If this was a contest of facts, there’d be no contest at all. Trump with his record, should be no challenge and no threat at all. It’s essentially a crime that the race is still basically 50/50. The man has been impeached twice, found liable for fraud, defamation, sexual assault and convicted of false documents when committing election interference.
The worst case is that we get a series of He Said/He Said cross-allegations that just come across as finger-pointing like this discussion between journalist Adam Mockler and MTG’s boyfriend Brian Glenn and onlookers.
This is just chaotic, it’s accusation followed by cross-accusation without any context or meaningful thought. Adam does an impressive job responding to all the wild narratives that are spouted by these MAGAs, but it’s all mostly for naught. Nothing is truly illuminated, no one learns anything.
What needs to happen is that the CNN moderators need to break the tie. They need to stand up whenever either of the candidates speaks a falsehood, and call it out.
And we know with Trump, that will mean responding with a fact check to everything he says.
Reposted from Dark Skies on the Horizon
Trump’s primary arguments are that the economy was “better” during his term, that prices and inflation are high, that immigration is “Out of control” leading to greater crime and that Biden has engaged in “Unconstitutional Lawfare.”
None of that is true.
Four years ago during Trump’s final year, the economy was in free-fall. Unemployment topped out at 14%, 8 million people were put out of work. A thousand people a day were dying and had to be placed in refrigerated trucks because there wasn’t enough space left in the morgues.
A lot of that is on Trump’s head. He threw out the Pandemic Playbook that had been developed by the Obama/Biden administration.
The Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus — a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.
“Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act — all steps in which the Trump administration lagged behind the timeline laid out in the playbook.
“Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels” within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources.
Trump failed at this. He failed at all of it. They didn’t have proper supplies of PPE for first responders. He actually blocked some states from getting their own supplies. They didn’t come up with a national testing plan (because they wanted to let struggling Blue States like New York Twist in the Wind] They failed at the travel ban, only blocking people from China and leaving the door open for people from Europe who brought the virus to US shores.
Even the first drug company to provide a vaccine, Pfizer, did it entirely without any help from Trump because they weren’t included in “Operation: Warp Speed,” although they did get government funds to pay for vaccinations later.
"HUGE NEWS: Thanks to the public-private partnership forged by President @realDonaldTrump, @pfizer announced its Coronavirus Vaccine trial is EFFECTIVE, preventing infection in 90% of its volunteers," Vice President Mike Pence tweeted.
Others, however, pointed to the fact that Pfizer's senior vice president and head of vaccine research and development, Kathrin Jansen, publicly distanced the company from the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed vaccine initiative. Jansen was quoted Monday by The New York Times as saying, "We were never part of the Warp Speed. We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone."
So he doesn’t even deserve credit for that - on top of telling people to “inject bleach, shove UV lights under their skin, take Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin” and also failed to provide a vaccine distribution plan to the next Administration.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There was no distribution plan for the coronavirus vaccine set up by the Trump administration as the virus raged in its last months in office, new President Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, said on Sunday.
"The process to distribute the vaccine, particularly outside of nursing homes and hospitals out into the community as a whole, did not really exist when we came into the White House," Klain said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Biden, a Democrat who took over from Republican President Donald Trump on Wednesday, has promised a fierce fight against the pandemic that killed 400,000 people in the United States under Trump’s watch.
He signed a series of executive orders last week, including some that target vaccine distribution.
Biden plans to partner with state and local governments to establish vaccination spots in conference centers, stadiums and gymnasiums. The new administration will also deploy thousands of clinical staff from federal agencies, military medical personnel and pharmacy chains to increase vaccinations, and make teachers and grocery clerks eligible.
During the 2020 election, Trump ignored masks and CDC protocols insisting on having Super-spreader Rallies that gave Covid to Chris Christie and 8 other people including Kellyanne Conway, Mike Lee, Thom Tillis, Bill Stepian and Rhona Romney McDaniel. His rallies exposed about 30,000 people to Covid directly causing 700 deaths, including Herman Cain.
All together, nearly 500,000 Americans may have died largely because of Trump’s lies, delusions and inaction. He had just one job, keep Americans safe — and he bungled it.
Biden cleaned up Trump’s enormous mess. He rebuilt the economy and recovered millions of jobs. After Trump had lost 8 Million, Biden recovered 15 Million jobs. After Trump increased the deficit to over $3 Trillion with his tax cuts and recovery bills, Biden reduced the deficit by a record $1.4 Trillion in a single year.
