Lucky
Donald Trump has failed as President. We Americans were lucky that we didn’t have a “serious” crisis for the first three years of his Administration. By the way, don’t tell hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico there wasn’t a serious crisis. Or the folks who live in the burning forests of California. And please don’t tell our “allies” the Kurds that it wasn’t serious. We pulled out and left them to face the Russians and Syrians all by themselves.
But as most Americans aren’t Puerto Rican (though all Puerto Ricans are Americans), and California is a “Democrat” (sic) state anyway, and the Kurds – well to Trump they are just Kurds; it didn’t matter. It wasn’t until a national crisis that impacted us all, the COVID-19 crisis that has taken 210,000 lives in seven months, that we found out how impotent the President really is.
Liar
We already knew he was a liar. He lied to America about COVID, and now we know he lied about his finances. The New York Times revealed his financial position to the world Sunday. He’s paid less in Federal income taxes that almost any American in the past ten years. Two of those years he paid $750. Several more he paid none, zero, nothing. And before someone says, “well he was just a smart finance guy”, that’s Bull. We know from others that he consistently has lied about the value of his properties, higher when he wants them for collateral, lower when he has to pay taxes on them. And that tax audit he keeps talking about? He may have cheated to get $72 million in tax refunds. He seems to be the tax-cheat-in-chief.
Trump not only lied to the American people about the seriousness of COVID in the beginning. He intentionally misled us to protect Wall Street from financial impact and himself from the political repercussions. He refused to take responsibility, passing the “buck” to the state Governors. Then almost immediately he began to publicly undercut those same Governors’ efforts. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Governors who listened to Trump instead of the science, have some of the highest infection rates in their states today.
Incompetent
The closing argument is that Donald Trump failed Americans as President, and should be replaced. It seems more than obvious, a real political “no-brainer”. He is incompetent. So why are there still so many Trump signs out along the roads, so many banners waving from the back of pickup trucks, and so many lining up to participate in Trump (super-spreader) rallies?
Well, there is the obvious “flaw” of our times. There is an entire cable news network that spends twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week trying to convince America that Trump is great. And there is social media, so penetrated with doubt and false stories that people are struggling to decide between truth and falsehood. But I don’t think Fox, or Breitbart, or the false memes on Facebook fools most Trump supporters.
The Past
I think there are two reasons why Trump continues to get the support of some forty percent of Americans. The first is that he offers them an outlet for the fear and anguish they already feel about the changes in our nation. In less than twenty years we went from banning gay marriage to enshrining it in law. We went from a nation that struggled to consider a Black person as a corporate CEO or an NFL head coach, to one that elected Barack Obama as President. And we went from a nation that put marijuana users in jail, to one where only eight states still make it fully illegal. (In nine states it’s fully legal, thirty-three have some mix of medicinal use and/or decriminalization).
We have changed as a nation, and we’ve done it fast. There are many who feel “left behind”, and Donald Trump has given full voice to their internal worries. Some of those voices include racist and fascist views as well, something that Donald Trump has intentionally and repeatedly refused to condemn.
But the biggest lie of all is that Donald Trump is somehow protecting “your” retirement. The argument that Donald Trump is the “only” one who has kept pension funds and 401-k’s “up” is simply not true. When Barack Obama took office the Dow Jones Industrial average was at 7000. When he left office it was just under 20000, almost a 200% increase. Under Donald Trump, the Dow Jones went from 20000, up to 28000, or a gain of about 40%. Which one was better for your money?
The Future
And if you look into a future of even more changes, particularly climate changes, the best protection for our investments is to make our nation a leader in the technology to improve the environment. Donald Trump is looking backwards on that issue, talking about “clean coal” (whatever that is) and oil independence. That won’t move the nation or the world forward, and it won’t protect our investments.
As we discovered (again) Sunday, Donald Trump is a fraud. He’s an actor, a “brand”. Like the fake-doctor on the commercial who “plays one on TV”, Donald Trump has finagled enough money to “look like a billionaire”. He can’t even fire his own employees; he has to get someone else to do it. Trump deducted $70000 in one year for getting his hair-styled. And he paid his children a salary, then paid them for the same work again and called it “consulting” so he could deduct more money from his taxes. He has to re-finance or pay over $400,000,000 in loans in the next couple of years. He is financially “compromised” and vulnerable, not just to bankers, but also to foreign intelligence agencies.
Let him go. Let him find a way to “cash-in” as the ex-President. It’s time for America to move forward, into the Twenty-First Century, rather than wishing for the “good old days” that weren’t so great in the Twentieth Century. Tell Donald Trump the words he could only “act” on TV – YOU’RE FIRED!
