90 percent within five years.
Republicans’ solution is to eliminate all government safety net programs. They tried and failed to do this in negotiations to increase the debt ceiling in 2023. Republicans are holding up passage of a new farm bill because of their demands to eliminate food stamps. https://www.frugalron.com/the-republican-deficit-reduction-fiasco/ Getting rid of safety net programs will be an extremely high priority for Republicans, if Trump is in office.
The problem is, eliminating these programs creates even more recessionary pressure. If welfare recipients aren’t spending money, this means more layoffs. Add in the ripple impact repeated from above, and you have more job losses throughout the economy. All this leads to a deeper and longer recession.
Don’t get sick or injured!
Eliminating Obamacare and Medicaid will create chaos in the health care industry. Rural hospital closings will happen first. Most are already in precarious financial shape.
Next, you will see extremely large increases in employer sponsored health insurance premiums. Without income from Medicaid and Obamacare, costs are shifted to people with private insurance. With Obamacare mandates gone, most employers will drop health insurance premium sharing with employees. This will put us back to where we were in 2008.
Cutting safety net programs will also adversely impact low income white Republicans. However, from years of experience living around these folks, most will be perfectly happy as long as they are convinced Black people are hurting more from the cuts than they are
The bottom line, cutting safety net programs will create an even worse recession since money from these programs is not being spent on goods and services. Less goods and service purchases equals more job layoffs.
And, there is more…
Trump’s economic plan centers around dramatically raising tariffs on imported goods. This will be the main driver of increased inflation during Trump’s reign.
Tariffs or like a tax. They will raise prices to consumers and manufacturers. Domestic producers will raise their prices to match the new tariff enhanced prices. They will do this because they can. All this is inflationary.
It gets worse. The tariffs will make the recession described above longer and deeper.
Tariffs are a direct tax on consumers. Let’s say Sally is making $60,000 a year after taxes. She will buy roughly $60,000 of goods and services annually. However, because the tariffs are passed onto Sally and paid by her, the $60,000 she has to spend won’t buy as much stuff.
If Sally isn’t buying as many goods and services, more US workers will be laid off. Consumers, like Sally, can’t afford as much as they could before the tariffs.
Again, we have the same ripple affect on other workers as above. If Sally can’t afford her health club membership because of the tariffs (taxes), she’ll drop it. Because the health club is losing members, Joe is fired. Joe cuts his purchases dramatically and this goes on and on in the economy and creates a serious recession. All brought on by Dictator Donald Trump.
Reciprocating tariffs
Other countries will not sit still when Trump raises tariffs. In Trump’s first term, other countries imposed reciprocating tariffs on our exports, especially agricultural ones. This was devastating to farmers and caused a surge in bankruptcies and suicides.
Trump is planning much larger tariffs. The reciprocating tariffs will then also be more severe.
These tariffs will hurt US manufacturers. they will pay higher costs for their imported materials and have to compete internationally with manufacturers in other countries that don’t have high tariffs raising their costs.
Large tariffs are highly inflationary. They will create shortages. They will contribute to Trump’s recession because consumers will be spending money on tariffs instead of buying more goods and services.
At the same time, Trump promises large cuts to rich people’s taxes. We learned in his first administration these tax cuts simply transfer into much larger deficits. Add in the increased deficits because of his recession and deficits will reach new highs.
Where things get ugly…
Currently the US GDP is $29 trillion. The US government owes $35 trillion. ($8 trillion of that is from Trump’s first term.)
Many economists consider it a tipping point when a country’s debt is larger than its GDP. At that point, a country can no longer borrow and the economy goes into a free fall.
That hasn’t happened, yet. The US has a stable Federal Reserve and the dollar is the foundation of the international monetary system. However, there are limits to how long this can be forestalled. Te US already had its credit rating dropped because of Republican shenanigans around raising the US debt limit earlier this year.
Currently, it looks like the US’s 2024 calendar year deficit will come in around $2 trillion. (This is bad, but better than the$3 trillion deficit Trump left us with in 2020).
There are lots of variables here, but estimates of what Trump is proposing would increase our national debt by $7.5 to $15.2 trillion over ten years. https://time.com/7055327/us-debt-harris-trump/
If we take a midpoint of $11 trillion and divide that by 10 to get an annual debt increase, we are at an additional $1.1 trillion above the current $2 trillion annual deficit. This is really bad.
It is highly likely (as explained above) that deporting 11-21 million consumers, taking the safety net program income out of the economy and the impact of Trump’s tariffs and reciprocal tariffs and ripple effects on the economy will result in a severe recession.
The impact of Trump’s recession could easily double our projected $3.1 trillion deficit. GDP growth was close to stagnant during Trump’s first term. We would be lucky if that happened with what Trump has planned. Obviously, the US government’s debt to GDP ratio is much more precarious if this happens. I’m not predicting a default , but…
Did we forget about inflation?
Deporting illegal immigrants will cause food shortages. After we get over that, food and many other prices will stay much higher because employers will have to pay native Americans much higher salaries than they paid undocumented workers. This will increase inflation.
The biggest driver of inflation will be Trump’s tariff plan. Put the two of these together and we easily could have double digit inflation.
Combining Trump’s projected disasters
Trump’s planned policies could easily bring us a severe and long recession, a cataclysmic debt crisis and hyper-inflation.
Trump also plans to put the Federal Reserve under his control. Combine all this and Venezuela starts to look like a stable economy in comparison.
Did Frugal Ron lose it?
Is all this doom and gloom simply a product of Frugal Ron’s revulsion of Donald Trump? Is he the only one predicting a disater if Trump is elected?
Not by a long shot. A survey of 39 economists by the Wall Street Journal found that not one economist favored Trump’s tariff plan. By one estimate, Trump’s tariff plan alone would cut gross domestic product by nearly 9 percent.
A letter from 23 Nobel prize winning economists explained: “His (Trump’s) policies, including high tariffs even on goods from our friends and allies and regressive tax cuts for corporations and individuals, will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality. Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.” (Vice president Kamala )Harris’s middle-class focused policies, they argued, “will do far more than Donald Trump’s to increase the economic strength and well-being of our nation and its people.”
If Donald Trump wins the election on November 5, and suspends the Constitution, he is putting himself in a dangerous position.
The policies he is proposing are likely to lead to an economic catastrophe. This is not a good thing. Also, for lack of time, I didn’t touch on the kangaroo courts he wants to introduce and his disastrous planned foreign policies.
Dictators soon run out of people to blame for the problems they create. So, back to my prediction at the start of this article. Within 18 months of their inauguration, Donald Trump and JD Vance will be dead. At the end, his supporters will correctly claim, “Everything Trump did, he promised in his campaign”. No argument here.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s biggest mistake in her campaign for president is not giving President Joe Biden and herself credit for creating the strongest economy in US history. Considering the mess Donald Trump left them with, this is even more impressive.
For decades, economists wrung their hands about how inflation adjusted wages in the US dropped after the mid-1970’s. Economic stagnation, they called it.
Record high inflation adjusted wages during the Biden/Harris Administration
Wages are at an inflation adjusted all-time high.
However, the Biden/Harris Administration, with help from the Federal Reserve, broke through this malaise. Never before have American workers had it so good.
No matter how you measure inflation, inflation adjusted wages are at an all-time high.
Total employment at all time high
Employment is at a record high level
What makes Biden/Harris’s accomplishments even more spectacular is they combined record high inflation adjusted wages with the highest number of people ever employed in the US. At the same time, unemployment rates are historically low.
We should put this in context. Remember the disaster Trump left at the end of his term? Partly because of his COVID mismanagement, we had supply chain problems that caused high inflation.
The increase in the number of people working came when interest rates were at historically high levels. This accomplishment is unheard of anywhere, anytime.
While most economists predicted a major recession with lower wages and falling number of workers, Biden/Harris and the Federal Reserve quietly went about building the strongest economy in history.
Business startups at all time high
Business startups are at an all-time high.
A strong well run government creates an environment where entrepreneurs have confidence that they can take a risk and be successful. During the Biden/Harris term, they built this environment resulting in the record number of new business startups.
Incidentally, this is a 25 percent increase in new businesses since Trump left office.
Inflation has dropped to low levels and continues to drop further.
Republicans claim they are going to lower inflation if they win the presidency. Someone needs to tell them Biden and Harris already did this.
(Note: I remember my daughter’s car buying experience in 2021 when dealers marked up new cars over $4,000 over MSRP because of a shortage of vehicles. Because of a shortage of houses for sale, my wife and I sold our Madison, Wisconsin house for far over market value. If anyone wanted to build a house in 2021, good luck.)
Biden/Harris and the Federal Reserve didn’t panic or pay attention to Republican complaining. They just quietly raised interest rates to keep the psychology of inflation in check and waited for supply chains to work things out – without government interference. (Note: Republicans never offered any solutions to lower inflation. They just offered their doomsday whining.)
I remember farming during the 1970’s when President Richard Nixon put a price freeze on to stop inflation. It failed miserably.
I desperately needed to buy a large tractor during the price freeze. John Deere all but shut production down because they couldn’t raise prices to cover their increased costs. Large tractors were on a month’s long waiting list. While John Deere couldn’t raise their prices, dealers charged $thousands over list price for the ones they could get. I was lucky enough to get a really good, lightly used tractor for a decent price. Also during the price freeze, if you needed a part for your equipment, you held your breath until it was in your hands. Many times, these essential parts were on months long back order.
When President Gerald Ford took office, he launched the “Whip Inflation Now (WIN)” program. He expected companies to voluntarily not raise prices. It failed.
President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979. Volker proceeded to raise interest rates from seven percent to 21 percent. That stopped inflation. However, it bankrupted the savings and loan industry, threw the US into a deep recession and decimated farm land values (not to mention my profitability).
For someone as old as Frugal Ron, all this just makes the Biden/Harris soft landing of stopping inflation while growing employment miraculous.
Stock market at all time high
Stock markets are at record highs.
The crowning glory of the Biden/Harris Administration’s economic accomplishments is having the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and other markets) at record high levels. This isn’t just good for Wall Street tycoons. It also raises the value of individual retirement funds to all time highs for people who never thought they would be that wealthy.
It also shows the faith markets have for the future, as long as Kamala Harris is elected president.
Of the last ten US recessions, nine stared while a Republican was president.
Since employment records were started, of the eight presidents with the highest job growth, seven were Democrats. Of the seven presidents with the lowest job growth, six were Republicans. Donald Trumpo had the lowest job growth of any president. He was the only one with negative job growth during his presidency.
Of the seven presidents wit the highest economic growth rates (measured by GDP), six are Democrats. Of the nine presidents with the lowest GDP growth rates, seven are Republicans. Trump had the lowest economic growth rate of all presidents.
Every Republican president from George H.W. Bush increased the unemployment rate dramatically during their terms. Every Democratis president since then fixed the economy and dramatically lowered unemployment.
Every Republican president from Ronald Reagan forward dramatically increased the annual spending deficit during their terms. Every Democratic president since then has dramatically lowered the annual spending deficit. Donald Trump ioncreased the size of the annual deficit each year he was in office. His ending (2020) deficit is the highest in history.
Of course, failure is not a problem for Republicans. They will just lie and claim (without evidence) that they can successfully manage an economy. Sadly, half the country will believe them.
Summary
All this is well and good. But, what about those who say they don’t care about all these statistics? They claim they never had it so bad financially and blame Biden and Harris.
The very best a government can do is provide a record number of jobs paying record high average inflation adjusted wages. If an individual is living above his or her means, they shouldn’t expect government to bail them out.
Bidenomics has not been perfect. Inflation would have gone down faster and growth would have been higher if Biden/Harris had ended Trump’s tariffs on their first day in office.
Nevertheless, it amazes me that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz let Republicans denigrate this economy without jumping all over them. Frugal Ron can’t change how they campaign. But, I can put facts on this website and urge those that haven’t voted to vote for results, not promises and lies.
The days of Republicans being conservatives and Democrats being liberals are long gone. Donald Trump calls Vice president Kamala Harris a radical left, San Francisco liberal. And for good measure, a Communist. This is standard political speak for Republicans. In fact, in the video, (in the attached link starting at 12:33) Trump uses the exact same labels for President Joe Biden and for Harris. Not a lot of originality here. https://mashable.com/video/jon-stewart-trump-old-attacks
When Trump calls Harris a liberal, he is using a rhetorical tool called “projection”. He is trying to his biggest weakness to his opponent. Trump also claims Harris is “stupid’ and a “liar”. (For effective projection, there must be a minuscule of truth in the accusation. Trump is the least intelligent presidential candidate in US history. He is also the most prolific liar in US political history. Consequently, his attempt at projecting stupidity and dishonesty to someone else doesn’t work.)
Defining conservative and liberal
In the U.S., conservatives believe personal decision making should not be dictated by a powerful government. Instead, decision making should be delegated to more local levels of government. Ideally, decision making should be left to individuals. The only exceptions to this rule are when the actions of an individual, or company, negatively impact others. For example, a company spewing large amounts of carbon into the environment that contribute to climate change demands strong government regulation. Ignoring pollution is not conservatism. It is negligence.
On the other hand, liberals want an all-powerful government that over-rules personal choice and freedom. They aim to impose the choices of the people in charge of the government on to all citizens. Liberal policy makers are typically arrogant in believing they know better than the individuals on how to run their lives.
Complicating this are fiscal conservatives that believe in less government spending and abhor deficits. Fiscal liberals believe a large government funded by deficits is essential for achieving their liberal goals.
What is liberal and what is mainstream?
