This website is dedicated to promoting conservative government. The recent stock market crash of the liberal Donald Trump’s bubble economy provides Frugal Ron and other conservatives an example to point out what happens when liberalism is allowed to go unchecked. Or, how not to run a government. Past columns on this website predicted the collapse of the Trump economy. This gives Frugal Ron the opportunity to say, “Frugal Ron got it right again!”

The reality is, Frugal Ron is no genius. It didn’t take much intelligence to predict the liberal Donald Trump’s attempt to buy prosperity with massive government spending increases using borrowed money would end badly. Economic growth rates were slowing even as the liberal Trump was pumping ever-larger spending increases financed by borrowed money into the economy. All that was needed to pop Trump’s bubble economy was a pinprick. Instead, we got a sledgehammer.

Every Republican president from Ronald Reagan forward has failed in trying to turn a government financed false prosperity into the real thing. It is no coincidence that conservative Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both came into office after Republican recessions and each launched record setting long growth markets in the US with consistently conservative spending increases.

What true conservatism is…

Perhaps this is a good place to remind our selves what real conservatism is. Certainly, since Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, borrow and spend Republicans have shown us a whole new level of liberal government. Donald Trump has expanded liberalism into socialism. The results are easily predictable.

The litmus test for conservatives is how a president controls spending. While Congress technically is in charge of spending, in reality a strong president uses veto power to get the budget he wants.

A conservative also balances the federal budget and keeps government spending deficits from interfering with the market. While presidents have a great deal of power to shape the budget, they have less power to control spending deficits during recessions when tax revenues drop. True conservatives appoint conservative and qualified governors to the Federal Reserve Board, and then respect the Fed’s independence.

Conservatives stay out of the marketplace as much as possible. For conservatives, government has no place picking winners and losers, either industries or individual companies. Conservatives believe in capitalism’s “creative destruction”.  If an industry or segment of the economy is dying, true conservative leaders get out of the way. As an industry dies, new industries we never dreamed of years ago evolve and replace the dying ones. They take over the dying industry’s human and capital resources and put them to better use. Conservatives call this progress. Countries that try and get in the way of progress and subsidize dying industries and protect inefficient industries from foreign competition lower the standard of living for all their citizens for the benefit of a few.

While real conservatives believe in staying out of the marketplace and disrupting people’s lives, this doesn’t mean we are against regulations. When our country and the world’s future are threatened by climate change, it is the absolute responsibility of government to mitigate the problem either by carbon regulation or taxation. Equally important, when air and water pollution by the few threatens the well being of the many, it is government’s responsibility to step in and force change.

Conservatives also recognize that government can do a plethora of things better than private industry. Some of these are protecting us from foreign attacks, maintaining an impartial judicial system, educating our children, keeping our food and drugs safe and on and on.

Conservatives recognize that voters need to make choices. For example, while 90 years ago it may have been wise for government to get involved in agricultural commodity pricing, no involvement is needed now. As conservatives know all too well, once an industry is subsidized, it is almost impossible to wean them.

Spend, Baby, Spend!

So how did we get into the current mess? The liberal Donald Trump’s 2018 to 2019 Current Expenditures increased by a whopping 6.5 percent. Even before the Corona virus outbreak, Trump’s spending increase was going to be much larger in 2020 due to spending bills approved by Trump. As Republican Senate Majority Leader told Trump, no one ever lost a presidential election for spending too much.  Now, this spending is being put on steroids.

The pre-Corona numbers put the liberal Trump’s spending increases right in line with other Republican presidents. Ronald Reagan’s average annual spending increase was 7.7 percent, George H.W. Bush’s annual increase was 7.3 percent and George W. Bush’s increase was 6.7 percent. By comparison, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had annual spending increases of 3.2 percent and 3.3 percent respectively. While the difference from a 7.7 and 3.2 percent annual spending increase may seem small, with compounding over eight years, they add up. Reagan increased federal government spending over 80.3 percent in his eight years in office compared to Clinton’s 28.5 percent increase in his eight years.

The last great Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who served from 1953 to 1960, is the only Republican who comes close to Clinton and Obama’s small annual spending increases. Eisenhower’s annual average increase in federal spending was 5.5 percent. (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures, Line 24. www.bea.gov)

Borrow, Baby, Borrow!