In fact, after Trump’s tax cuts expire next year in 2025, we’re likely to regain the traction we had before Trump under Obama when he reduced the deficit by $900 Billion. We might even get back to a balanced budget and a surplus without any further changes as we were under Bill Clinton.
Inflation is indeed still higher than it was under Trump — but inflation wasn’t a problem that only affected America. Most nations in the world have had high inflation and actually the US has never been even in the top 10 of nations with increasing inflation.
But the U.S. is hardly the only place where people are experiencing inflationary whiplash. A Pew Research Center analysis of data from 44 advanced economies finds that, in nearly all of them, consumer prices have risen substantially since pre-pandemic times
In 37 of these 44 nations, the average annual inflation rate in the first quarter of this year was at least twice what it was in the first quarter of 2020, as COVID-19 was beginning its deadly spread. In 16 countries, first-quarter inflation was more than four times the level of two years prior. (For this analysis, we used data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of mostly highly developed, democratic countries. The data covers 37 of the 38 OECD member nations, plus seven other economically significant countries.)
Among the countries studied, Turkey had by far the highest inflation rate in the first quarter of 2022: an eye-opening 54.8%. Turkey has experienced high inflation for years, but it shot up in late 2021 as the government pursued unorthodox economic policies, such as cutting interest rates rather than raising them.
[…]
Regardless of the absolute level of inflation in each country, most show variations on the same basic pattern: relatively low levels before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the first quarter of 2020; flat or falling rates for the rest of that year and into 2021, as many governments sharply curtailed most economic activity; and rising rates starting in mid- to late 2021, as the world struggled to get back to something approaching normal.
[…]
Annual U.S. inflation in the first quarter of this year averaged just below 8.0% – the 13th-highest rate among the 44 countries examined.
Since then, inflation has been reduced by a record amount from over 9%, down to just 3.1%. And rising wages have outpaced inflation for the past year.
The Covid-19 pandemic and recession brought higher prices all over the world. It wasn’t the result of anything done by Joe Biden. It wasn’t because of his stimulus bills, because that didn’t happen in 40 other countries. Even if that were an influence, Trump had 2 Stimulus bills (PPP and Cares) that were almost twice as large ($2.6 Trillion) as Biden’s ($1.9 Trillion American Rescuse Act). So if government spending caused the problem - Trump provided twice as much of it.
Since then, GDP has reached record highs, Unemployment has reached record lows — even lower than Trump’s previous record — Wages are up and outpacing inflation, and that inflation has been reduced in the US at a rate that is faster than any other country in the G7.
As the world emerged from the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic, most advanced economies experienced elevated inflation. U.S. inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target but is down substantially from its 2022 highs, with annual inflation declining in each of the past 12 months. Compared with advanced European economies, the United States has the lowest harmonized headline inflation rate—a comparable measure of inflation. (see Figure 1) In fact, compared with every other G7 economy, the United States has not just the lowest headline inflation but also the lowest core inflation—inflation that excludes volatile energy and food prices. Core inflation is the preferred measure of central banks.
The other argument used against Biden is that he “cut domestic oil production” but that is incorrect. He only stopped providing additional leases to oil companies on public land, they were still able to use all the leases they already had for private and public land all they wanted. No existing oil wells were stopped by this order.
Biden did stop construction of the Keystone XL pipeline - but that was an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Plus there is already a Keystone pipeline that is already providing oil — and frequently leaking — however, that oil belongs to Canada and wouldn’t help our domestic oil prices at all.
The person who actually cut oil production was Trump when he made a deal with OPEC and Russia to help increase oil prices in April of 2020.
President Trump played a key role in the historic agreement between the world’s largest oil producers that trims global production by nearly 10 percent, according to Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.
The deal reached by the so-called OPEC+ group, which ends the price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, reduces global output by 9.7 million barrels per day in May and June, helping to ease a global gut exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Production will also be reduced by 8 million bpd from July through December and 6 million bpd from January 2021 through April 2022.
Trump was “personally involved throughout the process” and “showed his skill at dealmaking,” Brouillette told reporters on a Sunday evening conference call.
Trump did not make any specific promises on behalf of U.S. production, according to Brouillette, who noted that Mexico agreed to cut output by 100,000 bpd in May and June and the “reduction of production within the United States will subsume whatever agreement the Mexicans would have been required to agree to under OPEC+.”