Republicans spent the last nine years shutting themselves off from reality while deifying Trump as their living god. During this period, policies they called radical and left wing became mainstream. Republicans find themselves on the wrong side of these popular policies. Some examples:
Seventy-four percent of Americans believe the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes. Seventy-three percent of Americans believe corporations should pay higher taxes. Twenty percent disagree that the wealthiest Americans and corporations should pay more taxes. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017c-0b90-d9ff-a9fc-3ffc91640000
Sixty-nine percent of Americans think marriages between same sex couples should be recognized by law as valid with the same rights as traditional marriages. Twenty-nine percent disagree. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx
Freedom and liberty as defined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights means we can perform as a drag queen. Don’t let Republicans take our rights away.
Eighty-six percent of Americans favor requiring background checks for all firearm sales and transfers. Fourteen percent oppose this.
Seventy-three percent of Americans support requiring gun owners taking a test, getting a license and registering their firearms, just like they do for automobiles.
Fifty-three percent of Americans say religion is an important part of their lives (2023 survey). This is down from 72 percent in 2013. From the same survey, twenty-six percent of Americans call themselves religiously unaffiliated. This is a 24 percent increase from 2023. Among unaffiliated Americans younger than 30, 60 percent cite the treatments of LGBTQ people as a reason they stopped going to church. The rise of Christian nationalism and GOP state legislators pushing anti-LGBTQ+ laws also is leading young people to turn away from organized religion. https://www.axios.com/2024/03/29/americans-lose-religious-affiliation-survey
Republicans, out of touch
When Republicans claim Democratic support for gun control, Gay rights and fighting climate change are fringe left-wing, liberal policies, most people’s eyes glaze over. These and the other policies listed above became mainstream years ago.
There is a lot going on with this data that illustrates the United States may be one country but is made up of two different worlds. For example, the Gallup poll that found 64 percent of respondents believe racism is widespread, also found 68 percent of Republicans are satisfied with the treatment of Black people. This is versus 14 percent of Democrats. Many of the other surveys have similar splits.
Note: One might logically question why something like universal background checks of gun buyers, with well over 85 percent support, isn’t reflected in our laws. There are two reasons. First, the plus 85 percent of voters that support regulation are not evenly spread across the U.S. Second, the U.S. is “kind of” a democracy. Gun advocates, concentrated in low population states that each get two seats in the Senate, have outsized influence. Also, 41 senators mounting a filibuster can stop any bill from becoming law, regardless of its popularity. However, for the purposes of this article, a Democratic presidential candidate speaking to an urban audience in a swing state is going to get votes when advocating for gun control. https://www.frugalron.com/the-united-states-of-america-kind-of-a-democracy/
Who is the fiscal liberal?
In the US, we generally define a fiscal liberal as someone who spends government money prolifically with a “deficits be damned” philosophy. This describes Donald Trump’s record as president perfectly.
Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama each increased annual federal government spending by three percent annually. Trump set an all-time spending record in 2020 and averaged 20 percent annual spending increases during his term as president. This wasn’t all due to Trump’s bungled mishandling of COVID. Between Trump’s first and second year in office and between his second and third years in office, Trump’s annual percent spending increase was more than twice Clinton and Obama’s average increases. President Joe Biden cut spending by over $100 billion from when Trump left office.
Trump, the ultimate liberal, broke every imaginable deficit spending record. Trump increased the size of his annual spending deficit each year he was in office. Unless Trump is elected again, his record spending deficit of $3.02 trillion in 2020 will hopefully stand for decades.
Since President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, every Republican president, during their terms, has dramatically increased their annual spending deficit. Conversely, the real conservatives, Democrats, during that period dramatically lowered their annual spending deficits. Joe Biden’s most recent (2023) deficit is over a $trillion lower than the deficit Trump left him with.
Source: https://bea.gov, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures, line 43, “Total expenditures” and line 49, “Net lending or borrowing”. Last revised July 25, 2024.
Examples of Trumpian and Republican big government/liberalism accomplishments and proposals
While Republicans criticize Democrats for liberalism, they have their own list of big-government plans. Most of these take away individual rights and freedom.
Deprive women making their own health care decisions (abortions).
Blocking bills protecting the right to contraception on the federal and state levels.
Disallow health insurance paying for birth control pills, etc.
End no-fault divorce.
Deprive transgender people of the right to clinically approved treatments.
Deprive childless women of full citizenship rights.
Banning access to “unapproved” books.
Prevent weather reporters from mentioning ”climate change”.
Deport U.S. citizens whose parents are undocumented.
Restrict travel of people from predominately Muslim countries.
Prevent schools from teaching about slavery, Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction discrimination.
Stop the dismantlement of statues glorifying Confederates guilty of treason and sedition while attempting to maintain slavery in the U.S.
Prevent schools from teaching about American Indian genocide and discrimination against Japanese and Chinese Americans/
Impose tariffs on imported goods. These tariffs are paid by U.S. consumers.
Threaten to suspend the Constitution.
Outlaw pornography*
Threaten to suspend First Amendment rights to religious freedom by making the U.S. a Christian nation.
*Rather hypocritical for Republicans to outlaw pornography considering their presidential candidate had sex with a porn star, Stormy Daniels. Trump also solicitedJessica Drake, another porn star, offering her $10,000 and the use of his private jet to have sex with him. Drake turned him down.
Where this takes us…
Republicans generalize in calling Democrats leftist liberals. Yet, they are very careful where and when they talk about their big-government proposals like banning books or banning TV weather forecasters from mentioning climate change. Donald Trump tries to hide his record on abortion by leaving the decision to states. J.D. Vance mimics Trump. But in his next speech, he’ll claim abortion should be outlawed in all circumstances, including rape and incest.
Trump’s campaign staff tries to focus him on immigration and inflation. Both are problematic. When Trump scuttled the Republican immigration legislation, his actions showed “the invasion at the border” was far less important than having a political talking point. Democrats are doing a great job pointing this out. They could also point out there were more illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. in the last months of Trump’s term than when he was inaugurated
Inflation is also a problem for Republicans to blame on Democrats. The question Democrats can counter with is, ”what inflation?” Annual inflation in the U.S. is 2.9 percent. More recent month on month inflation is even more of a Democratic success. June’s inflation rate was only 0.1 percent higher than May. July’s inflation rate is an identical only 0.1 percent higher than June’s.
Trump needs to be careful when he talks about bringing prices down to pre-pandemic levels. Since 2019, consumer prices rose 22.6 percent. However, in the same period, hourly wages are up 25.3 percent and non-supervisory workers’ wages are up 28.2 percent. Most voters aren’t willing to give up their wage increases to deflate consumer prices.
For Trump, when all else fails, lie and make personal attacks
What we will be treated to over the next two plus months is Trump continuing to rant about the terrible crime wave in the U.S. (All crime, and especially violent crime, are down dramatically since Trump left office. This is despite Trump’s convictions.) Trump will continue focusing on racist attacks on Kamala Harris. Vance will continue being weird and seemingly trying to lose the race by saying the most inopportune things.
To win, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz need to ignore the personal attacks and continue focusing on outlining an upbeat future. Let Trump and Vance lose the election on their own.
Harris and Walz’s populist solutions for the economy may not work. However, they may get votes because they are at least proposing something. Their ideas make more sense than Trump’s proposals of putting the president in charge of the Federal Reserve and backing the dollar with gold.
Wrapping this up…
Republicans will continue stereotyping Democrats as liberals. Logically looking at the facts, this just doesn’t stick anymore. For the most part, the liberal, left wing, Communist policies Republicans accuse Democrats of promoting have become mainstream. Most have overwhelming support of over 65 percent of voters.
What is important for voters is recognizing how dangerous Republican big-government plans are. Suspending the Constitution, installing a state religion, dictating what books we can read and what schools must teach are right out of Joseph Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union.
Don’t be fooled by Republican projection. The real big-government, liberal dangers to our liberty are Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and the Republican party.
Donald Trump, the first ex-president ever convicted of a felony, claims he is the victim of a “witch hunt”. Rather than accept responsibility for his actions resulting in 34 felony convictions, a sexual battery conviction (that the judge called, “Rape, by any definition of the word”) and a fraud conviction, Trump rants, “This is all done by Biden and his people!”
Other favorite speech clips, “This is done by Washington! No one has ever seen anything like this!” And, of course, it is all a “witch hunt”.
Trump complains President Joe Biden and the Department of Justice are engineering court cases to derail Trump’s presidential campaign.
Interesting. Before and during the Republican primaries, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador Nicki Haley each polled stronger than Trump in a general election match-up against Biden. Insofar as the election, Democrats would logically do everything possible to keep Trump out of jail. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nikki-haley-fares-best-against-biden-2024-presidential-election-poll/
Nevertheless, Trump is sure the all-powerful “Deep State” has singled him out for persecution like “no one since Jesus Christ”. Is there anything to this, or is this just more Trumpian lies and B.S.?
Differences between a witch hunt, a conspiracy and a real investigation?
The informal definition of a witch hunt is, “a campaign directed against a person or group holding unorthodox or unpopular views”.
Trump is racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, narcissistic and misogynistic. These are not unorthodox or unpopular views since he is the head of a political party whose members mimic these traits. That eliminates the argument that he is the victim of a witch hunt (as defined above).
Trump is a victim of real investigations, and there are reasons for this. Investigations are centered on facts. Factual investigations lead to trials. If the facts/evidence are irrefutable, the trials result in convictions. Convictions typically result in some form of punishment for the perpetrator. When this happens, we say, “Justice was done.” Our criminal justice system is based on these premises.
Justice. A mural in the dome of the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin
Trump and his backers continually try to undermine our judicial system with their fact free conspiracies. Consequently, as with their election conspiracies, if their case makes it to trial, they lose. Evidence and facts are essential to winning in court. https://www.frugalron.com/what-is-wrong-with-these-people/
For Trumpians, all facts and evidence are just noise. For these people, any utterance from Trump is gospel and should never be questioned. Unfortunately for them, Trump’s proclamations have zero weight in court.
Trump’s court cases (all backed by facts/evidence)
Before going further to decide if Trump is the victim of a vendetta, a quick recap of Trump’s completed and pending court cases is helpful.
In a state civil trial in New York, a jury convicted Trump of sexual battery of E. Jean Carroll. The presiding judge described the sexual battery as ”… rape by any definition of the word. The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million for defaming her. https://www.frugalron.com/republicans-and-rape/
The same judge, with a different jury, found Trump guilty of additional defamations against Carroll. The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll another $88 million.
Trump was sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office for grossly overvaluing his properties. Overvaluing these assets dramatically improved Trump’s balance sheet. This enabled Trump to get lower insurance costs and lower interest rates. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump and his two adult sons guilty of financial fraud and ordered them to pay the State of New York $454.2 million. The judge will also weigh an additional $250 million in penalties and some remaining claims in a non-jury trial slated to start on October 2, 2024.
Trump was charged with 34 criminal counts (felonies) for falsifying business records to cover-up hush money payments to his sextress, Stormy Daniels. A jury found Trump guilty of all counts. Sentencing is pending.
A grand jury returned a federal indictment charging Trump with four counts of 2020 presidential election interference. The case is pending.
Another federal grand jury indicted Trump for stealing government documents. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case, ruling Special Council Jack Smith was improperly appointed. The Justice Department is appealing the decision.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office followed an Atlanta, Georgia grand jury’s instructions and charged Trump and 18 others for 2020 election interference. The charges include violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Trump himself is charged with 13 felonies. The trial is on hold.
Trump also faces three additional civil suits brought by Democratic members of Congress and Capitol police officers seeking to punish him for inciting the January 6, 2021, riot.
Are Biden and the Justice Department conspiring?
If Joe Biden ordered the Justice Department to keep Trump from winning reelection in 2024, they’ve done a horrible job. Trump started his reelection campaign even before leaving the White House in 2021.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as a Special Prosecutor to investigate Trump’s 2020 election interference on November 18, 2022.This was almost 22 months after Garland took office. Trump was not investigated during those 22 months. Logically, if Biden and Garland wanted to “crucify” Trump, Smith would have been appointed the day after Garland took office, rather than almost two years later.
There are also the cases against Trump that Garland didn’t prosecute. Trump’s first impeachment was for his withholding Congressionally approved military funding for Ukraine unless Ukrainian President Zelenskyy started a sham investigation of Joe Biden. Trump should have been tried in criminal court for extortion.
The Mueller Report listed several areas to investigate Trump for criminal activity that Mueller didn’t have the authority to pursue. Garland’s Justice Department did not follow-up on any of these.
Garland also passed on prosecuting Trump for 2016 election fraud in the hush money case. Because the Justice Department didn’t prosecute Trump, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office took the case. They converted this into the falsifying business records case (#4 above) in New York State Court. The federal election fraud case would have been easier to get a conviction. It also would have had a longer prison sentence than the Manhattan case.
About the Manhattan case, Trump claimed, “They have me sitting here for a Biden trial. It’s a Biden trial.” Clearly, if Biden and Garland wanted to “get” Trump, they would have prosecuted him themselves in a federal court on the election interference charge. If they had done that, Trump would be in jail today.
Attorney General Garland, slacker in chief
After Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department, Garland was obsessed with regaining the departments reputation for impartiality. Unfortunately, what he accomplished was to make the department impotent. If not for the House January 6, hearings and the political pressure they generated, I doubt Garland would have ever appointed a Special Prosecutor or charged Trump with anything.
Garland did an admirable job prosecuting January 6 rioters. But the riot happened because, over several months, Trump hyped-up his low intelligence and violent followers with lies about the stolen election.
Forget the nonsense about a Biden/Garland witch hunt against Trump. Garland should have done his job of enforcing the law. If the investigation of Trump’s 2020 election interference, his stealing of government documents and the 2016 election interference was started as soon as Garland assumed office, Trump would be in jail now, and for the rest of his life.
Has anyone been treated as unjustly as Donald Trump?
No matter what political party you support, if you run for president or vice president, your whole life will be publicly investigated. If Trump were reasonably intelligent, he would know that.
