More Lies My President Told Me Part Four

                     Well, here we are again, analyzing gross misrepresentations and outright lies

• “[The stock market] was a number that, frankly, would have gone and it would have been cut in half had the other person or the other party won. The number would have been cut in half.”

I only bring this up because it shows Trumps propensity for simply "making shit up". Trump inherited an economy that was in the middle of one of the longest post-World War II economic expansions on record. Most of the trends that Trump points to as "success" started under Barack Obama. In truth, most economic indicators from Obama’s last two years are equal to Trump’s first two and better in some areas. This is especially significant because all the "restrictive regulations" Trump has bitched about and killed to the extent that he can, were in place during this Obama recovery. There is no evidence that it would not have continued if Hillary Clinton had been elected and no evidence that electing a Democrat would cause an economic crash.

• “More than 300,000 people under Obama, 300,000 people left the workforce. Under just three years of my administration, 3.5 million people have joined the workforce and nobody believed that was possible.”

That’s true, what is missing of course is the reason why and what happened later in the Obama years. At best, this is merely grossly misleading. Barack Obama took office in the throes of an historic recession. Economic indicators were depressed and deficits (can you say bailout?) high, during his first two years in office, generally speaking, before embarking on a growth spurt for the rest of Obama's eight-year term. More than 5 million people joined the U.S. labor force during Obama's presidency, according to Labor Department figures. That’s all of the 300,000 back at work plus 4.7 million more. And Trump has a degree from Wharton? A marginal note from this or any discussion of jobs is that as the population grows (which it will do) the number employed would be expected to grow, essentially proportionally.

In 2007, when the housing bubble burst, there were roughly 121 million Americans working full time.  Part timers are almost impossible to statistically analyze. By the time of Obama’s inauguration that number had dropped to about 113 million. So, I could say, as Trump has, that under Bush 43, 8 million Americans left the work force. While factually correct, it wasn’t “W”s fault either. After dipping even more in 2009 and 2010, the number of employed rose steadily to 125 million full timers on Trump’s inauguration day.

In fact, the number of Americans employed full time rose by 8 million in the Obama years. Of course, over the Obama years the population grew by an estimated 20 million or so, so the number employed full time should have gone up. In fact, although I have a Master’s (unlike Trump) and took (and passed!!) Managerial Stats, I am only “spit balling” here since census data runs in 10 year cycles, but at a glance it appears that employment not only recovered Great Recession related lost jobs, but gains actually outpaced population growth during the last 5 or 6 Obama years. So there.

• “We've added 12,000 brand new factories and many more are coming in.”

You and I have an image of “factory” which generally involves a relatively large number of persons engaged in some sort of industrial endeavor, and therein resides the lie inherent in this statement. Trump began making this claim after reports that the manufacturing sector was entering a recession, but it is, at best, misleading. Trump is citing a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) database set known as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, but the hitch here is that a relatively large number (80%!!) of these are not what most people would call factories. 

One quick example: If the Duck Dynasty inbreeds have 3 persons making duck calls in a log cabin,  that’s, by the BLS definition, a "factory".  The data does, in fact, show that United States gained almost 10,000 additional "manufacturing establishments" between the first quarter of 2017 through the first quarter of 2019; and the number increased to above 12,000 in the second quarter of 2019. What is missing is the fact that there was a gain of 10,000 also in Obama's second term.) The hitch here is that more than 8 out of ten of these "manufacturing establishments" employ five or fewer people.

 The BLS confers that title on  any establishment "engaged in the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products," so that also means establishments "that transform materials or substances into new products by hand or in the worker's home and those engaged in selling to the general public products made on the same premises from which they are sold, such as bakeries, candy stores, glassblowers, (cottage dildo fabricators), and custom tailors." By this definition, a guy who makes birdhouses in his basement is a factory! This is the same general approach Trump used when he lied and claimed “Six new steel mills are opening” when the fact was that just three idle blast furnaces in two existing plants were turned on. 

In a similar “can’t help himself” vein:    

      

• “It's Michigan -- an important state. We brought back tremendous amounts of business, tremendous car companies coming in -- everything else.”

Well…. No, just no. Car manufacturing jobs have remained essentially flat in Michigan since Trump took office, at 42,000 as of November. When looking at parts manufacturing jobs, Michigan’s total for November was actually slightly below July 2016. As one old philosopher said, “The man who knows not and knows not that he knows not – he is a fool, shun him.”

And…

• “Just a few months ago, I visited the new Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County at $6 billion, with a B, $6 billion. It is the largest investment in Pennsylvania history, we're ending decades of failed trade policies that devastated communities all across the state.”

By “We”, Trump must be confused, since he erroneously implied that the Shell plant he references is the result of his trade policies. The reality check is: In fact, Royal Dutch Shell announced the plant in 2012, under the Obama administration, after receiving one of the largest tax incentives in Pennsylvania's history. Final decision to build came in mid-2016, while Obama was in office.

Trump loves to turn his “rallies” (publicly funded campaign sojourns) into opportunities to attack local Democrats. Here he slanders Michigan’s Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who has two liabilities in Trump World: gender and party affiliation.

“I understand she’s (Whitmer) not fixing those potholes. That’s what the word is. It was all about roads and they want to raise those gasoline taxes, and you — we don't want to do that. But she’s not fixing the potholes.” 

Michigan’s transportation department spends about $9 million a year repairing potholes. Transportation experts confirm that increased funding is needed to keep up with the state’s pothole epidemic. Whitmer took office in 2019 and proposed raising the state gas tax to round up new funding for roads, but the state’s Republican legislature so far has blocked her plan.  Make sure you grasp this. She wants to fix roads; Republicans deny the funding, and then they and Trump blame her because the roads aren’t fixed. Catch 22!

