In the Cold Light 0f Reason

 

               In the Cold Light of Reason

    Now that (many of us hope) the Trump era is truly over and done, it might be useful to examine with data and reason, not emotion, the results of four years of the most morally challenged man to hold the office of POTUS (It’s actually probably a three- way tie Buchanan/Harding/Trump, but Trump’s open support of insurrection on his behalf gives him the edge in my opinion)

        Rather than rehash the several poor character issues, which are common knowledge, even if his acolytes ignore them, I will analyze those actions which can be evaluated with data or by analyzing the reactions of others affected by them.

Border Security:

 “Mexico will pay for the wall!”  No, just no, they haven’t, and they won’t. Period.

          In terms of detaining attempted undocumented crossings, the Trump years have seen an increase over the four years span, but the fact is that 86% of U.S. adults believe it also very or somewhat important to increase the number of judges handling asylum cases, and 82% said it is important to provide safe and sanitary conditions for asylum seekers once they arrive in the country. This same survey was very critical of fragmenting detainee families.

        While the raw numbers of detainees are high, it must be noted that coincident with the first Trump year and continuing throughout his term there was a huge increase in families from below Mexico, seeking asylum from violent and corrupt regimes. Even so, here is some raw data: The peak “Trump year”, 2018, saw 337,281 “removals” by both ICE and Border patrol. In 2013, under the Obama administration, 432,281 removals were enacted by those same agencies. In a single sentence, the border was more effectively, and at the same time, humanely policed during the Obama administration. 

        While Trump has seemed to glory in splitting families, the Obama administration did not, and in fact, for families remaining here until asylum hearings, more than 90% were present for those hearings; those with attorneys were present more than 95%. I cite these stats because Trump, as he is prone to do, stated in a debate with President elect Biden, that “less than 1 percent” of undocumented immigrants showed up for their hearings, He continued with: “When you say they come back, they don’t come back, Joe. They never come back. Only the really — I hate to say this — but those with the lowest IQ, they might come back.”  This has been proven blatantly false by every study ever conducted. It is, in short, a typical Trump lie.

Economic Policy:

One has to wonder that Trump actually graduated from a university which prides itself on having one of the nation’s premiere business schools. Trump, who once described himself as having graduated with “One of the highest GPAs ever”, in fact just “graduated”. Period. No honors. And definitely no MBA (advanced degree).

        In considering economic policy, context is important.  In saying that, I mean that events which are outside the control of POTUS can, and do, influence economic conditions such as Budget deficit and policy decisions. In considering the Trump record it is not only fair, but essential, to disregard a significant portion of the 2020 deficit due to the pandemic. It is, however, certainly germane to consider Trump’s reactions to it later in this op-ed9.  

        Budget: While campaigning as a deficit hawk, Candidate Trump said:  "We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. ... Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why.” He then made several generalities re: debt/deficit. During the 2016 primaries, he was again asked about the national debt, this time by Bob Woodward:
 Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers —”.    Woodward: “What’s fairly quickly?”    Trump: “Well, I would say over a period of eight years.”

In fact. When Trump made this statement, eliciting raspberries from every credible economist in the nation, the federal debt was, as he said, about 19 trillion, much of which was the result of extended federal stimulus during the great recession. This alone should have been the trumpet call signifying that Trump was an economic dunce. In fact, the debt service (interest payment) alone on the national debt then was over 11% of annual federal spending and, naturally increases as the debt does. Four years later, while admittedly partially due to the global pandemic, the US federal deficit is 29.5 trillion, an increase of almost 50%. Factoring out COVID-19 related spending it is still over 25 trillion.   

        I mention context earlier because the president in large measure “inherits”, the economy as it is when he is elected. As an example, Barack Obama was inaugurated and handed the housing bubble collapse, along with economic recession, 9.5% unemployment which would eventually reach 10%, and a bailout package signed by his predecessor. The great Recession, as it came to be known, brought with it, housing foreclosures, bankruptcies, even the failure of one of America’s largest commercial banks. Unemployment remained above 8% well into 2013, when the slow recovery began. In the interim, Congress had passed, and Obama signed into law, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This legislation was aimed at reforming and/or limiting those practices which had either led to or exacerbated the housing bubble collapse and subsequent almost 5-year recession.

        By contrast, when Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, the economy was on a continuous rise which began in the second Obama term and unemployment was 4.7%. In simplest terms, Trump inherited a healthy economy, yet he has overseen the fastest increase in the debt of any president—almost 36% from 2017 to 2020. Trump has not fulfilled his campaign promise to cut the debt. Instead, he's done the opposite. 