If you need to blame someone for higher gas prices, that person is Trump.
The fact is that current US Oil production and exports are at an all-time high right now.
For the sixth consecutive year, the United States has maintained its position as the world's top oil producer, according to the Energy Information Administration (‘EIA’). In 2023, U.S. crude output reached a historic high, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day (‘bpd’), surpassing the previous record set in 2019. December alone saw a remarkable milestone, with production peaking at over 13.3 million bpd.
This upward trajectory continues through this year, with an estimated record-breaking output of 13.21 million bpd. The primary driver behind this growth is the enhanced efficiency of well operations, reinforcing the nation's standing as a dominant force in the global oil market.
Also, clean energy production is also at an all-time high and has grown more plentiful than coal production which continues to decline.
Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced Monday.
Renewables also surpassed nuclear generation in 2022 after first doing so last year.
Growth in wind and solar significantly drove the increase in renewable energy and contributed 14% of the electricity produced domestically in 2022. Hydropower contributed 6%, and biomass and geothermal sources generated less than 1%.
We should be thanking President Biden for the amazing recovery and economy we have, not criticizing him.
The next question should be “What will Trump do to bring down inflation?” because the only thing he’s suggested so far is “Drill Baby Drill” - except we’re already doing that and his buddies the Saudis have still kept their production low. Biden should point out that Trump’s plan for tariffs will only increase the cost of goods and services making inflation even worse. His plan to again cut taxes for the rich - also won’t help the average person pay for their groceries. Frankly, one of the main reasons that prices are still higher than they should be has been corporate price gouging - what would he do about that?
Joe Biden acknowledged that “prices are still too high for housing and groceries”, and said he was “calling on corporations, including grocery retailers, to use record profits to reduce prices”.
What’s the president getting at?
Corporate profits reached a record high in the fourth quarter of last year.
The easiest explanation for record corporate profits at the same time prices remain elevated is that corporations have enough monopoly power to keep prices high.
(Note that many corporations are also shrinking the size of the products you’re buying without lowering their prices – a variant of the same thing.)
This is one of the biggest reasons the American public is not yet crediting Biden with a great economy. Most people still aren’t feeling it.
In 2023, PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not be. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.
If Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which – surprise, surprise – announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi and has also kept its prices high.
The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.
We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy – especially with groceries. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork and poultry products than they were in 2020.
Why? Near-monopoly power. Just four companies now control processing of 80% of beef, nearly 70% of pork, and almost 60% of poultry. So of course it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases.
Immigration is a complex subject, but the fact is that after Biden removed some of Trump’s more onerous policies — a set of right-wing Judges forced him to put them right back. “Remain in Mexico” continued for more than a year after Biden took office.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security said Monday that it ended a Trump-era policy requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court, hours after a judge lifted an order in effect since December that it be reinstated.
The timing had been in doubt since the Supreme Court ruled on June 30 that the Biden administration could end the “Remain in Mexico” policy. Homeland Security officials had been largely silent, saying they had to wait for the court to certify the ruling and for a Trump-appointed judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, to then lift his injunction. The Supreme Court certified its ruling last week.
So did still having the policy in place stop the flow of migrants? Nope.
They also still had Title 42 in place for 3 almost years.
The end of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought an end to the immigration policy known as Title 42 and the US will now return to its pre-pandemic Title 8 law that governs asylum and deportations.
Tens of thousands of migrants have surged to the US-Mexico border, and US President Joe Biden acknowledged that the change on May 11 would mean "it's going to be chaotic for a little while".
It dates back to a 1944 law known as the Public Health Act, which granted US authorities emergency powers to prevent the spread of diseases.
In March 2020, the Trump administration invoked the statute, citing the need to stop the spread of Covid-19 across its borders.
When Title 42 was in place, US authorities were able to swiftly remove migrants crossing the border from Mexico - including asylum seekers - using the pandemic as justification.
Some 2.8 million people were expelled while Title 42 was in place, according to US Customs and Border Protection.After taking office in January 2021, Mr Biden and his administration kept the policy in place and continued to defend it as a public health measure for more than a year.
Citing a diminished public health risk, in April 2022 the US Centers for Disease Control, which oversees US health policy, signalled it would end the policy.