Ok, let’s interject some fun fuel factoids here. Every state uses gasoline taxes to widely varying degrees.  California at 61.2 cents per gallon is the highest. Michigan at 42.48 cents is 12 cents lower than nearby Illinois (54.98). Both have hard winters and significant resulting road damage. Most northern, high population density, states have the same concerns and, accordingly, fairly high gas excise taxes. Typically, the more southern the state, the lower the states gas excise tax. Who is the exception? Why, it’s our fair state of Florida which has zero frost heave potholes, but a 42 cents per gallon state gas tax, which dwarfs LA, MS, and Al, who average a mere 19.6 cents per gallon.

What is most interesting to me is that some poor souls believe that the President controls gas prices and that federal gas taxes keep increasing. The Federal gasoline excise tax has been constant at 18.4 cents per gallon since the Clinton administration! 

• “Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, AOC and the rest of the Democrats are not getting important legislation done, hence, the “Do Nothing Democrats” nickname. USMCA, National Defense Authorization Act, Gun Safety, Prescription Drug Prices, & Infrastructure are dead in the water because of the Dems!”

Trump loves to castigate Democrats because they haven’t sent him very many bills he likes since they won control of the House. There’s a reason for that – Mitch McConnell.   The House has passed many bills reflecting the Democrats' preferred approach, only to see them die in the Senate, in most cases tabled by the majority leader to avoid even publicly debating them.  Contrary to the claim, Democrats did press forward with approving the USMCA trade deal and the National Defense Authorization Act.

The House of Representatives has actually passed dozens of bills, including a broad expansion of background checks for gun purchases, but they have largely died in the GOP-controlled Senate. This is even sadder because after every mass shooting, Trump tells victim’s families he supports universal background checks and after the furor of the moment dies down, he once again "bends and spreads ‘em" for the NRA, pushing no real, tangible, initiatives. The even sadder part is this: A poll done by Johns Hopkins University and conducted among 2,703 adults — including 169 respondents who identified as a member of the NRA, found that 74 percent of NRA members supported requiring background checks for all gun sales. NRA leadership simply ignores this.

• “We're doing a lot on gun safety, and we're working with the NRA, and we're working -- you know, we tried to work with a Democrats, but frankly, they don't even want to meet.”

And,

• “Decades they've been talking about it. So, we're looking at background checks, and we're looking at putting everything together in a unified way so that we can have something that's meaningful.”

They’ve met, they’ve sent meaningful legislation to the Senate. Trump’s pet Senator, Moscow Mitch McConnell,has  killed each initiative. Trump spoke with National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre "and assured him that universal background checks were off the table," according to multiple news organizations.

And now one more gun lie, sadly closer to home and most or our hearts:

• “As an example, you take the Pulse nightclub. If you had one person in that room that could carry a gun and knew how to use it, it wouldn’t have happened, or certainly not to the extent it did, where he was just in there shooting and shooting and shooting, and they were defenseless.”

Again, a blatant lie. There was an armed person at Pulse that terrible night. An Orlando police officer, Adam Gruler, was paid to provide security for the club that night. He even traded gunshots with the gunman, Omar Mateen, near the club’s entrance. Realizing that, while he carried his issued service handgun, the shooter, Omar Mateen, carried automatic weapons, Gruler called a signal 43, which means "officer needs help". When help arrived minutes later, Gruler told them, “He’s in the patio!” and shot multiple additional rounds toward Mateen. Gruler had been a member of the Orlando Police Department since 2001. Trump must have known some of this when he fabricated the lie that there was no armed presence.

And, finally for this installment, Trump’s dislocation of his arm as he pats his own back and lies in the process. 

• “I gave away my salary. It’s, I guess, close to $450,000. I give it away. Nobody ever said, ‘He gives away his salary.’ Now it comes up because of this. But I give away my presidential salary. They say that no other president has done it. … They actually say that George Washington may — may have been the only other president to do — but see whether or not Obama gave up his salary.”

He does give away his salary. There the truth ends. His Red Hat brigade constantly praise him as the great humanitarian for doing so. He praises himself as well.  Of course, he can give it away, since he has no expenses and his spawn are running the business. He and his family (two of whom are on the federal payroll) often blur the line between official actions and private business interests, and he has refused to divest from his business.

However, Trump could save far more than he gives away if he’d just play golf closer to home. As for “They say no other president has done it.” No Jethro, "they" don’t say that. Here’s why they don’t:  Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy, both, like Trump, wealthy, gave their salaries to charity.  Barack Obama, who didn’t have the luxury of a large (and criminally under-taxed) fortune, still gave about $1.1 million to charity during the eight years he was president, His presidential salary during that period was $3.1 million, though he made millions more from sales of a book he actually wrote all by himself.

Ok, Ok. Stop begging, here’s one more. If this doesn’t make you laugh…

“You're not going to know what this means because I'm a big, like, student. I like academics, believe it or not. People don't know. My uncle was a professor for 35 years or something at MIT. I like that stuff.”

This from the guy couldn’t do an MBA after graduating with no honors of any kind from Wharton. This from the guy who has offered stunningly incorrect statements on almost anything he has ever spoken about. These include but are by no means limited to: repeated false and unscientific claims about GDP, taxes, trade, immigration, climate change and foreign policy, among other subjects.

And I do believe that’s all I have to say about that (for now)