Orange Faced and Old — But Still a Legend in His Own Mind — Part 1
As an astute fellow writer on Medium has noted, Donald Trump is functionally a “Useful Idiot.” On his best days, he is a babbling buffoon who does not know geopolitics, history, business, ethics, or any other subject that someone in any position of authority should possess. In short, Trump was the worst possible person that could have ever ascended to the presidency of the United States.
Lest we forget just how pitiful Trump was at doing his job as POTUS #45 from 2017 through 2020, here are some stark reminders.
Trump’s infamous accomplishments
“I didn’t back down from my promises. I kept every single one,” — Trump’s words in a video played at the Republican National Convention in August 2020.
Well, no, he did not keep every promise. But Trump kept enough of them to fundamentally change America for the worse. Few presidents have left office with so little accomplished as well as impeached and disgraced.
Some of Trump’s get-done agenda items were standard for a ‘Republican’ president. White-collar criminal prosecutions hit a 33-year low. The Justice Department defended state laws that kicked thousands off the voting rolls.
The National Labor Relations Board is now more sympathetic to employers than unions. During Trump’s ‘no new war period,’ military spending reached the same levels as during the height of the Iraq War. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people lost health insurance by administrative decree.
Trump’s claim of ‘best U.S. economy in history’
Trump left office in January 2021 with a historically bad record on the economy. That seemed in conflict with Trump’s most repeated claim that the U.S. economy was the best in history during his presidency. He began making that claim in June 2018 — and it quickly became one of his favorite distortions
By just about any important measure, the Trump economy did not do as well as it did under Presidents Obama, Clinton, Johnson, Eisenhower, or even Ulysses S. Grant. Placing Trump’s bottom-line results alongside his predecessors paints a deeply unflattering picture. Comparing the economic impacts of all presidents over the last 70 years, the economy under Trump performed poorly.
The most overlooked aspect of Trump’s proclaimed “best economy in history” is that it took place on the tail end of a much longer economic recovery that began under the Obama administration in 2009.
As a result of the Great Recession in 2008, the Federal Reserve (Fed) stepped in to stem a massive ripple of losses through the global financial system as the housing market imploded. In the process, the Fed lowered interest rates, which had the immediate effect of pushing easy money into the hands of the already wealthy.
During his first three years as president, Trump’s economic output was merely a continuation of the recovery from the Great Recession he inherited from President Obama. As of early 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic brought it to an end, America had experienced the longest U.S. economic expansion in history. It was an expansion best characterized by the excesses of extreme wealth and an ever-widening chasm between the unfathomably rich and everyone else.
So, when Trump bragged that he created the greatest economy in the history of our country, the truth is he did not even create the greatest economy in the history of the last decade. In fact, between himself and Obama, Trump ranked second on many key economic indicators. And whereas Obama passed a flourishing economy to Trump, Trump gave a ‘rich vs. the rest of us’ economy to his successor, Biden.
Trump’s job creation
As for job creation, Trump has never explained why job growth slowed after he took office. During Trump’s first three years (before the coronavirus pandemic), fewer jobs were created than during Obama’s last three years. And Trump’s bungled coronavirus response exacerbated and extended damage to jobs.
In the third week of December 2020, 803,000 people filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits. It was the 39th consecutive week in which at least 700,000 Americans had filed first-time unemployment claims. Trump is the first president since Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he came into office.
Trump’s reshaped tax code for the mega-rich
At a campaign rally in Bullhead, Ariz., in 2016, Trump told the crowd, “A vote for me is a vote for massive, middle-class tax cuts, regulation cuts, fair trade.”
The Trump administration’s only so-called “big” legislative accomplishment was the ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.’ This act initiated various changes in individual and business taxation in the United States. This new tax law promised to accelerate long-term growth by stimulating business investment. In fact, business investment did not rise.
At its passage, Trump and most of the bill’s Republican supporters said the new tax law would result in higher wages, factory expansions, and more jobs. Instead, it was mainly exploited by the wealthy and corporations.
The new tax law’s centerpiece was its record cut in the corporate tax rate, from 35% to 21%. This corporate rate cut went right to the bottom line as corporations bought back stock and raised dividends which popped EPS (earnings per share) and drove the stock market to new highs.