The only thing Republicans are better at than spending money is borrowing money. (Note: All the following figures are pre-Corona virus.) While at this writing, final government balances for 2019 are not calculated, the liberal Trump’s 3rd Quarter2019 annualized balance is -$1.225 trillion. When Obama left office, the 2016 federal government balance was -$677 billion. The ultra-liberal Trump increased the annual federal budget deficit by 81 percent since taking office!

Considering the huge spending increases currently proposed to try and prop up the economy and the expected drop in tax revenues resulting from the Trump Recession, Frugal Ron expects the 2020 deficit will surpass $5 trillion.

Obama also had budget deficits over $1 trillion. While the free spending Trump got to take over a robust economy with growing tax revenues, Obama had to clean up the mess from the George W. Bush Recession. In the final quarter of Bush’s tenure, GDP plummeted at an 8.4% annual rate. Unemployment began rising rapidly. The S&P 500 plummeted 38% in 2008, its worst year since the Great Depression.

In Bush’s last year in office, tax revenues dropped 7.4 percent. In Obama’s first year in office, tax receipts dropped another 24.6 percent. It wasn’t until 2013 that tax revenues exceeded 2006’s levels. Credit the 2012 Budget Reconciliation Bill’s tax increase for the increased revenue that slashed the budget deficits and started yielding the increases in employment and economic growth that continued into the Trump Administration.  (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures, Line 2. www.bea.gov)

While the liberal Trump’s current budget deficit is the largest non-recession deficit in our country’s history, (and soon will be the biggest deficit ever) his borrowing is not unique. The year before Republican Ronald Reagan became president, our budget deficit was -$88.8 billion. By the time he left office, it was -$160.0 billion. George H.W. Bush showed he could out-borrow even Reagan and pushed the annual budget deficit to -$334 billion. Democrat Bill Clinton erased the deficit in six years and left office with a budget SURPLUS of +$155.5 billion. In two years, Republican George W. Bush turned that back into a typical Republican budget deficit of -$271.5 billion. Bush II left office with a budget deficit of -$604.3 billion. (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Receipts and Expenditures, Line 37. www.bea.gov)

The increased budget deficits occurring while Obama was in office were not caused by excessive spending. In fact, no Republican in history has come within two percentage points of Obama’s annual spending increases of 3.3 percent. They were caused by dramatically reduced tax revenues caused by the Bush Recession. In contrast, Trump inherited a growing economy and created the 81 percent increase in the size of his deficit with annual spending increases twice the size of Obama’s and out of control tax cuts to the rich, all leading to a bubble economy. DAMN THOSE LIBERALS!

What is really ridiculous out of all this is that Republicans are trying to create a Constitutional Convention that would pass amendments to the Constitution outlawing federal budget deficits and requiring annual spending increases lower than any Republican Administration has ever achieved. How much simpler it would be to simply elect another powerful, frugal Democrat like Bill Clinton as president who can whip Republicans in line and control their spending.

Open up the printing presses!

People often accuse big government politicians of printing more money to prop up the economy. It doesn’t actually work this way. Very little of the money used today is actual paper money. The way government grows the money supply is through banks and the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve currently requires banks to have a 10 percent cash reserve for all the loans in their portfolio. (This is not paper cash, it is a cash balance.) If Frugal Ron goes to a bank and asks for and gets a $10 million loan, the bank can make that loan if they have $1 million sitting in reserves. They put $10 million in Frugal Ron’s account using their $1 million and $9 million they just borrowed from the Federal Reserve. The $9 million from the Federal Reserve never existed until the bank asked for it. The net result is that Frugal Ron gets $10 million to spend and the US economy just created $9 million.

As long as the demand for money is market driven, this system actually works really well. Market driven means the market sets the interest rate. In this wonderful environment, the government isn’t borrowing money and driving up the interest rate. And, the Fed isn’t trying to counterbalance the rise in interest rates by lowering the interest rate.

Frugal Ron is not going to borrow $10 million unless he is reasonably sure he is going to make an adequate return on the loan. Likewise, the bank is averse to risk and is not going to lend the money unless they are very sure they can get it back. Like every business, banks want to grow. The faster they get Frugal Ron’s $10 million back, the faster they can turn their initial $1 million in reserves into $100 million in new loans.

