Was Donald Trump Right or Wrong About Most Everything?

 

Was Donald Trump Right or Wrong About Most Everything?

In a complex world, especially where things do not appear to be going in the right direction (the almost universal majority US poll results, regardless of party affiliation), it is historically quite normal for people to look for solutions that they can understand (or are supported by people they trust) and to find readily identifiable cohorts of people to blame. The above “King” self-portrait was posted by Donald Trump on his own Truth Social platform, even though he is beginning to back off his hints that he will or can seek a third term. His legion of “whatever Trump wants” GOP members of Congress or diehard MAGA adherents – representing about 30% of the American electorate – have imbued the President with papal infallibility. Trump has an uncanny sense what his followers want to hear, who to blame and what solutions they will buy… but does he deliver?

If making the world, particularly the United States, a better place, the answer has to be a resounding “no!,” but by repeating his failures as success enough, he had convinced his followers he is a winner. So let’s look at Trump 2.0, three quarters into his first year in his second term. He banged hard on the “economy” and “cost increases” during his second campaign. Costs have soared, but his policies were on the precipice of working, he asserts. Not a shot in hell.

Tariffs he exclaimed would generate new revenues (they have, about $200 billion), fix the “unfair advantage” foreign competitors have heaped on the United States for decades (not remotely fixed, even if you believe getting discounted goods was a problem… but Americans are paying record prices for almost everything), once exported jobs will return to the United States (they haven’t despite Trump’s litany of new foreign investments here, and the jobs numbers are, to put it mildly, terrible), getting rid of the worst of the worst undocumented aliens would benefit us all (“see below”).

Indeed, unharvested crops are rotting in the fields, slaughterhouses are shutting down, construction sites across the country are empty, small business restaurants are closing in droves and the lack of domestic childcare is sending parents home without jobs… all because citizen labor won’t take those jobs. The “worst of the worst” are still here, but a lot of hardworking, taxpaying undocumented workers are gone as deportation quotas are filled.

Even as Trump convinces foreign carmakers and tech companies to invest in the United States, his assault on the very foundations needed to prepare Americans for the related jobs – the finest institutions of higher learning in the country – have created challenging situations for those foreign investors. For example, at a newly built hi-tech Hyundai battery manufacturing facility in Ellabell, Georgia, unable to find enough technically trained US workers, Hyundai was forced to keep 300 South Koreans to overstay their visas… until ICE detained and deported those employees in early September. The plant is closed until next year, assuming they can figure out how to get the workers they need.

Oh, and unless you are an angry gunowner or a billionaire in the United States in a self-absorbed AI bubble, the economy as a whole is slip-sliding away, as this October 29th from the Wall Street Journal’s editor in chief reports: “The nation’s largest employers have a new message for office workers: help not wanted. From Amazon to UPS, employers are making deep cuts, hoping AI can handle more of the work that well-paid white-collar workers have been doing. Separately, a Journal analysis of the impact of stand-your-ground laws found that justifiable homicides are up in the 30 states that give people more leeway to kill in self-defense. And surging stock markets have created more billionaires in the world, with Americans dominating their collective wealth.”

As Trump is violating all sorts of statutes, simply by declaring “emergencies” without any basis, he has ordered federal or federalized troops to invade Democratically-led cities against the local elected leaders’ objection to “make them safe” (even as crime rates in those cities are plunging)… and promising to deploy more troops in more cities… even admitting in federal court that they supplied knowingly incorrect information in the Portland invasion. Americans do not like seeing troops in their cities or even in US cities, as Trump’s poll numbers reflect.

How about Trump’s role as a global peacemaker, steps he believes would lead to his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize next year? Aside from denials from the participants in some the major conflicts he “resolved” (e.g., India’s PM Modi denying Trump had anything to do with the settlement of tensions with Pakistan), the biggest “I will settle these” conflicts – notably Russia and Ukraine and the rapidly unraveling “ceasefire” in Gaza – the world is a more volatile place. Hamas has never agreed to accept Israels’ existence, and Israel will not accept in independent Palestinian state. Extra-judicial killings (without judicial or congressional authorization… and absolutely no tangible proof of wrongdoing) of purported narco-smugglers of the Venezuelan coast… as a flotilla of a carrier-based US fleet moves into striking range… and US military officers are being required to sign non-disclosure agreements to continue serving).

Even his triumphant trade agreement with China was forced on Trump by their edict to control rare earths, their shift to Brazil and Argentina to supply agricultural exports they once purchased from the United States, and the fact that even when the pledged to buy such exports in Trump 1.0, they never did… all added up to a Trump capitulation to the rising power of China. Trump returned from his first meeting with China’s Xi Jinping in six years with… er… words but no real trade deal. Xi only gave Trump and hour and a half. Dropping our tariffs to 47% with a Chinese pledge, after fulfilling China’s import needs from Brazil and Argentina, to buy more soybeans, are little more than platitudes. Students, researchers and professors who led the best US university tech programs… are removing to other less xenophobic nations… and even China… as we shoot ourselves in the foot.

At the end of this litany of failure is the shutdown, predicated on a litany of lies and false blame. Having shoved the “continuing resolution” (budget extension bill) down Democrats’ collective throat (a villainous rejection of what had traditionally been a bipartisan effort), Trump focused on decimating any opposing views by firing or prosecuting Democrats or Democrat-favored programs and then blaming Democrats for the action, when Trump controlled Congress and the Supreme Court. Even as the Department of Agriculture clearly had ample funds to continue the SNAP program, helping ordinary Americans was not a priority.

Indeed, premiums for millions under the Affordable Care Act were set to explode… sending a cost increase ripple into all healthcare premiums. Donor support was illegally solicited to support soldiers Trump wanted to get paid… the same funding mechanism he has used to fund a White House ballroom most Americans do not want. The donors? Mostly those who need government approvals or benefit as major government vendors. Trump could negotiate with Dems on much of this, but his little man Speaker Mike Johnson has told the entire House of Representatives that they are not needed in Washington; he even blamed Democratic NYC mayoral candidate for the shutdown.

I’ll end this blog with excerpts from a FastCompany.com (October 27th) article by Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University: “In politics voters are asked to pick between shrewd politicians who have mastered the art of deceit and manipulation and specialize in telling people what they want to hear, irrespective of their actual leadership capabilities. Unsurprisingly, the world is led by heads of states who enjoy dismal levels of popular approval, even when they rose to power with legitimate voter support. As I illustrate in my latest book, politicians are the ultimate example of the disconnect between our perceptions of leaders’ authenticity, and their actual honesty or genuineness… Indeed, not only do we make rapid, careless, and furiously fast inferences of other people’s character traits, we are also overconfident about the accuracy of our inferences, and stubbornly wedded to them to the point that no amount of evidence will change our mind.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and in case the majority of our electorate truly realizes what a failed presidency Donald Trump has shoved into the United States, he is working hard to rig all the upcoming elections so that they cannot do a thing about it.