And with new highs in the stock market, the benefits of this tax law mainly went to the rich given that the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 88% of all stocks. And for the first time, these new tax rates brought the total tax rate of the richest 400 Americans below that of every other income group.
Republicans both in the administration and on Capitol Hill insisted that the tax cuts would pay for themselves through faster economic growth. This did not and will not happen.
Trump’s tax cuts created a huge windfall for wealthy shareholders and tiny gains for the middle class. Through the third quarter of 2020, the least wealthy 50% of Americans owned just 1.9% of the nation’s net worth, while the top 1% owned 30.5%.
Also, the Tax Act of 2017 resulted in much lower tax revenues for the Federal Government than initially forecast. And this, in part, resulted in the federal budget deficit rising significantly faster than expected.
It has been determined that this tax law of 2017 will likely burden the nation with an additional $1.9 trillion in debt over 11 years, beginning in 2018.
Trump’s rising stock market
After the election in November 2020, and as covid-19 hospitalizations hit another new high, Trump called a news conference to boast about a different record: the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, he crowed, had pierced 30,000 for the first time. “That’s a sacred number, 30,000,” he said.
It was a bizarre statement even for Trump. After all, Trump had argued for years that any stock market gains after a presidential election should be credited to the new president-elect, not the guy on his way out the door.
In truth, neither current presidents nor presidents-elect control stock markets. More important, 30,000 was hardly a “sacred number” — or a particularly significant one, in the context of Trump’s dismal overall record.
Also, it is important to remember that rock-bottom interest rates have mainly driven stock market gains in the last decade. Low-interest rates pushed investors away from safe investments and into risky stocks in search of higher returns.
The low-interest rates also invited excessive stock buybacks by corporations — which drove the stock market higher. And the benefits of stock market gains accrue mainly to the affluent Americans who own most of the stocks — not to main street America.
Trump’s international diplomacy — America First
Trump promised a new kind of foreign policy — one that put “America first.” That meant pulling back from multilateral international institutions and agreements during his presidency. The United States left the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the World Health Organization and re-negotiated NAFTA with Canada and Mexico to form the new USMCA trade deal.
Trump’s aggressive manner, combined with his “America First” nationalistic agenda, seriously undermined transatlantic relations and U.S. global leadership. Trump rampaged across the world, leaving a trail of random destruction, division, and conflict in his wake.
Trump broke every rule in the diplomatic playbook. He accepted payments to himself and his family from entities with whom he was negotiating. He repeatedly surprised all involved with abrupt changes in U.S. policy such as supporting the Kurds and then betraying the Kurds. Or appeasing Turkey, then sanctioning Turkey. He provoked Iran, then sanctioned Iran. He withdrew U.S. forces from part of the middle east as he recommitted U.S. forces to other parts of the middle east.
Of course, it’s not like Trump didn’t have some world leader friends during his presidency. Trump and company knew they could always count on the support of authoritarian soul mates in the European right, including the rulers in Poland and Hungary, as well as America’s morally compromised allies in the Middle East.
Trump encouraged authoritarian “strongman” leaders such as Turkey’s Erdogan, Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and hooligans like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. And he coddled autocrats such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and, of course, Russia’s Putin.
Next up: Orange Faced and Old — But Still a Legend in His Own Mind — Part 2 — Stay Tuned
*************
If you found this article interesting, then you might like my series of six self-published books designed to present ‘some of what I know so far’ on a wide range of interesting subjects, including human evolution, spirituality, politics, religion, finance, nature, science, ancient anomalies, the cosmos and so much more.
This article is compiled from chapter 8 of my fourth book in the series titled: “So, here’s some of what I know so far regarding Wealth, Greed, Politics, and Power.”
You can find my books on Amazon by searching “books by Stephen Geist.”
Each of the six books has relevance to the other books but reading them in order is unnecessary. Each book can stand alone but reading all six books in the series would be better. Maybe you will awaken to a new state of ‘being,’ as I have — one that is both breathtaking and startling.
Also, if you enjoyed this article, please consider joining Medium and listing me as one of your favorite writers (so you will have access to all my work as well as the work of thousands of other excellent writers).