For the system to work, everything is dependent on the independence of the Federal Reserve Bank. Government controls fiscal policy (taxes and spending) while the Federal Reserve controls the monetary policy described above.

An independent Fed used to be the case. For example, when Ronald Reagan was president, he spent government money like a drunken sailor and pumped $hundred’s of millions of borrowed money into the economy. At the same time, the Federal Reserve kept the economy in check with record high interest rates. This depressed borrowing and dramatically lowered the growth of the money supply. Yes, Reagan had a horrific 82 percent stock crash, but the system held together and inflation took a terrible beating.

In the Donald Trump borrow and spend era, this independence is gone. Trump replaced the highly respected and independent Chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen with the much more pliable Jerome Powell. Why Powell won’t stand-up to Trump isn’t clear. Maybe he hasn’t get the backbone to withstand Trump’s bullying, or maybe he is reacting to Trump’s attempts to stack the Federal Reserve Board with wildly incompetent and unqualified candidates? But the liberal Trump had the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates in 2019 and 2020 to make up for his incompetence managing fiscal and trade policy. The yields on Treasury bonds dropped below 0.5 percent before the Corona virus collapse.

What has happened is that in the liberal Trump era, the demand for money is no longer demand driven. By “demand driven”, interest rates are set by the market. When the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates three times in 2019 to prop up Trump’s economy, that made interest rates to borrowers lower and made borrowing that was otherwise unprofitable now worthwhile. Consequently, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply and made the stock market and economy grow. All enhancing a bubble economy that was due to burst.

With the latest Federal Reserve interest rate decrease, long-term Treasury bonds are yielding 0.0 percent annual interest. This is the first time in history this has happened.

While this liberal scenario sounds like beautiful classic music to Republicans, it has a downside. There was a time not so long ago when frugal retired folks could put their savings into safe Certificates of Deposits and get a nice 3 percent annual return to supplement their pensions and Social Security. Now, in the era of zero interest rates, they will be forced to put their money in much riskier investments to get a return. Making this even worse, bonds used to be safe investments. Now, in the zero interest rate era, bond yields have only one direction to go. As bond yields go up, bond values drop and suddenly, another safe investment for retirees is gone.

For every loser, there is a winner. Big spending Donald Trump was always known as the “King of Debt”. Now his over leveraged, failing businesses have a lifeline.

Trump’s trade policies – A study in futility and stupidity

As a presidential candidate, the liberal Trump vowed to eliminate our job destroying trade deficit. Trump said he would renegotiate the unfair trade agreements other countries were using to take advantage of us. Trump was going to accomplish all this by launching “an easy to win trade war”. He would call upon his legendary negotiating skills to “put America first”.

Unfortunately, after three plus years, the most recent data available for the 3rd quarter of 2019 shows Trump’s trade deficit sits at an annualized -$506.9 billion. Comparing apples to apples, the “totally unacceptable Obama trade deficit” in the 3rd quarter of 2016 was -$436.4 billion. So, while Trump campaigned about Obama destroying the US economy with his huge trade deficit, Trump’s current trade deficit is actually 16.1 percent higher than Obama’s.

So why has Trump failed so miserably? Trade balances have nothing to do whatsoever with trade treaties!! Trade balances equal national savings. Simplified, Government net savings + Private net savings = Exports – Imports. Using the most recent Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data:

Government net savings = -$1,597.6 billion or $1.5976 trillion (includes local and state governments)

Private net savings = $1,090.2 billion or $1.0902 trillion

Exports of goods and services = $3,806.1 billion or $3.8061 trillion

Imports of goods and services = $4,313.0 billion or $4.3130 trillion

Doing the math…

Govt. savings + Private savings = -$1,597.6 billion + $1,090.2 billion = -$507.4 billion

Exports – Imports = $3,806.1 billion – $4,313.0 billion = -$506.9 billion

BEA calls the $0.5 billion difference the “Net Capital account transactions”, which translates roughly into something like, “the check is in the mail”. (Source of Export & Import data: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 4.1 Foreign Transactions in the National Income and Product Accounts, Lines 1, 18 and 36. Savings data: Table 5.1 Savings and Investment by Sector, Lines 36 and 39, www.bea.gov)

The net savings is called the Capital Account. The difference between Exports and Imports is called the Current Account. For any country, those two accounts must always be equal.

