Donald Trump put his humility on display yesterday during a speech to 5,000 American Farm Bureau Federation members. He first gave the crowd an inaccurate picture of how the recent Republican tax bill would affect them, completely overstating the tax cuts by $4 trillion dollars! From the New York Times:
Declaring that the “American dream is roaring back to life,” Mr. Trump — who has made clear that he likes big numbers — claimed that the tax overhaul cut taxes by $5.5 trillion when, in fact, the legislation will reduce the overall tax burden on individuals and companies over the next decade by $1.5 trillion, or $4 trillion less than what he cited.
“We have just signed into law the most significant tax cuts and reforms in American history — it’s a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts,” Mr. Trump said, adding that most of those benefits would go to “working families, small businesses and — who? — the family farmers.”
Mr. Trump apparently chose to highlight just one side of the ledger — the total amount of tax reductions in the bill that he signed in December — without counting the amount of taxes that were increased in the same legislation to help pay for the bill. White House officials declined to respond to questions about the president’s $5.5 trillion figure.
How do you get that so wrong? And those increases came at the expense of critical services like Medicaid. Next he promised the crowd that farm families would no longer be subject to the “death tax.” Also, wrong. Only about 80 total farm families per year will be helped by eliminating this tax. Eighty very wealthy families.
And if that weren’t enough, the narcissist-in-chief told the crowd, and this is a direct quote you can hear below, “Oh, are you happy you voted for me. You are so lucky that I gave you that privilege.” Watch:
On a final hypocritical note, he made this mention of the national anthem to the crowd. From the Tennessean:
"You are forgotten no more," Trump told the crowd gathered at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center for farm bureau's annual convention. "We're fighting for our farmers and we're fighting for our country and for our great American flag. We want our flag respected.
“And we want our national anthem respected also,” Trump said, receiving a standing ovation as impromptu chants of “U-S-A” broke out.
He then hopped on a plane and headed to Atlanta for the NCAA College Football National Championship game, where he clearly did not know the words to the national anthem. Watch: