THE WAY IT IS #1 (as of April, 2024)

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THE WAY IT IS  #1 (as of April, 2024)

from Dr. Common Good

I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, or anything else. In these fact sheets, we are going to talk about our country – the one we ALL live in! If you are a Republican, there are a lot of good Republicans out there you could support for President. And you should do that. But Donald Trump? He is not a Republican or a Democrat, or anything else. He believes in one thing – himself. And to him, that is more important than his own country, more important than you, more important than democracy itself. There’s a lot of junk out there in the media world, so let’s just look at the real situation:

Donald Trump and the U.S. in the world — No matter what he likes to say, Donald Trump did not make the U.S. respected or stronger in the world, As President, he did the exact opposite, and he will only sink us lower if he is President again:

  • Trump nearly ruined our relationship with NATO, an alliance that has helped to keep us strong and safe since World War II. Partly this is because he doesn’t even understand NATO, its history, or what role it has played in our defense. [The Biden administration had to do a whole lot of work to fix that relationship, and was successful in strengthening NATO against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.] Since WWII, every U.S. president, Republican and Democrat, has valued and supported the NATO alliance – except Trump.
  • He crawled, and still crawls like a puppy dog for dictators like Vladimir Putin. Remember? He valued Putin’s opinion over our own defense and intelligence agencies, and said so in public. He is willing to throw Ukraine under the bus to make Putin happy, saying that, as President, he “would let Putin do whatever he wants.” He invited the Hungarian dictator Victor Orban to his own home! And he sent “love letters” to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, an absolute dictator who gets rid of opponents by shooting them with anti-aircraft guns. What President in the history of this country has done such things? We have fought wars against kings and dictators, not crawled to them like a little child who wants to be just like them. Those dictators all know that Trump is ignorant, a pushover, and can be manipulated easily. Believe me, he is not tough, though he loves it if you think he is.
  • The U.S. used to be a leader, in global climate talks, in the U.N., and (most of the time) a supporter of democracy and freedom around the world. Trump threw that reputation and world leadership down the drain. He pulled the U.S. out of climate talks. He openly supported authoritarian governments and dictators – like Putin, Orban, Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines), and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in Saudi Arabia. He went against hundreds of years of American values in doing so.

Donald Trump and the U.S. economy – Trump, despite what he likes to say, did not create “the greatest economy in the history of the world”:

  • When Trump came into office, the economy was already on an upswing, after the terrible Great Recession of 2008-2009. If you compare key economic indicators from Obama’s second term in office to the first three years of Trump’s time (before the pandemic hit), the data show a continuation of trends, not a dramatic shift. So, Trump didn’t build anything new; instead, he inherited a situation that was already improving. The numbers show that average quarterly economic growth under Trump, 2.5 percent, was almost exactly what it was under Obama’s second term, 2.4 percent. And on average, there were more jobs added monthly in Obama’s second term than there were in Trump’s first three years.
  • His big accomplishment? He and the Republicans passed a tax cut, which ended up adding to the national debt, something that Republicans used to oppose. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that these tax cuts, mostly for corporations, have added more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt. While the tax cuts did lead to some increases in investment, and small gains in worker pay, the gains were nowhere near enough to cover the loss of national income.
  • Were everyday prices lower? Sure they were. But don’t let that fool you. That was before COVID and the invasion of Ukraine, two situations that raised prices and inflation everywhere in the world, not just in the U.S. Look at the situation now, under the Biden administration. When Biden came into office, inflation had risen to just over 9%. His policies helped drop that rate back to 3.8% in February 2024, including gas prices. It will take a little while for everyone to see those drops in everyday life, but those are the facts. And even the stock market under Biden has gone up a lot higher than it did under Trump.
  • On economic legislation: Despite all of Trump’s loudmouth talking, he never passed any infrastructure legislation, which is very important for the economy because it means improved roads, bridges, railways and Internet connections, among other things. By contrast, the Biden administration passed the largest bipartisan infrastructure bill ever. That bill has brought funding for infrastructure improvements all over the country, in both Republican and Democratic states, and created a lot of jobs. The Biden administration also passed the CHIPS and Science bill, investing in the production of advanced computer chips here in the U.S., creating a lot of jobs in the process and making the U.S. less dependent on China and other countries for these very important parts. And the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which has reduced health care costs and supported the growth of jobs in the expanding renewable energy economy.
  • Speaking of jobs — Under Biden, U.S. employment is now 10% above what it was when he was sworn in, even higher than in the Clinton administration, and more than twice what happened under Trump (4.4%). It is a fact that Biden has the strongest record of any recent president on increasing manufacturing jobs, and it is a fact that under Biden, the unemployment rate has been below 4% for the longest stretch in 50 years of American history.
  • Trump and trade: Pretending to be “tough”, Trump started a trade war with China that actually hurt Americans the most. That is partly because Trump didn’t and doesn’t understand how tariffs or trade work. When he raised tariffs on goods coming from China, it wasn’t China that paid, but Americans. This is because the companies importing those goods are the ones who pay, and they just pass those costs on to consumers through higher prices. According to a Council on Foreign Relations study, U.S. consumers felt the most pain from those tariffs, paying a total of $48 billion, with half of this amount paid by U.S. companies that rely on intermediate inputs (meaning parts) from China. Basically, as stated in a report by the United States International Trade Commission, the cost of the tariffs was passed through to U.S. importers.