Republican-led states are trying to find way to keep the policy in place. A proposed Senate bill, backed by Arizona Independent Kyrsten Sinema and North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, would allow for rapid expulsions in a manner similar to Title 42, but without the public-health justification.
Did having that policy deter migrants from showing up? Nope.
They’ve been showing up by the thousands on our southern border since Trump was pulling his hair out over “Migrant Caravans.” That hasn’t changed. People are coming to America because of violent and dangerous drug cartels that are funded and armed by the United States. They are leaving their home countries to escape inflation, to escape socialism and to escape drought caused by climate change.
They are coming here to save their own lives.
What isn’t reported is the fact that in addition to the 2.8 Million who were kept out of the country due to Title 42, the Biden administration’s policy has actually been to deny entry to single adults, only allowing families and single children (about 2.5 Million) to enter and go through the legal asylum and deportation processes. As a result more than an additional 3 Million people have also been denied entry bringing Biden’s total for those expelled and deported over 7 Million persons, more than any other President in history.
So, it’s simply not the case that the border is just “open” because it’s not. Biden has tried to bring some reasonableness and rationality to the process. He’s tried to push asylum seekers to schedule a meeting ahead of time using the CBP-One APP, to enter at a legal point of entry and he’s also granting a pathway to a green card for migrants who may be undocumented but are married to U.S. Citizens if they pay their back fines and taxes.
Speaking of crime, that has been dramatically falling in the last two years.
Misleading statements about crime and public safety are already proliferating in this election cycle. As November draws closer, misinformation is likely to intensify. That makes it even more important to take a close look at what the best and most recent crime data tells us. One major trend is becoming clear: violent crime dropped in 2021 and 2022 — and then declined again, significantly, in 2023. We’ll have to wait until the fall for final government data to confirm this trend. Until then, here’s what we know, how we know it, and what it means — drawing on both city data and the most recent information from the FBI.
City-level data shows declines in violent crime
City-level crime reports are the best places to look for up-to-the-minute crime data. Combining enough city-level crime data can, in turn, approximate national trends. Two research teams have used this approach to give a sense of crime in 2023. Both show sharp declines in violent crime.
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Drawing on data from 38 cities across the country, the Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicide declined by 10 percent in 2023. It also noted declines in assaults, gun assaults, burglary, and larceny, but a sharp spike in motor vehicle thefts.
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Similarly, Jeff Asher, a researcher and expert in data on crime and public safety, studied murder data from 175 cities and found a 7 percent decline in murders through December 7, 2023, compared to 2022. These cities are from across the country and include jurisdictions led by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Crime is down, and in fact, crime has gone down even further in cities which have been receiving migrants from the border.
In the past few months, politicians and certain media outlets have latched on to a narrative that recent immigrants, especially undocumented ones, are causing spikes in crime. Instead of gathering data and examining the issue empirically, they are making this broad assertion based on highly publicized individual incidents of crime by undocumented immigrants. All acts of violence must be taken seriously. But policymakers should not attribute blame to entire classes of people when individuals commit crimes.
The research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to nonimmigrants. Focusing on the facts is imperative, especially given that immigration has become a top issue for voters ahead of the election.
Substantial research has assessed the relationship between immigration and crime. Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite. Studies have also examined the impact of the concentration of immigrants in a community on crime patterns, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime rates and an increase in structural factors — such as social connection and economic opportunity — that are linked to neighborhood safety.
Lastly, there is the argument that Biden has engaged in deliberately trying to put his political opponent in jail. This we hear now after Trump’s people repeatedly chanted “Lock Her Up” with Hillary Clinton. After Trump tried to get Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and withheld $Millions of aid while they were invaded by and fighting Russia. Trump tried to get Bill Barr to investigate Biden but he refused, he sent James Durham to prosecute Clinton and he failed. He tried to sue Clinton, Comey, McCabe, Strozk and Steele - and he failed.
That’s on top of the fact that Attorney General Merrick Garland has testified under oath that he’s never even spoken to Joe Biden about investigatng Hunter.
At Monday's confirmation hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley of Iowa asked if Garland ever talked with the president about the Justice Department's probe into Hunter Biden's finances and taxes, a question that was expected to be a key topic for Republicans. Late last year, Biden's son released a statement that he learned about the investigation that was opened by the U.S. attorney's office in Delaware back in 2018.
