TODAY’S TRUMP LIES AND STUPIDITIES
Dr. Common Good
At Dr. Common Good we will do our best to counter the numerous lies, distortions and flat-out ignorance as these roll in. We can’t address them all, so we’ll pick out what we can. For today’s list:
Trump’s blatant lies about the Panama Canal: At a press conference today, and previously, Trump cited a completely made-up number of “38,000 American workers” who died digging the canal. According to the Smithsonian Institution, somewhere around 6,000 actually died, though the death toll is likely to have been higher than that. Importantly, most of these workers were not American, but Black Caribbean workers from the colonial plantation economies of Jamaica, Barbados and others. On top of that, the Black Caribbeans were segregated in terms of working conditions, pay and benefits. And how did the US acquire control of the canal territory in the first place? Originally, the territory was part of Colombia, but the US backed a group that wanted to secede from Colombia, in part through the use of our naval power (“gunboat diplomacy”). When that territory became Panama, the US signed an agreement in 1903 to build the canal and control the newly established Panama Canal Zone (for 99 years). The canal zone was then handed back to Panama in 1999, via treaty signed under the Carter administration.
Trump’s (and Musk’s) blatant lies about USAID: The fantastical lying about USAID is almost too much to grasp. USAID was established by President Kennedy in 1961 as an outgrowth of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and similar in spirit to the creation of the Peace Corps. It now has offices in some 100 countries and has become a major provider of foreign aid in multiple areas, including disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, poverty relief, technical cooperation on global issues including the environment, socioeconomic development, and health. It is also an important arm of foreign policy and bilateral interests, the primary agency through which the US projects “soft power,” which is critically important for maintaining alliances, for countering global efforts by the Chinese to bring countries into their orbit, and so on. In their absolute ignorance, Trump/Musk charge that it is run by a “bunch of radical lunatics” and that, for example, it sent $50 million in condoms to Hamas.
Trump’s colossal stupidity about a US “Iron Dome” missile defense: Trump has boasted that he wants to build an “Iron Dome” missile defense across the entire US, just like Israel’s missile defense system. This, like almost everything that comes from Trump, reflects his complete ignorance. The Israeli Iron Dome system is designed to defend against short-range missiles and artillery, and it covers a territory that is about the size of New Jersey. Any missile defense system for the US would not be aimed at short range missiles and artillery, but primarily at long range inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which travel into sub-orbital space where they are maneuvered to fire multiple warheads down on their targets. Defending against such weapons, over the entire United States, is an entirely different task than an Iron Dome faces. But of course, Trump has no idea.
Trump’s boast that he has done more in a few days than Biden did in four years: This is such a massive lie that we don’t even want to repeat it and add to its credulity. See the Dr. Common Good blogpost of January 21 for details on Biden’s major accomplishments, which Trump has never come close to matching. Trump is all about show and scams, not real policy change for the betterment of Americans.
And…where is the press? At a press conference today, by the way, Trump spouted several of these and other lies with impunity. Not one journalist challenged him. That has to stop.