        Job growth had been remarkably consistent since the end of the recession in 2010. The 3.6 million jobs added in the period since Trump took office were roughly comparable to the 3.9 million added in the previous 19 months under Obama. Likewise, unemployment steadily declined, and wages rose up at a slow and fairly constant rate. On a graph of any of these metrics, the period before Trump took office is virtually indistinguishable from the period since.  I point this out only because Trump constantly (until COVID-19) trumpeted the “world’s strongest economy” from 2017-2019.

        Almost immediately, Trump pushed for erosion of Dodd -Frank, especially lending limitations in commercial banks, citing that he had “Friends with ‘nice’ businesses who can’t borrow.”   This, by the way is, and was, false, as at the time there was no lack of available business funding and no one who had legitimate creds was denied.

       To understand this paradox, understand Trump via this quote: “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me. I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out, I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing.” When asked by Norah O’Donnell on CBS to explain “How do you renegotiate the debt?” he responded, “You go back and you say, hey guess what, the economy crashed, I’m going to give you back half.”  Apparently, we are to believe that China, Japan and the UK as well as our own holders of US government debt are expected to “take half” and shut up?  Now we can understand why Trump the “tycoon” has been essentially cut off from borrowing by US commercial banks and, finally, even Deutsche bank. Trump’s cavalier attitude towards debt may explain his apparent lack of concern for the deficits he has run in a strong economy.

         The World Bank compares countries based on their total debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio. It considers a country to be in trouble if that ratio is greater than 77%. Although the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the U.S. federal debt held by the public would reach 98.2% of GDP, or $20.3 trillion, by the end of 2020, the figure is actually slightly higher, at essentially 100%. In laymen’s terms, the nation owes as much as the combined economic output in that same year! 

Economic Policy decisions:

           Tax Cut:  Trump’s tax plan to significantly reduce business and personal taxes: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reflecting President Trump's plan went into effect on Jan. 1, 2018. While many economists warned that this act would increase the deficit, the Trump planners were apparently following the line used by other tax cutters, all proven wrong, in the flawed assumption that tax cuts lead to a dollar for dollar (or more) economic and federal revenue growth because those “saved” dollars are returned into the economy at a greater than 1 to 1 ratio as increased spending of saved revenue, This is actually one of the oldest economic fallacies extant, on a par with “trickle Down” theory and Supply Side fantasies. In fact, numerous studies show that only about half of the saved (untaxed) money makes its way back as federal revenue. Again, in simplest terms, $50 saved in tax can mean a $25 decrease in the next year’s federal revenue. So far, the Trump tax cut hasn’t decreased federal revenues to that extent (yet), but its proponents fail to mention that neither have they increased, as GDP has grown, revenues remain essentially flat. If supply side theories are relevant as Dr. Laffer, himself, postulated, it is only (as he also postulated) when the highest marginal rate is over 50%. When the Trump corporate tax cuts were enacted the rate was just 37%, but apparently learning nothing from the Reagan cuts and following recession, the Trump tax plan lurched onward. 

        "After eight straight years of slow growth and underperformance, America is ready to take off," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said when the tax cut passed two years ago. He was, as usual, lying and Obama shaming because he failed to mention the effects of the Great Recession. He also was wrong in that real GDP growth in 2015 was higher than any Trump year before or after the tax cut. Hampered in part by the president's trade war, the economy grew only about 2% in 2019. That's below the average growth rate since 2010.

        So, in summary, how has Trump economic policy affected the deficit? Remember, we’re looking only at those things not COVID-19 related. Considering the Great Recession, it is unsurprising that Obama had some large deficit years, and Republicans scathingly chastised him for all of them. By the last 2 years of his administration and the first of Trump’s (still an Obama budget) the deficit averaged $807 trillion, a large (too large) number. However, while supervising the “greatest economy ever”, from 2018 to 2020 (minus COVID-19 impact) Trump deficits ran half again as high, at $1.22 trillion. This doesn’t factor in the COVID-19 cost, which will make the 2020 deficit $ 4.226 trillion!!!

        Simply put, Trump policies did little or nothing for the US economy except deregulate in some areas which was largely to satisfy Trump’s cronies and contributors in industry and finance, and especially Energy.