Donald Trump and immigration – Trump has treated immigrants and immigration in a way that does not represent long-held American values, and he continues to throw out lie after lie about the situation:

  • Trump uses the most repulsive language ever heard from a U.S. government official to talk about immigrants. He calls them “animals,” and says “Nobody has any idea where these people come from. We know they come from prisons, we know they come from mental institutions, insane asylums. We know they are terrorists…it’s poisoning the blood of our country.” That is a dangerous lie. Immigrants are not coming from prisons or mental institutions. Most immigrants are fleeing from terrible situations in their home countries, whether that is civil wars, gang violence, government repression, natural disasters, or extreme poverty. In recent years, for example, immigrants trying to get into the U.S. have come from Venezuela (due to the crisis there), West Africa, and even China.
  • He lies constantly about immigrants and crime in the U.S. You can find the data yourself, but there is no evidence that immigration is associated with increased crime. It is in fact the opposite. A Cato Institute (not liberal) study showed that, in Texas, illegal immigrants were 47% less likely to be in prison, and legal immigrants were even less likely. A study published in the journal Criminology concluded that “increased concentrations of undocumented immigrants are associated with statistically significant decreases in violent crime.” Generally, though the data are complicated, the available research that estimates the relationship between illegal immigration and crime generally shows an association with lower crime rates.
  • Immigration and immigrant workers actually help the economy thrive. They don’t take away jobs that other Americans want; they actually fill jobs that Americans don’t want, and contribute to economic growth. American companies have publicly stated this multiple times. 
  • Help is definitely needed to process and manage the flow of immigrants trying to get into the U.S. But when Republicans and Democrats got together and finally negotiated a bill that would provide more resources to immigration courts, the border patrol and for border security, Trump told Republicans not to pass it. Why? Because it would give the Biden administration a “win.” As you see, Trump cares less about fixing the immigration situation than in winning office for himself.

Donald Trump and the Nation’s Health – Trump was a disaster for public health, during the COVID-19 pandemic and in general:

  • Trump infamously denied the existence of COVID-19, and when he finally admitted that it was a problem, he showed contempt for basic preventive measures like masks, and peddled ridiculous “cures” like Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and bleach. The consequences? Thousands and thousands of Americans died when they did not have to, causing tragic losses for so many families.
  • By contrast, Biden immediately passed the American Rescue Plan, supporting a massive nationwide effort to make COVID testing available, and creating a national infrastructure for vaccine access. Also in the plan was a wide range of supports for small businesses and other economic aid that clearly stimulated the economy after COVID and prompted the recovery we have seen.
  • Trump has consistently sought to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, which has expanded health care access for millions of Americans. Biden, by contrast, expanded its availability.

Donald Trump, Democracy, and the American Way – Trump is by any measure the most un-Democratic president in American history:

  • No president or past president has been criminally indicted. Trump, by contrast, faces four criminal indictments and a total of 91 felony charges.
  • No president has ever sought to overturn the legal results of a national election in order to keep himself in power – this includes the attempt to coerce the State of Georgia to falsify votes, the fomenting of an insurrection to prevent a lawful vote count in Congress, and the manipulation of the Justice Department to support his attempts.  
  • No president has ever violated the Espionage Act in the way Trump has, withholding classified documents from his time in office and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
  • No president has ever courted the help of nations who would otherwise be our enemies in order to help him win an election. That help, whether one calls it a conspiracy or not, is irrefutably documented in the Mueller Report.

SO, DON’T LET TRUMP’S TRASH TALK AND BRAGGING FOOL YOU. HE WAS NOT AND IS NOT GOOD FOR AMERICA, WHETHER YOU ARE A REPUBLICAN OR A DEMOCRAT. HE DOES NOT MAKE AMERICA GREAT. “MAGA” SHOULD ACTUALLY STAND FOR “MAKES AMERICA GO AWAY,” BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT HE REPRESENTS.

TRUMP. NOT GOOD FOR YOU. NOT GOOD FOR AMERICA. NOT GOOD FOR DEMOCRACY ITSELF. AND NOT GOOD FOR THE WORLD.

TRUMP LIKES TO CALL PEOPLE LOSERS AND SUCKERS. DON’T BE ONE.