A few examples of what Trump calls “witch hunts”:
In 1952, Senator Richard Nixon was going to be Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate. Nixon was accused of having an $18,000 hidden political fund. Nixon escaped the charges with his famous Checkers speech. (Checkers was his dog.)
In 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy drove a car off a Chappaquiddick bridge. Later investigators found Kennedy escaped and left his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while Kennedy found a phone and called his political consultant/lawyer instead of the police; who could have saved Kopechne. Kennedy’s presidential hopes drowned with Kopechne.
In 1972, Senator Thomas Eagleton was selected as Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern’s vice president. Eighteen days later, it was revealed that in the 1960’s, Eagleton was hospitalized three times for depression and was given electroshock therapy. Eagleton stepped down.
In 1973, Vice president Spiro Agnew was accused of criminal conspiracy, bribery, extortion and tax fraud for taking financial kickbacks while Governor of Maryland. Agnew resigned as vice-president and was later disbarred.
In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as president after a multi-year investigation. Nixon obstructed justice in ordering the FBI Director not to investigate the Watergate break-in.
In 1994, Kenneth Starr was appointed by Congress as a Special Counsel to investigate President Bill Clinton’s real estate dealings. Finding nothing of interest there, Starr and his Commission expanded their probe into Clinton’s sexual improprieties.
In 2011, pizza millionaire Herman Cain ended his presidential campaign amid numerous allegations of sexual impropriety and harassment.
In 2018, Senator Gary Hart was the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. There were rumors of Hart’s marital infidelity. Hart challenged a reporter to follow him. The reporter took him up on his offer and found Hart leaving a Miami Beach harbor on a boat called “Monkey Business”. The reporter also got a picture of Hart with a gorgeous blonde woman on his lap. They were on the boat with another couple. Hart’s presidential aspirations were finished.
For the sake of space, Rudy Guiliani, John Edwards and Al Gore all had their extra-marital affairs exposed. All three had wives undergoing cancer treatments at the time of their dalliances. Edwards was prosecuted, but not convicted of funneling campaign funds to his mistress. All three of their political careers were finished.
Trump’s treatment is no worse than any of the people listed above. Likewise, I’m sure Bobby Kennedy Jr. didn’t want his presidential candidacy defined by his brain worm. Anyone wanting to be president or vice-president (even Donald Trump, who is supposedly anointed by God) will get this same level of scrutiny.
Trump has not been treated as unfairly as Jesus. Donald Trump has a persecution complex. Sadly, too many voters are suckered in by this con man.
Should Trump have been prosecuted?
Many people, that should know better, believe Trump’s criminal transgressions should be ignored. They point to how his poll numbers increased with each indictment.
The reality is, we are still a nation of laws. If any of us breaks the law, we need to know there will be punishment. Enforcing laws and charging Trump is a deterrent to future politicians that believe laws don’t apply to them. No one should be above the law.
The laws Trump allegedly broke of trying to overthrow a legitimate election and stealing government documents are serious. It is outrageous for someone to steal plans for a US invasion of Iran, store them in the bathroom of his private residence and not be charged. Certainly, rape is serious and must be punished.
Our financial system and banks are based on integrity. Judge Arthur Endoran wrote in his decision finding the Trumps guilty, “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience. Their (the Trumps) complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.” Further, he wrote, “The defendants, (Donald Trump and his two adult sons) are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.” Clearly, all these cases had to be prosecuted.
There is a pattern with Donald Trump. Trump was forced to shut down his charity because of fraud. He also had to shut down and pay restitution to people that got bilked by his fraudulent Trump University.
Sometimes we need to look at the obvious reason Trump is being charged so frequently. He is a liar, he is crooked, he is a fraud and he only cares about himself. There is no conspiracy here, just an extremely flawed individual.
Poor Trump
Trump’s comparing himself to Jesus Christ and claiming he is being “literally” crucified to spare the rest of us the same fate from a runaway Deep State is ridiculous. If I wasn’t raised in a rural area, I would never believe there are people stupid enough to believe this. (Note: This is oddly a bloodless crucifixion.)
If any of us put on a court room circus like Trump got away with, we would be sitting in jail. Trump’s multi-$million lawyers gave him every advantage possible in his trials. Yet, he lost every case so far.
Further, Mr. Macho Man Trump didn’t testify under oath in his rape and hush money trials. Trump’s style is to cry, whine and lie outside the courtroom where there is no cross examination.
President Richard Nixon famously stated, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook”. If Trump wanted to prove his innocence in the 2020 election interference and the document stealing cases, he would have dispensed with all his delay tactics and gone to court to prove his innocence.
Wrapping-up
Facts are terrible things for Donald Trump and his lemmings. The facts are:
Trump was the weakest, in general election polling, of the three major Republican candidates. Democrats had no political incentive to put Trump in jail.
All of Trump’s trials and convictions were the result of facts, not a witch hunt.
Merrick Garland sat for almost two years before starting any investigation of Trump. If there was a Biden/Justice Department vendetta to ruin Trump’s presidential candidacy, it is the most screwed up vendetta in history.
Garland passed up the chance to prosecute Trump for a number of other crimes Trump committed.
Trump has not been investigated or persecuted more than any other presidential or vice-presidential candidate. The reason Trump has been charged and convicted of more crimes than any other candidate is that Trump committed more crimes than any other presidential or vice-presidential candidate.
Rather than blaming others for his legal problems, Trump (and his supporters) need to recognize all of Trump’s legal problems could have been avoided if he hadn’t:
Forced his fingers into E. Jean Carroll’s vagina.
Lied outrageously about his property values.
Didn’t have extra-marital sex with a porn star.
Didn’t try to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
Joe Biden must resign as president. He, his family and his close advisors ignored reality and practiced denialism for too long. For any of us who’ve watched friends or family go through Alzheimer’s, we recognize the progression. First signs are things we might blow-off. Biden trying to get the attention of a dead Congresswoman at a bill signing is an example. We should have been more suspicious when he called a press conference after the Hur Report was released to convince people of his mental acuity. Instead, he mixed up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. His disastrous debate performance followed by an extremely vibrant speech the next day is familiar. Biden has good days and bad days. Over time, the bad days will outnumber the good days.
Biden must resign immediately for two reasons.
The world is a dangerous place. If China attacked Taiwan tomorrow, we can’t risk if Biden is having a good day. Perception is as important as reality. Even if Biden is at his best. we would question his acuity.
Resigning now makes Vice president Kamala Harris the incumbent president in November. She can showcase herself on a bigger stage for four months before the election.
Trump’s advantage: if he had Alzheimer’s, no one would notice
Democrats missed a giant opportunity at the presidential debate. Donald Trump is a liar and a fool. In Trump’s interviews since declaring his candidacy, he has only gotten soft questions. If Biden was checked in, he could have hammered on Trump’s election lies by insisting on evidence. He could have asked why Trump’s “massive evidence of fraud” didn’t stand up in the 61 court cases he lost (many in front of judges he and other Republicans appointed)? A tuned in Biden would have blown off any of Trump’s deflections and returned to demanding real evidence of cheating.
Biden could have asked Trump about the studies by Simpatico Software Systems and Berkley Research Group, paid for by Trump and Republicans, to find election fraud. The companies were paid $750.000 and $600,000 respectively. Their studies both found no evidence of fraud on the scale needed to alter the election.
A sharp Biden should have taken the opportunity to explain the real reasons Trump lost. Trump had the worst job creation and economic growth records in US history. Biden missed the chance to brag about his own record of being one of the most successful US presidents in history in creating jobs and economic growth. Biden should have asked Trump why the unemployment rate now is less than half what it was when Trump left office.
Trump’s trials
An on top-of-it Democrat could have moved on to Trump’s trials and had a field day. Can you imagine Trump forced to explain his fetish for having sex in stores? Note: In the first part of Trump’s pussy grabbing tape, he bragged about trying to fuck (Trump’s term) a married woman in a furniture store. Trump was also convicted of raping E. Jean Carroll in a department store.
It would have been entertaining listening to Trump explaining why Congressional Republicans weren’t able to uncover or find the ubiquitous Deep State in their two-year long investigation. The point is, Democrats could have turned the 2024 election around at the debate if they had a lucid candidate on the podium. They didn’t, and they put themselves in a hole.
Why Kamala?
While Biden’s mental acumen and lucidity has been sliding downward, Vice president Kamala Harris’s has been going the opposite direction. Gone are the days when she would answer questions in a long, meandering way that almost resembled Trump. Now she is the epitome of directness. She is passionate about our country and future.
In a recent speech to Asian American young people advocating for them to press for equality and economic opportunities, Harris said, “You need to kick that fucking door down!”
That is the kind of bluntness Democrats need to use against Trump. I only wished they had it last week in Atlanta at the CNN debate.
Presidential aging
I’ve watched every president in my adulthood age dramatically during their terms, except Donald Trump. I credited Trump’s lack of aging to his cluelessness about the impact his presidential actions and inactions had on ordinary people.
It is unfortunate for the United States and Biden that his mental capabilities diminished so publicly. Biden has done a great job as president. However, he should have resigned, or at least, dropped out of the presidential race a year ago. The longer he stays in office, the more embarrassing it is for he and his family .
The Supreme Court
The other recent assault on democracy came from the Supreme Court. The six Republican justices on the Court must absolutely hate democracy and the Constitution. They also must hate the multi-cultural inclusiveness, women’s ability to make their own decisions about their bodies, rights of Gay people, freedom of religion and the love of liberty the United States represented before they became the court majority. So far, here are a few of their actions.
The Court took away the long held Constitutional right to privacy and abortion.
Republican justices eviscerated the Voting Rights Act.
Three of their rulings make it harder to fight global warming and pollution. This is a disastrous mistake.
They over-rode local gun control laws.
Mural depicting “Liberty” in Wisconsin Capitol dome; Madison, Wisconsin. Joe Biden must resign for us to have any hope for preserving our democracy and liberty.
However, none of their decrees are as extreme as their rulings on presidential immunity. Now, a president (or former president) cannot be held legally responsible for any official act during their presidency.
What would happen if Democrats took advantage of Court ruling?
If Democrats lose the upcoming election this November, the Democratic president could just say the election was fraudulent and invalidate the results. The president could declare martial law and order any protestors jailed. The president could order Special Forces to kill Donald Trump and his VP pick. Might as well knock off Robert Kennedy Jr. also. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the president can’t be prosecuted for any of this.
If the president has a loyal majority in the Congress, or failing that, 34 loyal Democratic senators, the Democratic president doesn’t need to worry about impeachment. If some Republicans get unruly, the president can just have them arrested and locked away in some unknown prison. Again, according to the Republican Supreme Court Justices, no worries about the president ever being prosecuted for any of this. The president is above the law, and for all intents and purposes, a king.
I’m sure the Justices wholly expect Democrats will follow the rules and do what is right. They won’t have to worry about Democrats enacting the above scenario. They are saving implementation for Donald Trump and Republicans.
What the Republican Justices accomplished with their immunity rulings is telegraph loud and clear, whatever Donald Trump does as president, the six right-wing Justices have his back. He will never face any prosecution for whatever he does. For a narcissist like Trump, that is all he needs to impose a dictatorship, if he gets elected. The last four words are the key.
Wrapping up…
In 2016, too many people looked at Hilary Clinton and decided she wasn’t perfect. Apathy ruled. Many people either didn’t vote or wasted their vote on a third-party candidate. What we got was the worst president in US history and three extremist justices that don’t represent most US citizens. We can’t let this happen in 2024.
The only thing that can stymie the Republican justice’s plan for a Donald Trump dictatorship is for intelligent, non-haters to vote for a Democrat as president. I can’t predict who will head the Democratic ticket for president. Yet, I can guarantee that person will be more intelligent, honest, moral and qualified than Donald Trump.
Many people believe Donald Trump and his followers created a cult. They are wrong, Trump and his Republican followers created a full-blown religion, with Donald Trump as their god.
These people blocked out reality in deference to their leader. Like any religion, it is heresy to question Trump’s divinity or his actions.
Trumpianity
Many times, on this website, I’ve described how Republicans have bastardized Christianity. I have called Trump’s followers “Christians In Name Only”. However, the acronym, “CINO”, is the same as Conservatives In Name Only, which also describes today’s big government loving Republicans. I have also used “Make Believe Christians” to describe Trump’s followers. Or, I’ve simply called them hypocrites.
This gets very confusing. To simplify things, henceforth, on this website, Trump and his followers’ religion will be called Trumpianity. Followers of this religion will be called Trumpians.
This allows us to completely disassociate Trumpianity from Christianity. Each religion has different saviors and values.
Clearly, if Trumpians believed Jesus Christ would be at their judgement day, they would never want it on their record that they supported someone as vile as Trump as their leader. Trump’s policies towards migrants, the poor and marginalized groups violate Christian values and human decency.
Is this church Trumpian or Christian?
In the upcoming election, voters have a distinct choice between Christianity, ably represented by President Joe Biden and Trumpianity whose savior is Donald Trump. For voters who are not Christians or Trumpians, the choice is between decency and indecency.
Differences
The two religions worship different messiahs. There are other major differences between Christianity and Trumpianity. These differences are the reason Trumpianity and Christianity are mutually exclusive. You can be one or the other, but not both. If morality is important to you, the differences between the two religions should be a factor in deciding who to vote for. Some differences are listed below (Christian values are bold, Trumpian values are not).
Jesus (the Messiah of Christianity) spent His time on earth caring for the poor. He provided food, shelter, clothes, healing and compassion to the people others closed their eyes to.
Trumpians want to take food away from the poor by eliminating the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). They want to eliminate housing subsidies for the poor and completely take away shelters for most homeless people. These policies will make more people homeless.
Trumpians want to stop using white taxpayer dollars to help underfunded schools populated by kids with black and brown skin. Trumpians also want to take away health care for the poor by eliminating Medicaid. They want to terminate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), taking away health care for millions more Americans. Trumpians also aim to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits for older Americans.