Trade: Trump’s simplistic view of trade deficits was a driving force behind his derisive attacks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, in fact, had supporters and detractors in both parties. What was not really in question was that TPP would have a strong positive effect on the economy over time. TPP negotiations were initiated in the Bush 43 years and completed in the Obama years. While there was some debate regarding if there would or might be manufacturing decreases in the US as a result, what was certain was a significant gain for the US in the areas of intellectual property and drug patent rights, formerly almost ignored by major Asian players. What Trump has proudly proclaimed as an improvement has resulted in a non-US participation version of the same treaty, encompassing the other original parties, minus all the intellectual and drug protection verbiage. Meanwhile nothing is better, just different. Trump floated the idea of rejoining TPP briefly, in 2018, but caved to pressure from interest groups.         

        Trade Policy: Most high school Economics students understand tariffs far better than Donald Trump, whose statement that “China will pay the Tariffs!” should have gotten an immediate gong and a hook from offstage. The importing nation’s consumers pay tariffs. Always. Period. Amen.

         Simple example: a BMW x7 Xdrive 40i costs (in the USA) $74,900 (the base model!) the tariff portion of that price is about $1800. Germany doesn’t pay it. The importer (BWM USA) does, and then they add it back into the price so you, the US purchaser, pay it.  Thus, it is, and always has been, whether tobacco, TV sets, soybeans, cars, cotton, or whatever. At least that’s how it was when nations still went to war over trade. Now those wars are economic and we’re losing.

         In more recent years the US has had essentially free trade and few, if any, tariffs for either party with China in most areas. Trump’s ill- advised tariffs on various Chinese products predictably resulted in corresponding tariffs levied by China. American farmers, traditionally huge exporters of soybeans to China were slammed because China simply found new, tariff free, sources (such as Brazil). It’s childishly simple: “If you make it harder for your guys to buy our products (as in adding tariffs to the cost), we’ll retaliate by doing the same.  As a result, American farmers, the original welfare class, got even more farm subsidies as their crops became unsaleable, as China shopped elsewhere.

         In this area alone, Trump’s tariffs have cost the rest of us tens of billions more in Farm aid (subsidies) than usual in each of the last two years. To the individual non-farmer this is usually of little notice, since farm subsidies aren’t generally voted on in Congress, however the Trump tariffs have also cost the average American household an extra $852 annually over the last two years in increased prices on Chinese products. Only $852? Multiply those two years ($1704 total per household) by 128.45 million households and, to date, Trump’s ill-advised tariff war has cost US consumers about $219 billion, not including farm bailouts.

Foreign Relations:  Reading former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book is illuminating in this area, not for his opinions, but for the factual descriptions of Trump behavior. Bolton, like so many others in the administration, originally on the Trump Train, finally could stand no more of Trump’s incompetence, demonstrated almost daily. It essentially a tale of a, man who knew little or nothing about word affairs yet ignored advisors who do. After coaxing two such honorable men out of retirement, he largely ignored them both and finally fired both SecState Rex Tillerson and SecDef Jim Mattis.

        Per Bolton’s eyewitness accounts (seasoned by his previous experience in the Bush 43 administration); whereas the normal procedure for national security briefings is for the President to listen to advisors present current situations, Trump did most of the speaking, many times on topics of which he had no understanding. Along the way he: glossed over a Saudi correspondent’s assassination, almost certainly at the behest of a Saudi Prince, had a love affair on paper with the insane North Korean head of state, and characterized Vladimir Putin as “nice,” refusing to allow any investigation of charges that Putin sanctioned bounties for dead US soldiers in Afghanistan.

        On the other hand, after charging that Obama made a “terrible deal” and gave Iran billions of “our” money (it was already theirs, seized/frozen decades earlier) and blasted the US signing onto an agreement which would have limited Iran’s ability to produce weapons grade enrichment of Uranium, Trump withdrew us from said agreement to the great concern of our allies in Europe. In fact, Trump began a series of reversals of Obama executive orders related to the environment and other topics, many of which were aimed at lessening regulations on some of the greatest US polluters.

        As a result of withdrawing from both the Iran agreement and the Paris Accords, related to reducing greenhouse gasses to combat global warming, our European allies drew farther away. Stripped of US involvement, Iran has announced intentions to markedly increase Uranium enrichment, previously limited by agreement.