"I have not. The president made abundantly clear in every public statement before and after my nomination that decisions about investigations and prosecutions will be left to the Justice Department," said Garland, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. "That was the reason I was willing to take on this job. The answer to your question is no."
He’s also stated that no one has told him to indict or prosecute Trump.
Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress Wednesday that "no one" has told him to indict former President Donald Trump, after Trump claimed in an interview that President Biden told Garland to indict him.
Garland, testifying before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee for the first time since special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in two cases this summer, emphasized the independence of both Smith and the Justice Department. Trump, in a "Meet the Press" interview that aired Sunday, claimed that Mr. Biden told Garland to indict Trump.
"Biden indictments. Excuse me, Biden political indictments. He said to the attorney general —" Trump told NBC's Kristen Welker, who interrupted him. "—he said to the attorney general, 'Indict him.'"
At Wednesday's hearing, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff asked Garland if the president of the United States asked him to indict Trump.
"No one has told me to indict," Garland said. "And in this case, the decision to indict was made by the special counsel."
Biden has not told Garland to indict Trump. He hasn’t said that to Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg or Letitia James. They’ve made their own decisions based on the evidence, they’ve achieved indictments by presenting that evidence to Grand Juries.
Biden has nothing to do with it.
Trump has committed numerous crimes. He tried to overthrow the 2020 election using Fake Electors and a violent mob. The claim that the election was “stolen” has failed against scrutiny in every court, every recount, every audit and every defamation case against both Fox News and Rudy Giuliani. Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis are all convicted of trying to overturn the election.
Trump is a convict. He’s a Felon. He shouldn’t be on this debate stage, but he will be.
All of these are documented facts. All of this has been reported by mainstream News outlets. None of this is in doubt. None of this is being questioned by anyone reasonable.
Trump will lie about all of this.
When he does, the moderators should stop him and call it what it is — A Lie. They don’t have to promote Biden’s agenda for him, but they shouldn’t let him, or Biden for that matter, state something false without saying ‘That is not true.”
It should be easy.
“He’s engaged in Lawfare.”
“There’s no evidence of that and Merrick Garland has testified that it isn’t true. There’s also no evidence or indication of coordination between State prosecutors and the White House.”
“The economy is terrible.”
”No, Sir. We’ve had record GDP, a record stock market, record deficit reduction, record inflation reduction, record wage growth, job growth and unemployment all under Biden. We have some ways to go, but we’re in the strongest position we’ve ever been in. Trump left office with the economy in freefall and had the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover.”
“Prices and the cost of gas are higher”
”That’s because Trump cut a deal to reduce production and increase prices with the OPEC+ and Russia while his corporate buddies are price gouging to create record profits. We need someone in the White House who will bring corporations to heel, not coddle them.”
“We used to be energy independent.”
”We are still energy independent and have been for years, we have the greatest clean energy generation, oil production and exports — which far exceed our imports — of any country on earth.”
“The Border is Open.”
”We have challenges at the Border that need to be addressed by Congress, but the Border Patrol has stopped, apprehended and expelled an all-time record number of over 7 million migrants at the border. They are working hard, but they need more resources and we need more immigration judges to process claims.”
“Crime is rampant and out of control.”
”Crime has been reduced dramatically in the last two years, particularly in ‘Democrat Cities’ and has gone down even more in cities that migrants have been sent to.”
“We didn’t have any wars with Trump.”
”We don’t have any wars now, US troops are not in any conflict anywhere. But we were in Syria until Trump pulled our troops out and betrayed our allies the Kurds to Turkey. We were also in Afghanistan until Trump released 5000 enemy troops from prison and surrendered the entire country to the Taliban. Trump’s ill-fated Taliban deal undermined the Afghan government and ensured its total collapse. There was no way to salvage the situation. We support Ukraine in order to protect NATO nations and won’t give up their land to Russia’s aggressive and illegal theft, and we support Isreal, but not to the point of genocide against Palestinians.”
It can be done in seconds.
I think Biden should turn any attack against him into a defense, then go on the offensive and point out all the civil cases that Trump has lost, from Trump University to the now defunct Trump Charity Foundation. He’s lost two defamation cases. He lost a criminal tax case. He lost a business fraud case. Again, he’s a convicted felon. He still has three outstanding criminal cases, for which he should be in jail right now. Biden has nothing but fertile ground here, he also needs to talk about how incompetent and dysfunctional Trump’s administration was which has been recently reported to have had no regard for the public interest.