Trumpians believe people should be responsible for themselves and not be dependent on government. This applies to everyone except white farmers that produce corn, soybean, wheat, rice, dairy and sugar. See the article below for more details.
Two times, Jesus admonished rich men and told them they should sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor. (A Christian government would help facilitate some of this transfer by imposing higher taxes on the rich.)
Trumpianity is focused on greed and making the rich richer at the expense of everyone else. They use tax cuts and reduced government oversight to concentrate as much money and wealth into as few hands as possible. Trumpians even want to make it easier for the rich to cheat on their taxes by keeping the IRS underfunded. Trumpians take from the poor and give to the rich.
Jesus was the most honest man to walk the earth. In John 8:32, Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”.
Donald Trump (the Trumpian Messiah) is the most prolific liar in the history of US politics. To Trumpians, the truth is the enemy. This is the opposite of Christianity. One cannot be a Trumpian unless one rejects truth and facts.
Christians are guided by all the Ten Commandments.
Trumpians believe Commandments dealing with lying, adultery and stealing aren’t relevant.
The Bible states in Romans 13:1-2: “Obey the government, for God is the One who has put it there. There is no government anywhere that God has not placed in power. So those who refuse to obey the law of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow.”
Trumpians revere law breakers. The Trumpian Teacher, Donald Trump, is a convicted felon. He has also been convicted of sexual battery, The judge in the battery case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, ruled the assault was a rape by any definition of the word. Trump has also been convicted of financial fraud of banks and insurance companies. He also defrauded ordinary people that enrolled in the now defunct Trump University.
What’s more, Trump surrounds himself with lawbreakers. Trump’s former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos is a felon. Two other high ranking campaign advisors, Paul Mantafort and Rick Gates are felons and served time in prison. Roger Stone, another high-ranking Trump aide was convicted of a felony and went to prison. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security advisor pled guilty to a felony. Trump Organization’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg, committed a felony as part of his work for the Trump organization and is in prison.
Trump’s lawyer for over 12 years, Michael Cohn, is a felon and served prison time. George Nader, a Trump foreign policy advisor is a felon serving a 10-year prison sentence for possessing child pornography and transporting a child for sex. Elliot Broidy, a close Trump confidant and fundraiser is a felon. Steve Bannon, a close Trump advisor will soon serve a prison term for refusing a Congressional subpoena to testify. Trump’s former chief trade negotiator, Peter Navarro, is currently in jail.
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is accused of domestic violence. Trump aides David Sorenson and Rob Porter are also accused of domestic violence. Trump pardoned most of his criminal friends before leaving the presidency
Several of Trump’s lawyers are indicted for trying to overthrow the 2020 election. Many are also facing or have been disbarred and can no longer practice law. (Lawyers are considered “officers of the Court”. They are disbarred for abusing courts, making unsupported claims and false statements in court. In other words, lying. For example, saying the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent is an unsupported claim. The lawyers couldn’t provide evidence of fraud because there isn’t any evidence of fraud.)
Some of the lawyers that have been indicted and or facing disbarment are Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Christina Bobb, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell and others.
Trump lawyer, Alina Habba, was sanctioned multiple times in Trump’s failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Presidential Campaign. Habba and her co-council were fined over $66,000. The judge in the case determined the lawsuit was frivolous and in bad faith. In addition, he ordered Trump and Habba to pay Clinton and others an additional $938,000. Because of another failed Trump lawsuit, he and his lawyers must pay $1.3 million to former White House advisor Omarosa Manigault.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon. Trump, his sons and his company have also been convicted of multiple financial frauds. Trump has also been convicted of what the civil trial judge called “rape, by any definition of the word”.
In addition, Trump surrounds himself with fellow felons and some of the most scurrilous lawyers in the United States. These are not good people. Just to reemphasize what Jesus said, “Those who refuse to obey the law of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow”.
Jesus lived simply. He wore shabby, minimal clothing and lived with the poor. He was not ostentatious. Jesus detested materialism and dishonesty.
Donald Trump (Trumpian’s chosen Savior) is the epitome of greed and the opposite of Jesus. Trump was convicted of financial fraud and fined $453.5 million. About Trump, the trial judge, Justice Arthor Engoron stated, “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscious.” Sadly, Trump has passed on his disdain for the law to his two oldest sons. About Trump and his sons, Engoron wrote, “Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.”
The Bible teaches that life begins at first breath. Genesis 2:7 states “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Most Trumpians want to eliminate abortions. Many want to outlaw all artificial forms of birth control. Contrary to the Bible, the former group believe life begins before birth and the latter believes life begins before conception.
Jesus teaches that those who take care of strangers will receive eternal life and those who do not will receive eternal punishment. (Strangers in this context are people from other countries.)
Trumpianity is focused on putting 21 million human beings that have lived, worked and paid taxes in the US into massive camps and deporting them. While Trumpians claim the reason for the deportations is the people came here illegally, the real reason is Trumpian racism. Trump also wants to deport US citizens that were born in the US whose parents came here illegally. Trump also permanently separated parents who legally applied for asylum from their children.
In the entire New Testament, there is not one word about homosexuality. Jesus spent His time on earth helping the poor and fighting the materialism of the church and the greed of the rich. Homosexuality simply wasn’t a priority to Jesus.
Trumpianity focuses a great deal of effort in taking rights from LGBTQ+ people and making them less than equal citizens.
Jesus set an example for his followers by being humble and good.
Donald Trump sets an example for his Trumpians by being guilty of all seven of the capital vices or cardinal sins; pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.
Christianity teaches that rapists should be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 22:25
Donald Trump (Trumpianity’s Master) was convicted of sexual battery against E. Jean Carroll. During the trial, two other women , under oath, told of being sexually assaulted by Trump. The judge in the case ruled Trump’s assault of Carroll was rape by any definition of the word. Trump has never asked for forgiveness for raping Carroll or apologized to her. The Old Testament rule for rape means Trump should be stoned to death. Trumpians just defy reality and truth and pretend the rapes never happened.
Jesus said, “Be careful that you don’t practice your religion in front of people to draw their attention. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”
The Trumpian Savior, Donald Trump, makes a spectacle of waving a Bible around, trying to sell Bibles and praying in front of large audiences.
Trumpians declare faith. Christians demonstrate their faith by doing good for those that are less fortunate.
The biggest difference between Christianity and Trumpianity is:
Christianity is about love and forgiveness.
Trumpianity is about hate and retribution.
The truth about Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a con-man. He convinced his followers that he is a self-made multi-billionaire. He convinced Trumpians that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. He convinces them that even though he has been convicted in every trial he’s faced in the last year; he is a victim of a witch hunt.
However, Trump’s most successful con-job is convincing Bible-thumping Republicans that he is one of them. He pledges to save Christianity in the United States if elected for a second term.
Trump is the very essence of hypocrisy. I can’t think of a better way to speed up the exodus of people from Christian church membership than having prominent preachers and their membership supporting Donald Trump. Trump is the antithesis of all that is Christianity.
(Note: Certainly not all Christians are hypocritical Trump supporters! Many Christians are honest and good people who would never dream of voting for Trump. Again, this is the reason to designate Trumpians separately from Christians.)
Trump’s promise of making Christianity a state religion
Any hope of legislating Christianity will fail and backfire as even more Americans will describe their religious affiliation as “none”. Rather than declare Christianity a state religion, a far better plan for Trumpians is abandoning Trump and practice real Christianity. People likely would be attracted to churches that treat all people as equals and is accepting of people born with something other than white skin, that are not heterosexual and who believe women should have the same rights and opportunities as men.
Biblical comparisons
Trumpians believe God sent Trump to save America. Logically, God should be able to find a better messenger in a country of 333 million people than Trump.
Trumpians try to compare Trump to other flawed messengers in the Bible like David. Not a good comparison. David’s lust was only for one woman. Trump continually acts out his lust for women he is not married to. David only failed towards the end of his life while Trump has been a miscreant all his adult life.
While David was the epitome of courage, Trump had his daddy buy him a 4-F draft deferment so he wouldn’t go to Vietnam. Also, Trump whines like a baby when he doesn’t get his way. It is hard to imagine two people more different than David and Trump.
The Biblical comparison that does work for Trump is the Golden Calf Idol (Exodus 32). The Israelites built the Golden Calf Idol after escaping from Egypt and wandering in the desert for years. They built the idol at the urging of Aaron, Moses’s brother. The Golden Calf was a false god, just like Trump. Aaron’s modern-day comparison is Fox News.
The Christian alternative to Trumpianity
The Christian candidate running for president is President Joe Biden. Biden does not walk around waving a Bible and making speeches to right-wing Trumpian church groups. Biden shows his Christianity by his everyday actions. He has been married to the same woman for 47 years. He shows his unquestioning love for his wife and family in a way we should emulate. While president, Biden has constantly tried to help the poor and oppressed at the expense of the rich and privileged, just like Jesus. Unfortunately, Trumpians managed to stop many of his Christianity based plans.
Biden’s faith has certainly been tested during his presidency. Trumpians have made up all sorts of disgusting accusations. Trump uses something called “projection”. He tries to project his own undemocratic actions onto Biden.
Trumpians accused Biden of taking $1.5 billion from China and varying amounts from Ukraine. Rather than lash out like Trump, Biden let the Trumpians make fools of themselves trying to find evidence that doesn’t exist. Voters should not confuse Biden’s Christian actions with weakness.
Biden has not been indicted or convicted of rape or financial fraud. Biden is not a felon. The Biden’s Administration does not have any wife beaters or perverts. No one in Biden’s administration is in prison or facing prison. Joe Biden is one of the few presidents with a scandal free presidency.
This is not an accident. Unlike Trump, Biden is a good person. He surrounds himself with good people that Trump could not tolerate. Biden also attracts good people because his goal is to improve the lives of all people in the United States. Conversely, Trump wants to make life more miserable for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed. This attracts a totally different kind of people working for him than Biden has.
Thankfully, voters don’t have to choose between morality and competence. They get both with Biden.
The defining challenge of Trump’s presidency was COVID. He failed miserably. His lies, misinformation an incompetence in not listening to the the world’s leading disease experts resulted in the US having the highest number of COVID deaths of any country in the world during his term. We also had one of the world’s highest per capita death rates from COVID during his term. Trump failed.
President Joe Biden’s biggest challenge has been inflation. This was a worldwide problem because of the recovery from the pandemic. Early in Biden’s term, when inflation was at its worst, the US inflation rate was in the middle of the twenty largest economies in the world (G-20). Today, the US inflation rate is the lowest of any of the G-20 countries. Biden succeeded.
There are three reasons a Donald Trump election victory in November will quickly evolve into a Trump dictatorship. This dictatorship will last at least as long as Trump is alive.
Reason #1: Getting elected and staying in office keeps Trump out of jail.
Trump will not go on trial for stealing government documents, for trying to overturn the 2020 election result or the Georgia RICO case, that also revolves around overturning the 2020 election results, before the November presidential election. There is also a civil case brought by Capitol police officers and some Democratic congressmen seeking damages for Trump’s instigating the January 6, 2021, riot/insurrection. Last but not least, an Internal Revenue Service audit found Trump may owe $100 million (plus penalties and interest) for a dubious accounting maneuver on his Chicago building. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/us/trump-taxes-audit-chicago.html
Trump cannot be tried while he is in office. Logically, he will want to stay in office as long as possible. If Trump wins in November, he can appoint a friendly attorney general and stop the federal cases and the tax collection. If an obedient Republican wins the open Georgia gubernatorial election, Trump might get the new governor to fire Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, (who charged Trump in the RICO case), if she is still in office.
This is all good for Trump in the short term. The bad part is, the federal cases are only postponed. It is a federal crime to destroy evidence. Also, the statute of limitations applies from the date of the offense until the defendant is charged. A four-year delay while Trump is president will not stop these cases from moving forward again once he leaves office.
There is a mountain of evidence against Trump in his three remaining criminal cases. If convicted, Trump would go to jail for a very long time.
Trump is a fool, but even he is not stupid enough to obey the Constitution and leave office after the 2028 election. If he were to leave after a Democrat won the 2028 election and appointed an aggressive attorney general, a former President Trump would be facing the same charges he is trying to avoid now. The question isn’t if a President Trump will take dictatorial powers, the question is when.
A German magazine recognizes Donald Trump as a Hitler wannabe. Germans should know, they experienced the real thing.
Reason #2: A president cannot dole out retribution. A dictator can.
Trump continually talks about retribution against all the people that wronged him in denying his victory in the 2020 election. Trump’s problem is, there is no evidence of election fraud, because there was no election fraud. Trump lost in 2020 because he is a vile excuse for a human being and his disastrous presidency was fresh in voters’ minds.
Trump promises a dictatorship on Day 1 of his next presidency. We should pay attention to what he’s saying.
Trump can have a dictatorship on Day 1 of his administration and order his attorney general to jail Joe Biden and all the judges in the 61 election court cases Trump lost. However, on Day 2 of Trump’s presidency, all these people are out of jail. Again, there is no evidence of fraud or illegal activity associated with Trump’s 2020 election loss. This is a difficult concept for Trump and Republicans to grasp, but in a Constitutional judicial system, one needs evidence to arrest, try and convict someone. On the other hand, dictators don’t need evidence to jail someone for life.
Once a president crosses the line using our justice system to seek retribution against innocent people, there is no turning back. Trump will need to declare martial law and take the dictatorial powers he has always wanted and keep them for the rest of his life.
Reason #3: Republicans demand a return on their investment in Trump to get a whiter America.
A president Trump will fail again. The only way Republicans can get their right wing agenda passed is if Trump has dictatorial power. A few of Trump’s biggest failures as president follow This list is no where near complete in listing Trump’s failures.