         Both the tariffs discussed earlier and the Trump attempts to blame China for the current pandemic, which, while starting there, was already destined to spread world-wide by the time he began shaming them, further damaged relations with a market critical to world and US trade. Meanwhile, China and the other original signatories to the TPP (minus, of course, the US) have forged a new trade agreement which is very like the TPP except it deletes the two cardinal concessions critical to the USA – intellectual property protection and drug patent protection. Additionally, these nations haver extended feelers to the UK and Europe, which if accepted could further isolate the US in a widening trade limbo. Trump fails to understand this, as he failed to properly face the facts of Covid-19.

        I cannot recall any time since I’ve been politically aware, (60 years or so) that our relations and general “sameness of purpose” with Western Europe allies have been at such a low ebb. This becomes even more depressing, considering the high esteem and political concert of the Barack Obama era. Having been in the vast majority of western European nations and in North Africa during that period, I can attest to that high regard, having actually had locals start conversations to tell me that. 

In a recent interview, former SecState, Rex Tillerson, summed it up in a statement elegant in both content and brevity: “His  (Donald Trump’s) understanding of global events, his understanding of global history, his understanding of even U.S. history was really limited. It’s really hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t even understand the concept for why we’re talking about this.”

Domestic Policy: 

        Following the events of January 6^th, 2021, it is almost unnecessary to expand on Trump’s role in the polarizing of America. So, I’ll do it quickly.

        Race: Donald Trump’s “race problem” was inbred by a father who openly discriminated in housing which he built with Government loans. It was obvious in Trump’s insistence that persons of color be “cleared” from parts of his Atlantic City casino when he and the wife du jour were there. It was clear when he said to a reporter that “Blacks are genetically lazy” (a paraphrase of a longer rant.) Events in Charlottesville, Va., when he refused to condemn white supremacists even when one ran his car into a crowd, along with his relationship with Steve Bannon, left no doubt in a rational mind. He was certainly aware, of yet has failed to speak out about, the facts related to unarmed black shootings by police at three times the rate of whites under similar circumstances. Maybe the most damning comment was his statement during the Housing discrimination trial: “You know you don’t want to live with ‘them’ either.”

        Gender:  While proclaiming his apparent love and respect for women (just like he has been the “best President” for persons of color since Lincoln.) He has body-shamed women in public, paid off a porn star to keep shtum about an affair while his wife was pregnant, and publicly used his favorite epithet “nasty” (it was his father’s, too) to condemn women who dare to disagree with him. The rest of Trump’s relationships with women including his serial wives is in the public record.

        The Military:  While bragging about military pay raises, which he falsely claimed were the “highest ever,” Trump has denigrated the leaders of all branches of service. He has (per John Bolton and at least one other who was there) berated the Joint Chiefs of staff en-masse for daring to urge caution in matters in which he, himself has zero real world experience. This has included showboating about pulling US forces from Syria against advice from those who actually understood the situation, and then, when that fuckup became evident, ordering them back. He has interfered in the Military Justice System several times, not for justice’s sake but for political reasons. (SEAL assassin, Eddie Gallagher, Capt. Brett Crozier). 

Personal attacks included George W. W Bush:

At least twice since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former president George H.W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.

On the Joint Chiefs (eyewitness account):

 “Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them.

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass. Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

On a visit to France:

        “Why should I go to that cemetery? (US cemetery at Normandy) It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. … Later, (on that same trip), he asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” (An American President who doesn’t know who our WWI allies were?!!)

        “I would have been honored” to serve, Trump has said, “but I think I make up for that right now. Look, $700 billion I gave last year, and this year $716 billion. (“He” gave nothing, we all did)) And I think I’m making up for it rapidly, because we’re rebuilding our military at a level it’s never seen before.”

         The first lie is that he believed his defense budget was an all-time peacetime high. Accounting for inflation, Obama’s 2010-11 budget of $711.34 billion, in today’s dollars is $855 billion. He lies because he can. Unbelievably, this man conflates signing a bill authorizing military spending with personal sacrifice.   Likewise, total force strength is actually lower than any time since 1960, with the exception of the Marine Corps which has remained relatively constant.

Overall leadership:

While most of what has preceded this portion reflects in some fashion on leadership, the Corona Virus pandemic has been an almost constant display of how not to lead a nation.

        First, as admitted to Bob Woodward (preserved on audiotape, at that) and recounted in Woodward’s book “Rage” we have the real Trump contradicting his public comments. In public comments, Trump minimized/downplayed the coronavirus threat, asserting the virus would “go away quickly”, “vanish” when it warmed up, and compared it to a mild flu, emphasizing the need to reopen the country to try to get the economy going again.