All this is, of course, far out of Trump’s ability to comprehend. Even the most basic parts of trade are out of Trump’s depth. Trump continually claims the import tariffs he put on Chinese goods are paid by China. This is false. The US companies importing the goods pay these tariffs to the US government. Those costs are passed onto US consumers as higher prices. As of June 30, 2019 the US government collected over $63 billion in tariffs over the previous 12 months. This leads to at least $63 billion in increased costs to consumers.

When the liberal Trump started a trade war by putting a 25 percent tariffs on steel imports because of what he called unfair trade practices by steel exporting countries, other countries countered by putting tariffs on our agricultural exports. Since agricultural commodities are heavily dependent on exports, these tariffs and other trade restrictions put on our exports devastated our farm economy.

The sad part is this trade war obviously accomplished nothing. Our trade deficit grew by over 16 percent during Trump’s “easy to win” trade war. The liberal Trump’s trade war attempt to lower the US trade deficit was doomed to failure because even if he had gotten the trade concessions he wanted from other countries, they would have had no impact on our national savings rate.

Worse, Trump’s “America First” trade agenda increasingly focused on harming other countries, especially China. This goes beyond stupidity. For farmers, the US domestic economy is maxed out. There isn’t much room for further growth. The export dependent farm economy’s growth is contingent on increasing incomes in China, Mexico and other such countries. Only an imbecile would do anything to hinder China’s growth.

While farm bankruptcies and suicide rates are increasing at record rate, a Farm Journal poll released in January 2020 found Trump’s approval rating by farmers is at a record 83 percent.  We’ll leave this phenomenon for another column.

Savings

Frugal Ron got it right again when he predicted Trump’s foolish trade war would not improve our country’s trade balance. That was a no-brainer. However, Frugal Ron missed big time in predicting the trade deficit would explode because of Trump’s huge federal budget deficit.

Using the equation again: Government net savings + Private net savings = Exports – Imports. One would have expected that the -$558 billion in Government Net Savings  (because of the huge increase in Trump’s spending and tax cut) would have gone to the other side of the equation and been reflected in an equally huge increase in our trade deficit.

While Trump’s current balance of trade deficit grew 16.1 percent, that doesn’t qualify as an explosion. What happened over the past three years is unprecedented.  The decrease in government savings almost entirely went into private savings.

Private savings was at $590.4 billion in the 4th Quarter of 2016 when Obama left office. As noted above, the latest numbers show private savings are at $1,090.2 billion (or $1.092 trillion).  This is a difference of $499.8 billion.  (BEA Table 5.1)

The difference from Obama’s 2016 Federal budget deficit and Trump’s 3rd Quarter 2019 deficit is $558 billion. Looking at it this way, $0.90 of every dollar increase in our deficit has gone into private savings.

According to the Consumer Expenditure Survey, people in the top 10 percent of income saved almost a third of their income after taxes. People in the middle of the income distribution spent 100 percent of their income. It appears high income individuals and companies are running out of places to spend the money they got from Trump’s tax cuts and spending increases. The only place to go with it is savings.

The Socialist president

While Ronald Reagan was a wild-eyed liberal, deficit loving, big government spender, no one ever accused him of being a socialist. At Reagan’s core, he believed individuals could make better spending choices than government. One of the tenets of conservatism is that decisions should, whenever possible, be shifted to the lowest level of government. The lowest levels of government are individuals.

This is clearly not the case with Donald Trump. His “managed economy” is the closest thing to socialism the United States has experienced. And, it has failed miserably.

The liberal Trump vowed to protect the steel industry.  He put a 25 percent tariff on steel imports. Then Trump set-up a bureaucracy in the Commerce Department.  Steel users must apply to this agency if they can’t find a certain type of steel in the US before they can import it. There is a long backlog of steel users in this government morass waiting for tariff exemptions. Without the exemptions, manufacturers are at a disadvantage to foreign manufacturers who don’t have to deal with tariffs and a bureaucracy.

According to a PBS study, “The results? “For the first few months after Trump’s tariffs took effect, steel prices did rise. The price of a metric ton of hot rolled band steel hit $1,006 in July 2018, according to the SteelBenchmarker website, which tracks steel prices. Since then, it has plunged to $557 — lower than before the tariffs.”