Trump promised Mexico would pay for building a wall on the US border.
It didn’t happen.
Trump then promised he would build a wall.
It didn’t happen.
Trump said he would stop illegal immigration.
It didn’t happen. The number of illegal immigrants entering the country is estimated using a proxy measure, the number of arrests at the border. Arrests plummeted during the COVID pandemic, while Trump was president. But, arrests skyrocketed In Trump’s last two months in office to 71,141 and 75,316. In comparison, the highest number of monthly apprehensions in Barack Obama’s term was 67,342. Trump did not stop illegal immigration. Quite to the contrary, illegal immigration increased during Trump’s time as president.
Trump promised he would enact the “penny plan” to cut federal spending one percent annually. He stated he was the only one who could do this.
It didn’t happen. Presidents Clinton and Obama averaged three percent annual spending increases during their terms. Trump averaged six percent increases until his last year when he set records for the largest percent increase in spending since World War II.
Trump promised he would balance the federal budget “fairly quickly” and wipe out our national debt in eight years. He stated he was the only one who could do this.
It didn’t happen. Trump increased deficit spending every year he was in office and ended his term with the biggest deficit in history.
Trump promised he would end our international trade deficit. He stated he was the only one who could do this.
It didn’t happen. Our trade deficit increased every year Trump was in office.
Trump promised to end Obamacare and replace it with something much better.
It didn’t happen. He failed on both counts.
Trump promised to create record numbers of jobs. He stated he was the only one who could do this.
It didn’t happen. In Trump’s first three years in office, 23 percent fewer jobs were created than in the last three years of Obama’s presidency. Trump’s presidency ended with him being the only president since the 1930’s when these records were first kept, that had fewer jobs at the end of his presidency than when he came into office. Trump also increased the unemployment rate during his term by 34 percent.
Trump said he would grow the economy by 4 percent per year.
It didn’t happen. The economy grew 2.5 percent annually in Trump’s first three years in office. By the end of his term, he had the lowest annual growth rate of any president since these records were first recorded in the 1930’s.
Trump said he could get North Korea to stop their nuclear and missile programs.
It didn’t happen.
Trump said he signed more legislation than any other president.
Trump lied. He signed fewer pieces of legislation than any other president in US history. This, despite Republicans controlling both the House and Senate in Trump’s first two years in office. His biggest accomplishment was signing a huge tax cut for corporations and the rich that created out-of-control deficits.
Trump failed. By any measure, the US was far better off before Trump was president than at the end of his term. COVID was the defining challenge of Trump’s presidency and he failed miserably. The US desperately needed real leadership. Instead, Trump fell into his typical pattern of ignoring experts and instead listened to medical outliers and his “gut” to make decisions. As deaths piled up, rather than take responsibility and change course, he tried to shift blame to the experts he ignored. He also blamed the mainstream media that reported the number of deaths and everyone from China to Democrats for his failures. At the end of Trump’s term, the US had one of the world’s highest per capita COVID death rates and more COVID deaths than any other country.
Why Trump failed.
In true Trumpian fashion, Trump blames everyone around him for his failures. More relevant reasons are his low intelligence and inability to focus. For example:
Trump’s first defense secretary, former General James Mattis said Trump, “has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci stated, “Donald Trump’s attention span is like a minus number.” These were not the only advisors making these observations.
An even bigger problem, except for himself, Trump doesn’t stand for anything. His position on issues changes with the wind. A few examples…
Four years ago, Trump was proud to sign the First Step Act. This bill allowed over 2,600 imprisoned former crack cocaine sellers to petition for early release from prison. Now, Trump says drug dealers should be executed.
Two years ago, Trump said, “Abortion is MURDER!” Now, it is just fine in any state that allows abortion.
A few months ago, Trump fumed, “The flood of illegal immigrants is poisoning the blood of our country”. While appearing to be following orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump had his minions in Congress kill the bill, that Republicans led negotiations on, that would have stopped the flood.
Trump is too lazy to put in the effort to pass legislation that doesn’t directly impact him. However, Republicans want their agenda passed now. These are some of the reasons for Republican impatience…
America is becoming more accepting of a multi-cultural society.
Every day, the US has a higher percentage of non-white citizens.
LGBTQ people are gaining acceptance as real people throughout the US.
Women are gaining more power and successfully fighting big government’s takeover of their futures and reproductive rights.
Black people are fighting the systemic racism they’ve dealt with for generations. We now have historically high numbers of Black judges and US attorneys (who decide which federal cases are prosecuted). In addition, Black scholars are getting real history in textbooks.
Horror of horrors, even trans people are gaining acceptance.
Republicans also recognize fewer and fewer people are identifying as Christian.
Trump is Republicans’ last great white hope for winning a presidential election and righting all these wrongs. Republicans learned Trump is incapable of accomplishing change as a president. Their only hope is for Dictator Trump being much more effective. Republicans will support whatever Trump does to consolidate power and give the racists, bigots, Islamophobes, anti-semites, misogynists and sexists that make up the Republican Party what they want.
How we got here
It is a given that the Republicans identified above will vote for Trump. If the Democrats nominated a risen Jesus Christ, Trump would still get the aforementioned groups’ votes.
The reason Donald Trump is leading in polls is because of Joe Biden. Democrats wanted to make Trump the focus of the 2024 race. Voters didn’t buy that and instead are making Biden the focus.
JoeBiden (and Donald Trump) are too old to be running for president. Voters watched Biden age dramatically over the last four years. Biden’s age, his gait and his frequently blank expressions are tangible reasons he is running behind in most polls. The intangible reason is, voters simply don’t like Joe Biden. Biden ran for president in 1988 and 2008 and lost both times. In 2020, he needed South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn to save his candidacy. Biden could easily win reelection to his Delaware Senate seat, but when he stepped out onto the national stage, he can’t connect with voters.
When a candidate like Biden is not liked, people ignore a booming economy where wages are outpacing inflation and where we can now go out to a restaurant without a mask on and feel safe from COVID. The flip side of not being liked is Biden is blamed for things he has no control over, like Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israel’s response and college protests.
For some reason, candidates as diverse as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump can make all kinds of blunders yet maintain their popularity. Who would possibly have believed ten years ago that a presidential candidate would be convicted unanimously by a jury of sexual battery, which the presiding judge described “as rape by any definition of the word” and still be leading in the polls?
The real problem here starts and finishes with Biden. Biden recognizes the seriousness of Trump’s threat to democracy and the rule of law. Biden also saw his standing in polls months ago. If he had announced he wasn’t running, Democrats would have one of any number of young, dynamic and aggressive candidates walking all over Trump.
If intelligent, good people don’t vote for Biden in November because he isn’t “likable” or they don’t support some of his policies, Donald Trump wins and we will lose our democracy. Simple as that.
The clear and present danger…
Trump values himself over anything else, obviously including the Constitution, the Bill of rights and our democracy. Trump has continually talked about terminating the Constitution if he wins the upcoming election. He routinely says he will mobilize the National Guard to enforce his actions. We need to take him at his word. Well before the 2028 election, a President Trump will have declared martial law to deal with the invasion at the border or some other manufactured crisis.
If you think this is far fetched and there are Constitutional safeguards, wake up. Congressional Republicans ignored facts and rallied around him in his first two impeachment trials. Standing up to Trump and for the Constitution would be political (and maybe literal) suicide for any Republican. Republicans will have enough seats in the House and the Senate to allow Trump to do whatever he wants.
Don’t count on the Supreme Court to save our democracy from Trump. The Supreme Court, has a 6-3 right wing majority. Their success in keeping Trump’s election subversion trial from happening before the election, based on Trump’s total presidential immunity claim, makes a mockery of “blind justice” on the Supreme Court.
Where do we go from here?
Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. said, “The US is sleepwalking into a dictatorship, if Trump wins in 2024.” I couldn’t agree more.
Many people don’t recognize the threat because they think Trump is a harmless, blowhard. Too many voters believe, “Trump says all kinds of crazy things, but he just blows a lot of smoke. We lasted through one Trump Administration. We can do it again.”
Unfortunately, the Trump of 2024 is different than the Trump of 2016. The 2024 Trump is facing prison, perhaps for the rest of his life. Trump can’t blame himself for the legal problems he created, so we hear hate filled tirades blaming everyone connected to his cases. He is a dictator in waiting.The “retribution” he promises can only be delivered by a dictator.
At the same time, Republican frustration with democracy is reaching a boiling point. A Republican Supreme Court reversed Roe versus Wade. Yet, Republicans underestimated the power of the ballot as voters in some Republican states made abortion legal. Petitions with far more signatures than needed will put abortion on the ballot in more Republican states this year. Worse, the House’s Republican majority showed Republicans can’t get their crazy, right wing policies enacted in a democracy.
The bottom line…
Otto von Bismarck, a German 19th Century politician, said, “There is a special Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, small children and the United States of America.” We are going to need that special Providence.
When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Frugal Ron predicted Trump would lead us into a recession. Frugal Ron also predicted Trump would dramatically increase the unemployment rate, stymie job growth, rack up record percent annual spending increases, create record government spending deficits and increase our trade deficit. As it turned out, Trump didn’t disappoint.
So, is Frugal Ron some kind of genius? Not hardly.
Frugal Ron studies history, something Republicans don’t do. He also learned history repeats itself for people who fail to study history and learn from it.
It was easy to predict Trump would follow Republican dogma in his fiscal management. The results were equally predictable. We’ve seen it over and over with Republicans.
Before understanding why Republican economies fail, it is important to understand their record over time using various measures. Note: While Congress theoretically controls government spending and taxation, in the real world, the president sends a proposed budget to Congress. Members of Congress typically declare the budget “dead on arrival”. However, because the president has final veto power and there is only one president and 435 House members and 100 senators, the final budget the president gets is usually very close to what he proposed.
Recessions
No one is as predictable at creating recessions as Republican presidents. In the last 100 years, 13 of the last 17 recessions have taken place when a Republican occupied the White House. It gets even more worse when looking at the data since 1953. In that period, 10 of the 11 recessions occurred while a Republican was president. I’m not doing a statistical analysis, but we can assume there is more than random chance at work here.
The lesson here is if you are a business owner, especially one with limited cash reserves, DO NOT start a new business or a major expansion if a Republican is president or about to take office!
Job growth
Measuring job growth accurately and comparing it across presidential administrations over an 85-year period requires some effort. Looking at just the number of new jobs created does not tell us much because there were a lot fewer workers in the 1940’s. Adding an average 97,000 new workers a month like Truman did was a Herculean feat as World War II was ending. Those numbers now would be considered a failure.
Also, presidents have different term lengths. In the graph below, I used Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data and calculated the change in job numbers from the start to the end of each administration. Then I calculated the percent change in jobs from the start to the end of each term. Last step, I divide the percent change in jobs by the term length of each president in years. The final numbers you see in the graph are the annual percent change in jobs during each president’s term. One last detail, BLS started collecting this data in January, 1939. This means only the last five years of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s term are included.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)
As far as performance by political party, of the eight presidents with the highest job growth, seven are Democrats. Of the seven presidents with the lowest job growth, only one is a Democrat. Again, pretty hard to argue this is due to chance.
No matter what metric one uses to measure job growth, one fact is undeniable. Donald Trump is the only president since these records were kept in 1939 with negative job growth in his term.
Republicans are in a league of their own based on their audacity in spinning the truth. Even though COVID claimed over 1.1 million US lives, Republicans continually call COVID a hoax. Yet, when confronted with Trump’s disastrous economic record, suddenly, COVID was a once in a century pandemic. The reality is, COVID was a once in a century pandemic, made much worse in the US because of Donald Trump’s mismanagement. That mismanagement is reflected throughout measuring Trump’s economic performance.
When we cherry pick Trump’s data in his favor by knocking 2020 (the pandemic year) out of the dataset, things go from disastrous to mediocre. During Trump’s first 36 months in office, the US economy gained 6.6 million jobs. But during a comparable 36-month period at the end of Obama’s tenure, employers added 8.1 million jobs, or 23% more than were added in Trump’s first three years in office. And, if you look at the chart above, Obama isn’t the president you want to lose out comparing to. A better comparison, in Joe Biden’s first 36 months in office, 14.7 million new jobs were created.
Republicans claim their tax cuts create jobs, The above graph disproves that fantasy. Trump’s corporate tax cuts are an excellent example. Corporations took the money they saved on taxes and did stock buy-backs, paid down debt and padded their bottom lines. As the above paragraph showed, job growth in Trump’s cherry picked first three years was mediocre.
Ronald Reagan’s presidency is interesting. In this and other economic performance graphs and tables below, Reagan is the only Republican matching up with top tier Democrats. While he had two recessions while in office, his end of term performance was very good.
There are a few possible explanations for Reagan’s success:
Reagan may be an outlier.
Some unexplained factor or chance made him successful even though he followed Republican dogma.
Reagan’s extreme liberal borrow and spend policies kept the economy afloat until George H.W Bush took office and the typical Republican recession took hold.
Looking at the graph again, certainly, there are other factors at work. From 1939 until Roosevelt died in 1945, the US put record numbers of people to work building an industrial behemoth to win World War II. On the other end of the spectrum, the Bush II recession destroyed $9.8 trillion in wealth as home values plummeted and retirement accounts vaporized just as Obama was taking office. U.S. home mortgage debt relative to GDP increased from an average of 46% during the 1990s to 73% during 2008, While Obama’s numbers in this and other charts don’t look great, after assuming office in 2009, he accomplished yeoman’s work in keeping the economy from going even further into free-fall. At the end, he actually created substantial numbers of jobs.
Economic growth
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States (without double counting the intermediate goods and services used up to produce them). Changes in GDP are how economic growth is measured.