         To Woodward, however: Trump warned about the risks of the virus in frank and scary terms, calling it “the plague,” acknowledging it’s deadlier than the flu, and saying it could spread by air. This was deliberate. As Trump also told Woodward on March 19, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

        “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air, and that’s how it’s passed. (is this the speech of a college graduate?) And so, that’s a very tricky one, that’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your — you know, your, even your strenuous flus. … This is more deadly. This is five per — you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know? (Say Whaat??) So, this is deadly stuff.”  April 13, to Woodward: “This thing is a killer if it gets you. If you’re the wrong person, you don’t have a chance. … So this rips you apart. … It is the plague.”

    This was definitely not what he was telling America at the too numerous photo-op briefings where Dr Anthony Fauci and other real medical persons were shoved aside while Trump ranted about his “ratings” and touted unproven and, in some cases, unsafe treatments. At times he even gave undeserved credibility to pillow salesmen and witch doctors, and the gap between Trump’s actions and good public policy widened to an abyss. What he was saying was:

February 26, at a press conference: “When you have 15 people [infected by the coronavirus in the US], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

February 27, at a White House meeting: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

March 9, on Twitter: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down; life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” (As of today, there are 392,000 dead and counting. This is 10 times the flu toll in an average year, and it ain’t over.)

         As avid as Trump’s acolytes are, if he had personally urged masks, and enforced social distancing, it would have become a religious obligation to most of them. Instead, he threw several Governors (Democrats, of course) under the bus for trying to do what he should have done. While impossible to foresee, it is reasonable to conclude that maybe 50,000 Americans might still be alive, had Trump led, vice lied. This is not simply hindsight, since all the signs and warnings were there, but ignored.

         Capable leaders choose good people to do important tasks. Trump, the master of nepotism, chose son-in-law Jared Kushner to over-see mask acquisition and, what ensued was a barrage of dead ends and Kushner associates benefitting from some of them. This tragedy is amplified by the fact that the Obama transition team had provided a hands-on pandemic simulation 3 years earlier, in early 2017, for several incoming Trump cabinet members, including the recently resigned Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao (also known as Mrs. Mitch McConnell). McConnell would later, as he has done until it became politically unattractive to continue doing so, allege that the Obama administration left no “playbook” for a pandemic. In 2019, the Trump administration conducted a second pandemic simulation which they dubbed ‘Crimson Contagion.” This run- through was not publicly released during early part of the Trump COVID-19 response because doing so would have revealed just how much of a leadership failure was occurring: 

        The simulation is so close to the later reality as to be almost indistinguishable.   The New York Times reported it thus: “The outbreak of the respiratory virus began in China and was quickly spread around the world by air travelers, who ran high fevers. In the United States, it was first detected in Chicago, and 47 days later, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. By then it was too late: 110 million Americans were expected to become ill, leading to 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.” That scenario, code-named “Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services in a series of exercises that ran from last January (2019, 13 months before COVID-19) to August. The simulation’s sobering results — contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that had not previously been reported — drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed.”

        Presented with this, the Trump administration did, literally, nothing. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell’s “non-existent" Obama playbook, used in the simulation, had been further refined.

        Again, while it is impossible to determine what might have been, it’s certainly arguable that a concerted effort to prepare the nation might have helped a bit. Imagine if all states had immediately received the results of the simulation and were urged, regardless of partisan concerns to prepare on the local level.

        Governors trying to do as the CDC recommended have had to fight the Trumpists who, like their leader, believed that it was overhyped and really not all that bad.  Trump even contradicted his own administration’s recommendations to push a rosy image of the country’s fight against Covid-19, demanding that states reopen quickly, before they met his administration’s recommendations, and getting parts of the public to think (wrongly) that masking is unhelpful or unnecessary, as his administration recommended, but failed to mandate, public use of masks. (a recommendation he largely ignored).    

        In the final analysis, Donald Trump’s failure to lead, in the face of overwhelming good advice to the contrary, is unsurpassed in my 60 years as a follower of US politics. This, alone, should cement his position as one of the worst presidents in our history. There never was a Wizard behind the curtain, but simply an incompetent, and not really very bright, reality television star, who has mastered the “big lie” school of   public relations. The nation is worse off because of it and far too many of us are dead. If there was a heaven and, in that heaven, a Bad Presidents Club, Trump would be met at the door by James Buchanan and Warren Harding, both grateful to no longer be tied for last.