“Steel-consuming companies have sought alternatives. Some have moved production overseas, where steel imports aren’t subject to Trump’s tariffs. Or they’ve reduced their steel purchases or substituted alternatives from plastic or composite materials.”

“President George W. Bush also sought to protect the steel industry by imposing tariffs in 2002. Rebuked by the World Trade Organization, Bush withdrew the tariffs the next year. While Bush’s tariffs were in place, the industry actually lost 14,000 jobs.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/why-trump-tariffs-havent-revitalized-american-steelmakers

Conservatives recognize that for every winner that some government program creates, there will also be some losers. The steel industry protections from imports Trump put in place provided some short-term winners in the steel industry. However, the losers far outnumbered the winners.  All consumers were losers because they wound up paying more for anything made from steel. US manufacturers that use steel were also losers because cars, machinery and everything else they produced were less competitive in international and US markets where competitors didn’t have to pay tariffs. Foreign countries that don’t have steel tariffs are winners because they picked up jobs from US manufacturers when they moved jobs overseas to avoid the tariffs. Foreign manufacturers are winners as they picked up business from US companies that couldn’t move production overseas.

The biggest losers in this real life scenario are US farmers. Mexico, China, Europeans and everyone else affected by Trump’s tariffs put countervailing tariffs on US agricultural products. Trump, the true socialist, tried to make up for farm producer losses with a massive subsidy program. As always with government subsidies, the right amounts never go to the right people.

In the end, the US steel industry was a loser for the protections. As noted above, some steel users switched to substitutes, demand for steel end products dropped because of higher prices, and manufacturers using steel moved overseas.

The liberal Trump’s recent trade deal with Canada and Mexico shows all that is wrong with socialist trade protectionism. Trump’s agreement requires 75 percent of a vehicle’s content be produced in North America and 70 percent of a vehicle’s steel and aluminum to originate in North America to be tariff free. The way to get around all this is simply to produce the whole automobile overseas and pay a tariff to bring it here.

This trade agreement may well be as devastating to the US auto industry as Trump’s tariffs were to the steel and farm economies. This is just the kind of legislation the conservative President Obama fought. What should tell us something is that Trump’s U.S.M.C.A. was approved in the Senate with the help of some of our most left wing, liberal senators, Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren.

Besides protecting chosen industries like manufacturing from foreign competition, socialists also believe in subsidizing businesses. Trump personally lobbied with former Wisconsin Governor (R) Scott Walker to hand out close to $4 billion in subsidies to a Taiwanese company, Foxconn, to build a manufacturing plant in southern Wisconsin. The “Seventh Wonder of the World” as Trump characterized the huge plant, has yet to materialize.

Conservatives hate government subsidies of chosen companies since it hands out taxes paid by long-time established companies and gives the subsidized organization an unfair advantage in competing for labor and resources against the companies who funded the subsidy. Also, subsidies rarely go to small companies (who create most of our jobs). They are usually reserved for large, politically connected organizations.

Wrapping-up

There are two major summary points in this article. First, Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is an ultra-liberal, borrow and spender who follows the socialist agenda of a government managed economy.  While socialists are generally associated with policies that help poor and middle class people (Bernie Sanders), Trump’s socialism is geared to helping the rich.

Sadly, today’s Republicans think they are conservatives if they take money away from the neediest people in our country (who typically happen to be people of color). This isn’t conservatism, this is racism.

Trump succeeded in cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other safety net programs while letting spending run amok in the other 98 percent of government. Hence, Trump’s current (pre COVID-19) annual spending increase is double Obama’s average increase in Obama’s eight years in office. In a true sign of the victory of liberalism, all of the gyrations in today’s financial marketplace are the result of whatever Trump and his Fed are proposing. Market economics is dead.

What is an example of conservatism? Bill Clinton had the lowest annual percentage increase of federal government spending in Bureau of Economic Analysis history (they started keeping records in 1929).  His federal budget surplus of $155 billion was the biggest in history. (The only other president in the last 60 years to have a budget surplus was Eisenhower.) 

Clinton got government out of the way of consumer buying decisions by signing two major trade agreements and giving China Most Favored Nation trading status. His tariff slashing was tantamount to having the biggest tax cut in history.

Since Clinton had a budget surplus, government wasn’t in the credit market.  Interest rates were set by market demand with the Federal Reserve sitting on the sidelines. No wonder he had a record long period of economic growth. Another aspect of the power of conservatism, Clinton’s economic growth was spread across all segments of society.