This graph looks like the Job Growth graphic above. Of the seven presidents with the highest economic growth rates, six are Democrats. Of the nine presidents with the worst growth records, seven are Republicans. Herbert Hoover’s Percent Annual GDP change was -253.9%. Including his numbers made the graph unreadable, so I left them off, but include him in the above analysis. The first full year of GDP data collection was 1929. That was the first full year of Hoover’s presidency.
Put in more understandable terms, a study by two economics professors at Princeton, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found, “Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republican. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades.” Their study was done before Biden had an economic record and also does not include Hoover’s data . https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/sunday/democrats-economy.html
Spending
The important column to pay attention to in this table is the “Percent Annual Change”. The rest are just support information. Democrats Clinton and Obama grew government spending at about 1/3 the level of the Republicans. Biden has decreased annual government spending substantially since taking office.
For this table, and the ones following, I’m focusing on the more recent past. I’m starting with Ronald Reagan because he took spending and deficits to a whole new level never seen in peacetime. This from a guy that complained, “Government isn’t the answer, it is the problem”. I guess Reagan’s solution was to make the problem much bigger.
Again, I cherry picked Trump’s data to remove the impact of his mismanagement of COVID. Between Trump’s first and second and second and third years in office, Trump doubled the percent increase in government spending that Democrats Clinton and Obama maintained. In Trump’s last year, he exploded the percent increase in spending to a level not seen since World War II.
This table drives a stake in the heart of the fantasy that Republicans are fiscal conservatives. Republicans love big government. Republicans spend and spend and then spend some more.
Deficits
Let’s do some basic math. If government increases spending dramatically and at the same time cuts revenue by giving big tax cuts to rich people, what is going to happen to net income? Republicans just can’t figure this one out and they keep getting the same results, bigger and bigger deficits. Trump is even campaigning on more tax cuts. He should break his all-time record deficit if elected to a second term.
The important columns to pay attention to are “Annual Change ($billions)” and “Percent Change”. You will notice every Democrat has decreased the deficit during their term in office. Every Republican has increased the deficit. Percent changes are equally telling. The crazy number Bush II has is due to the math of doing a percentage change and going from a positive balance to a deeply negative one.
For every president, as far as spending and deficits, their first year in office is basically a reflection on their predecessor. Most spending and revenue was set in the previous budget before they took office. Obama left Trump with a first year spending balance of -$574 billion. By the next year, Trump increased the deficit to -$987 billion, In Trump’s next year in office, he increased the deficit to -$1.15 trillion. Both the -$987 and the -$1.15 trillion were the largest non-recession deficits in US history. In Trump’s last year in office, the deficit exploded to -$3.2 trillion, an all time record. Trump’s mismanagement of COVID was the primary reason massive deficits were needed to rescue the economy in his last year in office.
Trump increased the federal spending deficit every year he was in office and concluded with an all-time record deficit. Anyone who thinks Trump will cut our government deficit if re-elected needs a dose of reality.
Reagan’s $210 billion deficit in 2008 seems paltry by today’s standards. It was 17.2 percent of total federal government spending and 3.8 percent of GDP. Biden’s most recent annual deficit of $1.194 trillion is 19.2 percent of spending and 4.6 percent of GDP. Both deficits are far bigger than they should be. But, not a lot different compared to overall federal government spending and GDP.
The data clearly shows, tax cuts to rich people do not pay for themselves. When a Republican says they are going to cut taxes, what they really mean is they are going to create deficits. The tables above on Job Creation and the table below illustrate that tax cuts certainly do not help the economy. Tax cuts for rich people make rich people richer and create deficits for our grandchildren to pay off. Conversely, Democrat’s tax increases do lower deficits.
One last point, you can take the BEA data and compare spending and deficits from the end of the previous president’s term to the end of each term, you can compare each as a percent of GDP, use inflation adjusted inflation values or do the comparisons in the above two tables anyway you want. What you’ll find, you’ll get different numbers. But, the answer is the same. Since Ronald Reagan was elected, Republicans are deficit loving spendaholics compared to Democrats. In other words, Republicans are liberals.
Unemployment rates
There is an old saying, “you get what you pay for.”
This doesn’t apply when you are talking about Republicans. The spending table showed Republicans spend government money like drunken sailors on a port call. Yet, Republican spending, insofar as lowering unemployment, speeding up economic growth, creating jobs and preventing recessions is ineffective.
As far as unemployment, the Reagan presidency’s unemployment decrease stands out in contrast to other Republicans, again. In all other administrations, unemployment falls during Democrats’ presidencies and shoot way up when Republicans are in the White House.
Republicans claim cutting government regulations helps employment. Obviously, like cutting taxes for rich people, the data doesn’t back up their claims.
Doing some more data cherry picking, Trump supporters claim Trump had low unemployment before COVID. The reality is Trump’s mediocre pre-pandemic job gains (covered above in the section on “Job Growth”) merely continued the low unemployment rate trend Obama left Trump with.
Trade deficits
Donald Trump promised he would end our international trade deficit and bring American jobs back home. He also claimed he was the only one who could do it. Trump failed miserably.
Trump wanted a trade war and he got it. He implemented 30 percent tariffs on many imported goods. In turn, other countries put reciprocating tariffs on our exports. Trump also got his way by negotiating new trade agreements with many trading partners including renegotiating NAFTA. These resulted in gut-wrenching, record bankruptcies in agriculture and for companies and industries reliant on exports. It also resulted in higher costs to consumers in all countries.
The results – in Trump’s first year in office, (2017), our trade deficit was -$378 billion. In the following years, the trade deficit increased to -$441 billion to -$448 billion and to -$570 billion in 2020. Like everything else he touched, Trump’s trade war only made things worse . We got bigger trade deficits every year. And, as the tables above show, he certainly didn’t help employment.
The reason Trump failed so spectacularly is that a country’s trade balance has nothing to do with fairness of trade, trade agreements or tariffs. It has everything to do with net national savings.
Economists use this equation to explain trade balances between countries: Private savings – Government savings = Exports – Imports
Government can’t do much about private savings, but can control government savings. If a president wants to lower the trade deficit, lower the government spending deficit. Trying to restrict trade more, as Trump proposes if he gets a second term, will only cost more jobs and create more chaos.
Just to clarify, when trade protections are put on manufacturing jobs or a commodity like steel, it will not affect our trade balance. What these protections do is adversely affect other industries that aren’t protected. Regardless, if it is Trump or Biden, when a liberal government inserts itself into the marketplace and uses trade protections and tariffs to pick winners and losers, bad things happen to the overall economy. Besides unprotected industries, the big losers are consumers that will pay higher prices.
Income inequality
According to a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis study, “Income inequality in the U.S. has been rising. Since 1980, real income of the bottom 50 percent of the population has grown about 20 percent. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent have enjoyed 145 percent growth. In addition to ethical concerns over fairness, inequality has practical economic, political, and social consequences. Some research suggests that higher levels of income inequality reduces a country’s aggregate economic growth because it decreases household spending and limits educational opportunities for the children of the less well-off. The unequal distribution of income constrains how much the pie grows for everyone.” https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2023/the-state-of-income-inequality#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20income%20inequality%20in%20the,but%20the%20approach%20has%20limits.
The year 1980 is important. In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president. During his term, he lowered the top tax rate from 70 percent to 37 percent. It has stayed in the mid 30 percent range since then. Not coincidentally, income inequality flourished, thanks to Reagan and every Republican president following him..
“It’s vastly oversold that tax cuts will generate job and economic growth,” said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “When you cut taxes for the upper income, you give them more after-tax income, but you don’t do anything for growth.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reached the same conclusion in 2012 . Tax cuts don’t spur growth but do increase income inequality. I will add, tax cuts also increase deficits.
Some claim Trumpian Republicans are populists. Not so. Populists typically are the Robin Hoods of politics. They reappropriate wealth, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Core Republicans are low income, white people without college degrees. Their idea of reappropriating wealth is to make sure rich people get to keep their wealth, often at core Republicans’ expense.
This makes no sense. But, it is the world we live in today.
Stock markets
CNN reported in September 2020 that: “Since 1945, the S&P 500 has averaged an annual gain of 11.2% during years when Democrats controlled the White House, according to CFRA Research. That’s well ahead of the 6.9% average gain under Republicans.”
Looking at the more recent past, the trend continues.
The data in the table makes Donald Trump look favorable. However, between the 2020 election and when Trump left office, the S&P 500 rallied seven percent in less than a three month period. This indicates markets were happyto see Trump go.
Biden’s economic performance is not fully reflected in the 10 percent annual S&P 500 gain he achieved. Part of this is due to the conventional wisdom, that proved wrong, that the US was headed into a recession. Markets are also reacting to the almost every month threat of the Republican House of Representatives shutting the government down. At the same time, investors had perfectly safe, high interest CD’s competing with the stock market. Despite all this, with Biden as president, the S&P 500 is at all time highs.
Inflation
Average annual inflation rates for 2021, 2022 and 2023 were 4.7 percent, 8.0 percent and 4.1 percent respectively. The current inflation rate is 3.4 percent and continually falling.
A primary driver of recent inflation is rising wages. According to a Center for American Progress (CAP) study, “Real average wage growth for a typical worker during this recovery has been the second highest of all recoveries from post-1980 recessions, and only the COVID-19 recovery (the Biden recovery) has combined robust wage growth with a near-complete recovery of the unemployment rate. The data also suggest that most individual workers are earning more today than they were before the pandemic; every prime-age worker cohort has higher inflation-adjusted median wages than before the pandemic.” https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/#:~:text=The%20data%20also%20suggest%20that,wages%20than%20before%20the%20pandemic.
What is going on here?
A lot of things happened over the last 90 years impacting our economy. I’m acknowledging some of them that haven’t been listed previously below. To many people, these are major determinants. In my view, these are short term factors and aren’t the big reasons for the difference in economic performance between Republican and Democratic presidents. We’ll get to those in a bit.
In 1933, the unemployment rate was 25 percent. Wages fell 43 percent from 1929 to 1933.
After World War II, millions of veterans were incorporated into an economy shifting from military production to civilian goods.
John Kennedy cut the highest tax rate for those making over $250,000 annually from 90 to 70 percent. Through his appointees, he revamped the Federal Reserve to be more expansionary.
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon both benefited from a war economy (Vietnam). However, decisions to fund the war without tax increases may have led to higher inflation. Nixon also sold US grain reserves to Russia. These reserves depressed commodity prices for years.
Jimmy Carter dealt with a number of issues, some of his making. Society was changing with changing traditions. Consequently, millions of women entered the workforce. There were oil price shocks and inflation increased. Carter appointed a hard nosed Federal Reserve chairman, (Paul Volker) who vowed to tame inflation. Frugal Ron was farming and saw his loan interest rates increase from 7 to 21 percent between 1979 and 1980. (Interest was his biggest expense before the increase.) At the same time, corn prices dropped from $3 to $2/bushel. Not relevant to this article, but these changes inspired a lifelong learning experience in economics for Frugal Ron to understand what caused these things to happen.
Ronald Reagan became president after beating Carter in 1980. Reagan cut the top tax rate from 70 to 37 percent during his tenure. Cutting tax rates and dramatically increasing government spending was an expansionary fiscal policy while Volker was still using deflationary monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. On Nov. 6, 1986 Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This allowed allowed around 3 million immigrants to secure legal status after paying $185, demonstrating “good moral character” and learning to speak English. Between 1980 and 1990, the foreign born population in the US increased from 14.1 million to 19.8 million. This massive influx of immigrants may be the reason Reagan’s presidency was immune to the miserable job growth, low GDP growth and high unemployment that plagued all other Republican presidents after him.
In the face of rapidly increasing deficits during the recession in the last year of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, he increased tax rates slightly.
Responding to growing pressure about the deficit, Bill Clinton increased taxes substantially after taking office in 1993. He left office having wiped out the deficit and left government with a surplus.
George W. Bush decreased tax rates for wealthy people. He created a large deficit and consequently a record high trade deficit.
Barack Obama cut taxes for middle class families and small businesses and raised them for high earners. He also passed the Affordable Care Act. This provided health insurance to over 20 million uninsured people. Enrollment in 2023 reached over 40 million.
Donald Trump passed a corporate tax cut with a flat 21 percent tax rate
Why the difference in economic results?
Republican dogma dictates each new Republican president will cut taxes for rich people, dramatically increase government spending for the same people and cut regulations. The data in this article shows these policies do not lead to growing economies or employment gains on the level Democrats continually attain. They do lead to ever increasing record deficits.
Insanity is defined as repeating the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different result. So, are Republicans insane when they keep doing the same things over and over, or is something else happening?
Republicans aren’t having a 40 year mental breakdown. For Republicans, broad based economic growth with high employment and low deficits are not a priority. This is important.
What Republicans are doing is perfectly logical if you understand their goals and values.
Based on current Republican priorities in the House of Representatives and Republican legislation over the last 40 years, here is how one would rate Republican priorities:
Keep the US white.
Make life as miserable as possible for Black people by maintaining systemic racism, eliminating education funding and safety net programs.
Concentrate as much wealth as possible in as few hands as possible.
Keep growing farmer welfare payments so no US corn, soybean, wheat, rice, cotton, dairy or sugar farmer ever competes in a capitalistic market.
Republicans claim their tax cuts and all the rest are the means to an end result of a strong economy, They are lying. The tax cuts, decreased government regulations, huge spending increases to preferred groups and larger farmer welfare payments are actually the ends they want to achieve.
Republicans simply don’t care if the economy goes into another recession and they run up more deficits. What is important is making rich people richer and protecting preferred farmers. (Most of the food we eat somehow miraculously makes it from the farm to the grocery store with only government food safety involvement.)
Conversely, Democrats do a great job of identifying their goal. It is simple, “use the power of government to improve peoples’ lives.” Looking at the above economic data, they are successfully achieving their goal.
How to grow an economy
Much of this article focused on how not to grow an economy. So, what does work? Following are some text book answers:
Increase the population. Increasing the population is pretty straightforward. You can either have a birth rate that results in a growing population or you can import people.