The Revolving Door Project on Monday released a set of reports on corruption and mismanagement in executive agencies during the Trump presidency, calling on the media to focus on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump's poor governing record as he campaigns to retake the Oval Office.
The new reports, called "retrospective memos," show that Trump's executive branch was rife with cronyism and corporate influence from 2017 until 2021. RDP, a watchdog group focused on the executive branch, released the reports as a way to fight "Trumpnesia" and focus the political discussion on the governance records of Trump and President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection.
"Donald Trump's most important legacy as president wasn't what he said, or even what bills he signed, but how he turned the federal government into a favor machine to benefit his family and cronies," Jeff Hauser, RDP's executive director, said in a statement. "The media should not focus on the aesthetics of this week's presidential debate but rather cover the Biden vs. Trump election as a comparison between how each president administered the immensely important executive branch."
There is no part of Trump’s story and record in the White House that isn’t basically a disaster. It was a mess from top to bottom.
In contrast, there’s a great success story to be told for Joe Biden if they would simply tell the truth. He’s implemented historic infrastructure and broadband projects, historic investments in clean energy, historic investments in manufacturing, record-setting job creation and wage growth, he signed the CHIPs bill, he signed the first and strongest gun safety bill in decades, he reduced prescription drug prices for Medicare, cut student debt, cut home heating costs, provided increased subsidies for Obamacare and he signed the PACT act for our veteran's health care. He’s been hitting it out of the park in almost every area. Some things could get better, there’s plenty more to do such as restoring Reproductive Rights, Voting Rights, implementing true Police and Justice Reform, raising the minimum wage, addressing corporate greed to bring inflation down even further and fixing our Immigration process but it’s not like Trump is the one who will fix any of those lingering problems. He won’t. If he wins reelection, he’s likely to set off an inflation bomb.
16 Nobel Prize-winning economists have warned that former President Donald Trump's second-term agenda could create what Axios is describing as an "inflation bomb" that would rock the global economy.
In a letter, the economists argue that a combination of more tax cuts for corporations, a labor shortage caused by the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and looser monetary policy in the form of lower interest rates would cause prices to skyrocket yet again just as inflation has started to stabilize in the three percent range.
""We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the U.S.'s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.'s domestic economy," the economists wrote, per Axios. "Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets."
After all that, Biden can hammer in on Trump’s agenda — his wanting to destroy reproductive rights with a nationwide abortion ban, to cut IVF, birth control and contraception, his plan under Project 2025 to totally gut the civil service sector of the government and install loyal sycophants who will do his bidding regardless of Congress or the Courts. His plan under Agenda 47 to reimplement racist failed policies like Stop-and-Frisk, to unleash active duty troops against the American people if they protest, to gut DEI, CRT and teach the Confederate “Lost Cause” philosophy instead of accurate history, to give a green light even more bigoted discrimination against Black and Brown people, and his plan to make anti-LGBTQ discrimination and Christian Supremacy the law of the land, like forcibly displaying the Ten Commandments, implementing School Prayer, bigoted censorship and banning of books and pro-Christian Right-wing Indoctrination using Prager U propaganda in our Schools.
And lastly, his pledge to get “Retribution and Revenge” against his political enemies by turning the DOJ into his own personal Secret Gespacho Police who will pursue, punish and prosecute anyone who previously criticized or opposed him in the past.
He would put an end to Democracy as we know it. If you compare their track records and future plans fairly and accurately — the choice is very clear.
Sadly, I have little expectation that Jake Tapper or Dana Bash will be able to keep up with the ridiculous deluded Lie-Gasm that Trump is capable of generating. Lord knows Katelyn Collins couldn’t keep up with it. Tapper and Bash interjecting with fact-checks would be exactly the type of “Bias” that Trump and his campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt are already complaining about — prompting Steven Bannon to tell Trump to “cancel the debate” — but then again, that’s their job.
It would be nice if Biden didn’t have to spend half his time correcting Trump’s falsehoods before making his own case.
[According to the comment, fact checking will NOT be part of their job. That means that Biden is going to have to all this heavy lifting all by himself. Shockingly, considering his kick-ass performance at the State of the Union, I suspect he’ll surprise everyone by probably being fully up to it. He may not include every argument I’ve made here, but he will have a lot of it, and that’s all he needs.]
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