The second major point of this article is that the current economic free-fall is the result of a perfect financial storm. We had a classic bubble economy fueled by a combination of three years of out-of-control, liberal borrow and spend policies and a loose monetary policy. Throw in a major crisis like COVID-19 and a ridiculously incompetent Donald Trump who ignored all warnings of our being unprepared for a pandemic. All of a sudden, you have a disaster that turns into a financial free fall.

That is the past, so where is this going? Financial markets thrive on stability and confidence. Donald Trump provides neither.

To the movers and shakers of the financial world, the liberal Trump is a pathetically incompetent figure. He inherited over $500 million from his father. He proceeded to lose more money than any American from 1985 to 1994 ($1.15 billion). After six bankruptcies, no bank in the world will lend money to him or his businesses.

What about Trump’s economic advisors? Typically, when a presidential campaign gets going, they recruit high-powered economists from Wall Street and academia as campaign advisors. When a candidate wins, these economists follow the former candidate to the White House. In Trump’s case, this didn’t happen. No real economist was going to have anything to do with an administration that was clueless about the value of trade and didn’t understand the basic economics that trade agreements have nothing to do with a country’s trade balance.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was charged with locating an economic advisor. So, like the rest of us, when we need something hard to find, Kushner turned to Amazon.

He did a search on Amazon for someone matching Trump’s views on trade. Kushner found a book co-written by Peter Navarro and was struck by its title, “Death by China.” Kushner cold-called Navarro and invited him to be an adviser to the Trump campaign. Navarro now directs the White House National Trade Council and serves as the Assistant to the President. Not surprisingly, Wall Street has little confidence or regard for Trump or his team.

Epilogue

The liberal Donald Trump is the most disastrous president in US history on many levels. Even before the corona virus, his current 6.5 percent annual spending increase is double Obama’s average over his two terms. The liberal Trump’s most recent (pre-corona virus) federal budget deficit is 81 percent higher than when he took office. The unbelievably stupid Trump, who can’t understand trade deals have no impact on our trade balance, has a 16 percent bigger trade deficit than Obama. What is so funny about these disasters is how Trump claimed during his presidential campaign that the budget and trade deficits were destroying our country and he was the only one who could fix them.

Going on, with the liberal Trump, for the first time in our history, we have Treasury bonds yielding 0 percent interest. We have an economy in free fall because of the corona virus and Trump’s ignoring all warning signs of our being unprepared for a pandemic. We still don’t know how many deaths his ineptitude will cost.

When Obama left office, we had a treaty with Iran (that they obeyed) that halted their nuclear weapons program for ten years and was integrating them into the global economy. Today, their nuclear weapons program is going ahead full throttle. When Obama left office, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs were only a danger to themselves since all their tests blew up on them. After Trump’s “fire and fury” threat, the North Koreans suddenly got their act together and had a successful H-bomb test. Today, they are doing regular missile testing to get their nuclear weapons to the US.

The pathological liar Trump has zero credibility with the majority of voters due to the 16,000+ lies he told in his first three years in office. He is far and away the most immoral president in our country’s history. https://www.frugalron.com/mr-man-trump/

Trump is the laughing stock of world leaders. While Obama was president, other leaders wanted to get meetings with him to find out how he was turning around the US economy faster than their countries were able to do. In contrast, Trump left the last NATO meeting in a huff after leaders of Canada, England, Italy and France were caught on video imitating him. They weren’t laughing with Trump, they were laughing at him.

Trump’s backstabbing of our Kurd allies who sacrificed 11,000 of their lives to do the dirty work of beating ISIS for us, Trump’s embrace of authoritarian dictators and his breaking of international treaties have destroyed our world standing. Our separating of children from their parents who came here legally seeking asylum and then warehousing the children far away from their parents breaks all Judeo-Christian values we used to hold dear.

Trump flaunts our laws and if he left office today, he would be indicted for at least 16 felonies. He would likely join a plethora of his friends who are already in jail. Even Richard Nixon had more respect for our laws than Trump.

The only light at the end of this pathetic tunnel is in November. Voters have a chance to elect another honest, conservative Democrat who can again pull us out of this Republican economic debacle. God help us if we miss that chance.