Have abundant mineral, oil, soil and temperate weather resources. Using common sense to maximize these is important. For example, don’t use finite ground water supplies to grow corn that will be burned up as ethanol.
Improving infrastructure is imperative for increasing a country’s wealth. Moving goods and services quickly and efficiently is essential.
Investing in human capital is the most important way to increase a nation’s wealth. There are various ways to accomplish this.
Improving people’s physical and mental health outcomes.
Developing an educated workforce is essential.
While improving all of these is important, the biggest bang for the buck is focusing resources at the most “at risk” populations.
A step further…
So how does improving people’s lives increase broad based wealth? Let’s look again at what doesn’t work.
Republicans continually tell us if rich people are given tax cuts, out of their magnanimity, the rich will start their factories and provide jobs for the little people.
This isn’t how it works. New jobs are created when there is increased demand. Tax rates have little or nothing to do with it.
Demand is created when the customer base of people that can afford to buy increases and/or existing customers have more money to spend.
Tying this together, Democrats increase demand for products and services (economic and job growth) by improving the lives of people. If people are better educated, they can earn more money (and pay more taxes). Democrats want to create excellence in education as a key to increasing opportunity for kids of all colors and backgrounds. Republicans look at public education as an area to cut costs and thereby reduce taxes for rich people, who can then afford to send their kids to private schools.
Republicans want to reserve the pool of future high paying jobs for wealthy kids from private schools. A well funded, vibrant, quality public school system expands the number of future well paying jobs and opens that market for kids of all colors and backgrounds. No wonder Republicans fight paying public school teachers for the value they create.
Obviously, Social Security increases the buying power of recipients. Likewise, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act provide health care for people who couldn’t afford it. Healthier people are more productive and can earn more money.
Effective health insurance enables people who have been hospitalized to continue spending on thisngs that grow the economy instead of spending the rest of their lives paying hospital bills. Medicaid also covers costs for the care of elderly. This allows adult children to keep working and generate more economic growth.
Low income women can get subsidized child care that allows them to continue working and generate more income. Food stamps (SNAP) allow low income people to avoid hunger and makes them more valuable to employers.
Democrats do all they can to make birth control and safe and accessible abortion available. By improving lives with these policies, a 15 year old girl doesn’t have to drop out of high school. She can instead go to college, if she chooses, and make a much higher salary. This leads to higher GDP and employment. This is so much different than when I was growing up.
Biden reduced or eliminated school debt for millions of overburdened people. Instead of having to deal with that debt, these former students can buy houses, cars, start families or all kinds of things that generate more jobs and higher economic output. Doing these things that improve people’s lives are like a “thousand points of light” insofar as stimulating economic growth.
From Social Security to student loan forgiveness are Democratic programs. Everyone of them was fought tooth-and-nail by Republicans. Even Social Security isn’t immune from continuing Republican threats. In her presidential campaign, Nicki Haley called for Social Security benefit cuts. Cutting back Social Security has been a crusade of the Koch family, who endorsed Haley.
How including Black people in the economy enhanced incomes
The above graph encapsulates one of my main points. The former Confederate states were stuck in an economic crater ever since the Civil War. White racists did everything they could to deprive Black people of opportunity. Civil rights laws were passed in the early 1950’s and white people were forced, over time to to give Black people something close to equal rights. As the graph shows, everybody was better off. When Democrats use the power of government to improve people’s lives, the economy improves.
Earlier, the Reagan presidency was identified as an outlier in the dismal list of Republican economic ineptitude. As a point of emphasis worth repeating, it may be the key to Reagan having a more resilient economy that made it through two recessions was his acceptance of millions of migrants. While he was president, three million became full citizens. This presumably had the same effect as including Black people in the South’s economy.
Republicans fight opportunities for people of color with a passion. In Wisconsin, employers are so hard up for college graduates, Republican business groups proposed the University of Wisconsin give lower tuition to Illinois residents if they sign a pledge to stay in Wisconsin for a set number of years after graduating. Yet at the same time, undocumented Wisconsin high school graduates, who already have homes in Wisconsin and don’t have to sign a contract to stay, have to pay out of state tuition to go to a Wisconsin college.
Frugal Ron quit counting how many times he’s heard Wisconsin Republicans saying a variation of, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay some Nigger’s hospital bills!”
This is not the way to improve people’s lives. It is also not the way to build a strong economy.
Republicans want to limit LGBTIQA+ opportunities, or at least keep them out of sight. These groups contribute to our country in many ways, especially economically. Successful economic growth is color blind, sexual orientation blind and gender blind.
Republicans believe if we make life miserable enough for homeless people, they will get addiction treatment, better jobs and afford an apartment. This doesn’t seem to be working real well.
Every homeless person is an economic opportunity. Houston, Texas reduced homelessness by 61 percent since 2011 by reaching out and proactively helping homeless people get housing and addressing addiction and mental health needs. Many have gotten jobs and are contributing to the economy. Of course, helping these people takes money and commitment to help people improve their lives. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html
Last point, as far as improving a nation’s economic performance, don’t ignore infrastructure. Workers are more efficient if they have high speed internet, safe roads, reliable power and all the things that are considered infrastructure. Infrastructure was a Republican priority when Dwight Eisenhower was president, now it is Democrats who walk the walk.
Wrapping-up…
For years on this website, Frugal Ron has correlated Republican out of control spending and huge deficits with their disastrous economic record. However, correlation does not always equal causation. It was time to take another look and see if Frugal Ron’s conservatism is biasing this analysis. It appears there are other explanations besides Republicans’ liberal fiscal policies causing their dismal economic record.
Republican economic policies designed to satisfy the greed of rich people result in recessions and slow growth. In the end, they don’t benefit anyone.
The vision of cold, hard economics is a misnomer. Growing economies are fueled by politicians wanting to help all people improve their lives. This results in more qualified and healthier workers filling better jobs and spending more money and creating more jobs. Basically, this requires a government of moral people doing onto others as we would have them do onto us.
In summary, voters wanting a job creating, growing economy will get better odds gambling in LasVegas than voting for Republicans. Likewise, anyone believing Donald Trump can improve the powerhouse economy Joe Biden created is delusional.
In their latest act of silliness, the angry, white mob posing as congressional Republicans are attempting to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Republicans claim Mayorkas is not enforcing US laws and therefore failed to fulfill his oath of office. Typically, when there are record numbers of arrests, one would assume laws are being enforced. But, today’s Republicans won’t let facts spoil a good conspiracy.
According to US Customs and Border Protection data, total enforcement actions by fiscal year are listed below. Fiscal years run from October 1 to September 30 of the next calendar year. Note: Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017 and Joe Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. Mayorkas has been Biden’s Homeland Security secretary since his inauguration.
Fiscal Year Total Enforcement Actions
2016 690,637
2017 526,901
2018 683,178
2019 1,148,024
2020* 646,822
2021 1,956,519
2022 2,766,582
2023 3,201,144
*Covid impacted the number of people attempting to cross the border.
Clearly, anyone suggesting that Secretary Mayorkas and his Homeland Security employees aren’t enforcing the law is living in Republican Fantasyland. So, what is the real problem?
Rio Grande River at Del Rio, Texas. Mexico on far side, Mexican kids swimming. River is ineffective at preventing migration.
The law
Republicans claim the Biden administration is doing “catch and release” with illegal immigrants by letting them apply for asylum. In reality, Democrats are obeying the law.
Anyone that is physically present in the US and is not a US citizen can apply for asylum. Migrants can cut a hole through Trump’s wall or swim across the Rio Grande River. Once they set foot in the US, they find a Border Patrol agent, turn themselves in and apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents photograph and fingerprint the migrants. They also run criminal background checks on them. After that, the law says asylum seekers can remain in the US and they are released. They are given a court date when they can make their case for permanent asylum. If granted, they can eventually apply for US citizenship.
There is currently a 3-million-person (800 days) backlog for asylum hearings. While waiting for an asylum hearing, a person must wait at least 180 days before getting a legal work permit. Typically, illegal immigrants, whether applying for asylum or not, get a fake Social Security card so they can start working immediately.
Most asylum seekers lose their cases, but they are rarely deported because of staffing shortages and policies that discourage the deportation of migrants with deep roots in the United States. The “deep roots” mean that during the two plus years they waited for their asylum hearing, they got steady employment, become part of their community, married, have kids in school and so on. They may already have family in the US when they arrived.
U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar struck down rules both the Trump and Biden administrations imposed to reduce the number of people applying for asylum. Presumably, he, or another federal judge, will strike down any other attempts to circumvent the law and restrict migrants’ access to asylum.
Many migrants coming illegally into the US ignore applying for asylum. They will get their fake Social Security card and blend into the US population. Republicans claim Border Patrol agents are so overwhelmed by people seeking asylum that they haven’t the resources to pursue people just entering the US illegally and staying.
Whose fault?
Clearly, Mayorkas and Department of Homeland Security employees are enforcing the law by arresting record numbers of migrants. They are also obeying the law by releasing them into the US after they apply for asylum. Federal judges are doing their jobs when ruling that federal laws must be followed.
Bush II era border fence at Del Rio, Texas. The fence is ineffective at preventing iilegal immigration.
The big picture, for Republicans, keeping America white is a sacred quest. For them, having a large influx of non-white people coming into the US is a tragedy beyond comprehension.
Mayorkas is an easy target for congressional Republicans covering up their own failings. The real problem is the US has a broken immigration system.
Republicans had a perfect opportunity to fix this and pass new immigration laws in the first two years of the Trump administration when Republicans controlled the presidency, the House and the Senate. Unfortunately for Republicans, Trump was a weak president, and they missed their chance. Right or wrong, Democrats prioritized fixing the broken economy Trump left them and restoring the health of the nation over immigration laws in the first two years of the Biden administration.
When Republicans took over the House majority in 2023, they pledged to pass a comprehensive package of new immigration laws that year. They failed.
Senate Republicans went to work to build a bipartisan consensus to pass a badly needed, improved, comprehensive set of new immigration laws. Unfortunately, Trump destroyed their work. I suspect the real reason for this is that Trump’s puppet master, Vladimir Putin, demanded Trump jettison the border deal since it included funding for Ukraine. Obviously, to Republicans, stopping the waves of new immigrants is much less important than placating their leader.
What doesn’t work. Ugly and ineffective. Migrants can use cutting torch or reciprocating saw to cut through. This is Trump era wall at DelRio, Texas.Wire border fence, Del Rio, Texas. Road in front is for Border Patrol vehicles.
The big picture
Every time you take a bite of food, thank an illegal immigrant. If you eat away from home, thank an illegal immigrant twice. Illegal immigrants were essential in producing and processing the food. When eating out, they most likely prepared it; regardless of if you are eating at a haute taut restaurant or McDonald’s.
Likewise, when you see a completed house, apartment building or other construction project, thank illegal immigrants. The project probably wouldn’t have gotten done without them. If you check into a clean hotel room, thank an illegal immigrant. If you are Catholic and you notice extra donations helping people in need at your church, thank illegal immigrants that gave whatever they could.
People like Frugal Ron drawing Social Security payments need to thank illegal immigrants for helping keep the system solvent. Undocumented immigrants with fake Social Security cards pay into Social Security and Medicare, but are never able to get benefits. They also pay federal, state, local and sales taxes. The reality is, illegal immigrants are essential to our economy.
Illegal immigrants don’t take jobs away from white people. They take the worst jobs in the US that native born people won’t do. They may send some money home, but the majority is spent here. They buy groceries, clothes and whatever else they need. In each case they are creating jobs for the goods and services they buy.
The pie
Republican economics revolves around the fantasy that there is a finite amount of wealth in a country. This wealth is like a pie. When more people come to the table to eat the pie, that means there is less pie for everyone else.
In 1950, the US population was 148 million. In 2024, it is 348 million. If the people who espouse the fixed pie theory were right, we would have all starved to death decades ago. When the population grows, what I’ve described above happens. More workers generate more jobs as the new workers spend their money and it multiplies as it moves through the economy over and over.
Perhaps even more important, the US birthrate is declining. What this means is we have more and more people in the Boomer generation retiring and drawing Social Security and other benefits. Because of the declining birth rate (that has been going on for years), we have less working age people contributing to Social Security and Medicare. We also have a declining work force to do everything from growing food to high tech jobs. There is no better way to stagnate an economy than having a declining population. Having working age (and reproductive age) people immigrating here is like dropping manna from heaven.
The exodus
Facts are to Republicans what wooden stakes are to vampires. The reality is “There’s a lot of people (illegal immigrants) leaving the country, and they’re leaving voluntarily,” said Mr. Robert Warren, a senior fellow at the Center for Migration Studies.
The current undocumented population has stayed relatively constant at about 10.2 million over the past several years, after peaking at nearly 12 million in 2008. This is even with the large number of new arrivals at the border.
The primary reason people are returning home is to reunite with their families. Also, the Mexican economy is improving.
Migrants used to come to the US , work for a period, return home and maybe return again. This circular migration was upended in the early 1990s as the United States introduced a spate of policies to fortify the border, erecting barriers and deploying more agents.
But the border restrictions backfired. After facing risks and paying smugglers to cross the border, undocumented workers stayed in the United States, rather than coming and going.
Republicans perpetuate the myth that immigrants are taking jobs away from white people. They also perpetuate the lie that illegal immigrants commit more crimes than native born people. And, there is always the claim that these brown and Black skinned immigrants are “illegal”. We should invite some Native Americans into this conversation and get their views on what an “illegal immigrant” is.
Republican policies are driven by their racism. If the illegal immigrants were blonde haired, blue eyed white people, this article wouldn’t be necessary.
Morality and immigration
“Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”, is the motto moral people live by. Separating children from their legally asylum-seeking parents, warehousing the children hundreds of miles away from their parents and deporting parents without making any effort to reunite families is something none of us would wish on ourselves. Yet, this was a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Note: The Trump appointed Department of Homeland Security Inspector General found at least 348 cases where the Trump administration forced migrant parents to leave the US without their children. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watchdog-says-u-s-forced-deported-parents-to-leave-kids-behind
Likewise, forcing people legally seeking asylum in the US to stay for months in squalid, overcrowded camps in Mexico where rapes, murders, assaults and robbery were commonplace is also immoral. Both the Trump and Biden administrations used these camps, until Judge Tigar ruled they were illegal.
From a lifetime of being raised with and living and working around Republicans, I’ve learned the great majority believe non-white people are inferior. In many cases, aren’t fully valued as human. This is the definition of racism.
It explains how people that consider themselves moral can justify treating people of color like livestock by putting them in inhumane tent camps and separating families.
It is strange that a party that espouses their devotion to Jesus Christ would ignore His frequent admonition to “be kind to strangers”. (“Strangers” in the Bible are people from other countries.) When Republicans must choose between Christianity and their racism, Jesus always loses.
Summary
Donald Trump claims, “Immigrants are destroying the blood of our country!” Personally, I think a perpetual liar with a record of whoring, payoffs to his sex partners, two divorces (so far), an illegitimate kid, a rape conviction, a fraud conviction and facing 91 felony charges is more of a threat to “destroying the blood of our country” than 10.2 million illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants are one of the US’s greatest strengths. They take jobs nobody else wants. They spend their pay in the US and create jobs. They send their kids to school so they can add even more value to our future economy; just like other immigrants have done for generations. All along, they are paying federal, state, local and sales taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes. Republicans try to take this strength, using fear and propaganda, and rebrand it as a crisis. Don’t let them get away with it.
We watched the angry, white mob of Republicans storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, while waving their Confederate flags and trying to restore Donald Trump as president. These were some of the last desperate gasps of white racism as a political force in the United States. The raw truth is, Republicans are losing, and they know it.
The day Republicans gave up on democracy.
Republicans were shocked in 2018 when voters repudiated Donald Trump’s presidency and gave Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives. Things got much worse in 2020 when Trump was thrown out of office and Democrats took over the Senate.
For Republicans, seeing their living god defeated was more than they could handle. Rather than blaming Trump’s presidential incompetence, they decided the vote was rigged. Trump fanned this fantasy over the last three years without having a shred of evidence.
Since then, Republicans have broken away from democracy even more. Republicans didn’t like the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice voters elected in a landslide. So, Republicans in the Assembly and Senate threaten to impeach her if she doesn’t vote the way they want her to. After Republicans got thumped again in November 2023 elections, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum echoed Republican views that, “Pure democracies aren’t how to run a country.”
Confronted with their election loss, Republicans chose violence.
What has made Republicans so crazy now?
Along with losing elections, systemic racism, the Republican party’s foundation, is collapsing right in front of them. For Republicans, in 2016, this was no time for same-old, same-old. They needed a fire-breathing, true believing, bigoted, racist for president. Who cares if he is dim-witted, has no respect for laws, has no morals and is only concerned about himself?
Desperate times call for desperate actions. Here are some of the reasons Republicans are so desperate that they nominated Trump in 2016 and are sticking with him now:
White Republicans watched helplessly as a Black man was elected president twice. He fixed the disastrous economy G.W. Bush left him. Obama left a strong and growing economy and the lowest deficit in 10 years for Trump to destroy. Obama also won the Nobel Peace Prize. He left office with a 59 percent approval rating, compared to the 34 percent for the white presidents that preceded and succeeded him. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/final-presidential-job-approval-ratings
Republicans were shattered when a white police officer was convicted of murder in the death of a Black man (George Floyd). This goes to the core of threatening the Republican perception of a thin blue line that protects white people from Black mayhem and criminality.
According to Republicans, liberal district attorneys and judges are preventing the police from doing their jobs (killing unarmed Black people). Currently, an Austin, Texas a police officer is accused of murdering an unarmed Black man, three policemen in Tacoma, Washington are charged with second degree murder and manslaughter in the death of a Black man. Five former police officers (all Black) in Memphis, Tennessee are charged with murdering a Black man. These are some of the ongoing cases.
Police forces are reckoning with their racism. Citizens with cell phone video cameras are recording police brutality to Black people. To the horror of Republicans, police systemic racism is being challenged.
A major part of the systemic racism Black people endured is getting longer prison sentences than white people with similar records, committing the same crime. This is changing.
Another major part of the systemic racism Black people lived with is that Black lives have always been less valuable than white lives. However, the conviction of three white men for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in southern Georgia by a jury of 11 white people and one Black man shattered that foundational belief. All three defendants received life sentences. Arbery was a Black man jogging in a white neighborhood. Years ago, the white defendant’s defense that they were preventing theft because the Black man obviously was casing homes for a robbery would have saved them. Not anymore. To Republican terror, Black lives do matter.
Another sign of the weakening of white privilege that scares Republicans witless is that federal courts are changing. So far in Joe Biden’s term, 67 percent of his confirmed judicial appointees are non-white (34 percent are Black), and 68 percent are women. Back in the good-old-days, less than 4 percent of Trump’s judicial appointees are Black. Biden’s Supreme Court appointee is a Black woman.
Kamala Harris is the first non-white vice president in US history and the first woman vice president in US history.
The real power in federal courts are the lawyers that are federal prosecutors. Forty-eight percent of Biden’s appointees to these posts are Black. Back when Trump was president, of the 93 federal prosecutors, two were Black.
Another core part of systemic white racism is making sure people of color are prevented from moving into white neighborhoods. Over the years, exclusionary zoning, title restrictions preventing people of “Ethiopian descent” from buying houses in some neighborhoods along with bank “red lining” have all been outlawed. Horror of horrors to Republicans, people of color are moving into white suburbs. Even more horrific to racists, white people are finding out their new neighbors are not all drug dealing, murderous rapists and are just like white people in most ways. Consequently, suburbs are becoming less racist and are voting for Democrats. This break down of white privilege and systemic racism terrifies Republicans.
A major part of systemic racism is keeping Black people from voting. Republicans just know that Black people are inherently lazy. Requiring a picture ID, having fewer polling stations in Black neighborhoods and making it illegal to offer water to voters waiting in longer lines were supposed to cut down the number of Black people voting. Add a few white cops outside of polling stations to intimidate Black people and for sure Black voters will stay home. Unfortunately, these processes made Black people angry and backfired. In 2020, Black people turned out in record numbers in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia that made voting more difficult and voted for Democrats.
Schools are starting to teach real history. Real history includes the truth about slavery. About how Black men listened helplessly while white slave masters raped their daughters and wives in the next room. How families were broken up when a slave owner decided to sell some family members at auction. Real history also includes post Civil War Reconstruction and how Black office holders were lynched by white Klu Klux Klansmen after federal troops were pulled out of the South in 1877. Systemic racism depersonalizes Black people. White kids understanding what Black people have gone through, especially when shown through the perspective of Black people that lived through this horror, enables white kids to understand a and relate to Black people. The worst fear of racists is that their kids don’t grow up hating Black people.
Other symbolic chips in systemic racism that are intolerable to Republicans are tearing down and melting monuments to treasonous Confederate Civil War generals. These Republican heroes broke their oaths to defend the US Constitution and instead defended slavery. Along the same lines, Republicans failed to keep military bases named for the same Civil War seditionists. Adding insult upon insult for racist Republicans, both the US Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff are Black.
For Republicans, Black football players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality to Black people was an affront to all white people and a direct assault on white privilege. Systemic racism is all about Black people needing to know their place and interrupting a football game for their silly grievances was a step too far. Also, Super Bowl performances dominated by Black people and Latinos shows how far elitists have gone to destroy white culture.
Sticking this all in Republican faces is the “Black Lives Matter” movement. White people actually joined the BLM protestors.
After decades of fighting to keep white people’s taxes from supplementing under-funded Black schools , Republicans lost another major battle. In large part, thanks to the hated Education Department, “Average expenditures are very similar for the average Black and average White student, though sources of funding differ, with Black students receiving more federal funds and White students more local funds.” https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2022/02/16/school-district-expenditures-and-race
Republicans convinced themselves that “replacement theory” is real. Democrats are supposedly importing brown skinned people to the US that will vote for Democrats in future elections. However, the reality is, migrants are leaving the US at the same rate as those arriving. According to Econofact, “Reductions in net immigration to the U.S. began prior to the pandemic, declining in every year since 2016, when net migration exceeded one million. Net migration is the number of people coming to the US (legally and illegally) minus the number of people leaving”. https://econofact.org/the-decline-in-u-s-net-migration
Perhaps the worst sign of an upside down world for Republicans is their living god, Donald Trump, is being prosecuted by a Black man in Manhattan. Worse, Black women are leading Trump prosecutions in New York and Atlanta. All these Black prosecutors are elected officials. Trump will be forced to sit in judgement in front of a Black judge in New York and answer questions put to him by Black prosecutors. Considering the trial locations, we can expect Trump’s fate will be determined by juries that include people of color.
Other areas where Republicans are losing…
The forced birth movement is failing. Even in Republican states, whenever voters are given a opportunity, they vote to make abortion legal. Abortion to Republican elected officials is equivalent to a sharpened wooden cross to vampires.
On top of all this, schools are teaching real biology and how sexual orientation is determined. Unfortunately for Republicans, people’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with grooming or what books kids may read. And, voters are catching-on. “Youngkin’s Disastrous Night Shows the Culture War Has Fizzled”. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/08/glenn-youngkin-democrats-virginia-elections-culture-wars/
Republicans are completely incapable of grasping the reality that transgender people are real and not faking it. Again, how can the Republican Party survive if Republicans’ kids understand that being Gay, lesbian or transgender is not a choice? What happens to the Republican Party if kids grow up not hating people with a different sexual orientation?
Republicans proclaim the US is a Christian nation. It is impossible to defend this argument given the dramatic drop in the number of people in the US that consider themselves Christian and the rise in the number of people who are “religiously unaffiliated”.
What happens next?
In the last nine presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote in eight of those elections. Yet, because of the Electoral College, Republicans have held the presidency for 16 years versus 18 years for Democrats in that time period. Republicans also hold a six to three majority on the Supreme Court. In the US Senate, less populated Republican states like Wyoming get the same number of senators as California. In addition, Republicans have a built in advantage in representation in Congress because of their strength in less populated rural areas. Republicans have also taken gerrymandering to the next level in states they control.
Republicans should be happy to keep the present form of democracy going. But, as illustrated above, there are problems.
Rural areas are depopulating. Formerly reliably Republican suburbs are growing by adding better educated voters of all colors and consequently becoming more Democratic. Older Republicans are dying and are being replaced by younger, better educated voters interested in fighting climate change and unregulated gun sales. Worse, some Supreme Court Republicans are ruling against extreme Republican gerrymandering.
Republicans abandoned democracy on January 6, 2021 and they affirm their abandonment by racing headlong to nominate their wannabe dictator, Donald Trump, for president in 2024. Trump has made no secret of wanting to suspend the Constitution, executing military leaders that don’t kowtowel to him and make the Justice Department and FBI subservient to him. I don’t know anything else he can say that defines his plans to make himself a dictator.
Trump recognizes how racist the Republican Party is and is appealing to voters in the party center. He has announced his plans to Make America White Again.
According to the New York Times, “Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year. To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings.
To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states. To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigration-agenda.html
Maybe, we need to rethink this dictatorship thing?
Whitey Holm was a diminutive guy. Before World War II, he was raised on a small farm in Central Wisconsin. After the war, he took advantage of the GI Bill and became a world renowned horticulturist. He was a neighbor in Madison, Wisconsin who passed away a few years ago and was one of the most interesting people I ever met.
During the war, he was an Army infantryman that came ashore at Normandy two weeks after the D-Day landing. He fought all the way across France, the Battle of the Bulge, liberated concentration camps and into Germany, until VE Day.
Whitey was adamant that the people that wrote the books and screenplay for Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and other supposedly realistic movies weren’t actually there. His jaw would tighten up and he would say that anyone who actually fought there could never talk about it. It was so awful, they couldn’t possibly describe what it was like.
For me, I think about the godawful sacrifice Whitey and millions of other GI’s made. I also think about the over 400,000 that made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our democracy from Hitler and Hirohito. They didn’t question the need to preserve our democracy and keep us free from racist demigods like Adolf Hitler and Japan’s Emperor Hirohito. They just did it.
Our ancestors made horrific sacrifices to establish and defend our republic. It makes me sick that Republicans would just hand our democracy to Donald Trump, today’s power hungry, wannabe, racist, dictator. Sadly, Republicans are willing to give up our democracy just to satiate their hatred of people with black, brown, yellow and red skin, Gays, lesbians, transgender people, Jews, Muslims and strong, powerful women. And, don’t believe the lies that Donald Trump will bring more effective government The first Trump presidency was an economic, health and debt disaster. https://www.frugalron.com/the-trump-disaster/
Not only will Trump create a dictatorship, it will be evil, based on re-establishing white supremacy and destroying the multi-cultural society we have now.
It is time to put another nail in the coffin of Republican racism. In 2024, every racist in the US will turn out and vote for Trump. For the rest of us, Joe Biden (or whoever runs for the Democrats a year from now) certainly isn’t perfect. But staying home or wasting your vote on a third party candidacy that doesn’t stand a chance of winning will get us a Donald Trump dictatorship. Bottom line, vote for democracy and competence – vote for Democrats.
There is an old saying, “you get what you pay for.”
The data in the table makes Donald Trump look favorable. However, between the 2020 election and when Trump left office, the S&P 500 rallied seven percent in less than a three month period. This indicates markets were happyto see Trump go.
