Donald Trump in 2020?

Welcome to the Divided States of America.  While we have long had our two-party system of government, prior to January 20, 2017, the gap between Democrat and Republican or liberal and conservative was a manageable space.  The process of compromise might slow things down, but in a democracy, that’s how we roll.  We have now become divided like no time in our history since the Civil War.  What can we do to correct the situation?  Well, we have a built-in remedy called the ballot box and our upcoming 2020 elections may be the most important in my lifetime.  What do we have to look forward to next November?  Let’s look at where we are now.

Trump Supporter defined:
You, like many Americans, were fed up with our government and the congressional swamp.  You were outraged at its failure to make progress in the many issues that are important to you.  You are a proud American and you believe in a strong military.  You are a patriot who still gets a tingle when you see our flag flying and hear our national anthem.  You are not alone; most Democrats also share those values.

Donald J. Trump entered the presidential race and you had a sense that you knew him.  You had perhaps read about his exploits in the tabloids or watched him on his Apprentice reality television show.  He had money and bravado that you admired.  He made many promises that made you think he could and would make a positive impact on our lethargic Congress and he would get things done.

Analysis

Here we are nearing the end of his first term as president and we can now look back at his promises and see all that he has accomplished.  We will see that he has made many changes and that he has kept his promise to shake things up.

President Trump’s major campaign promises:

1. Build a wall along the Mexican border and find a way to get Mexico to pay for that wall.
2. Repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
3. Suspend immigration from terror-prone places.
4. Cut taxes for people and businesses.
5. Address our crumbling infrastructure with a $550 billion fund.
6. Improve trade with a repeal of NAFTA and TPP and use tariffs to our benefit.
7. Root out corruption and drain the swamp.

Let’s look at these promises one at a time:

1.  While the president gets an “E” for the effort to build a border wall, his inability to negotiate with a Congress that controls the purse strings, has made these efforts ineffective.  He lacked the ability to sell the idea of a simple but extremely expensive solution to a very complex immigration problem.  Since he ignored the experts with more comprehensive ideas for physical border security, his plan has essentially failed.  His 2,000-year-old solution (Great Wall of China, 221 BC) fails to deter a determined population from crossing our southern border.  We also now know that he had no idea how Mexico would pay for the wall, only that it made a nice sound bite.  None of this even begins to solve the overall problem of illegal immigration.

2.  President Trump’s attempts to repeal Obamacare have failed for good reason, people like it.  Yes, it is flawed and needs work, but Trump has no plan to replace this Band-Aid on our overall national healthcare problem.  Donald Trump does not deal well with complexity, hasn’t hired people who might be able to help, and doesn’t listen to the ones he has hired.  Republicans have tried over 70 times to repeal, delay, defund, or otherwise neutralize Obamacare without effect so it is not all on Trump.  Obamacare is the law of the land and until someone comes up with a better solution, President Trump’s efforts would be better spent on repairing the Affordable Care Act.

3.  The president’s efforts to ban travel from certain countries felt to be terrorist sponsors have failed.  Executive Order 13769, and its replacement, 13780, aka the Muslim bans, have been hit with restraining orders that prevented enforcement or they have been struck down by the courts.  Most court findings have dealt with the discriminatory nature of the Order.

4.  President Trump successfully pushed through his tax-cut bill.  Federal tax receipts from corporations have plunged.  About one-third of these benefits went to foreigners as many U.S. corporations are either foreign subsidiaries or their stock is owned by foreigners.  Therefore, a third of this went overseas.  On the U.S. side of things, the benefits went mostly (84%) to the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.  From 2017 to 2018, the corporate tax rate went from 23.4% to 12.1% but personal income taxes as a percentage of income fell but from 9.6% to 9.2%.  Instead of paying down our national debt in this good economic time, Trump has pushed our debt past $22 trillion.  Corporations and the very wealthy got the lion’s share of this debt increase and the average taxpayer got a few crumbs.

5.  Trump’s $550 billion infrastructure fund never materialized.  In his third year, his State of the Union address mentioned a $200 billion infrastructure fund to be used to stimulate other investments.  In a bipartisan effort, Democrats approved $2 trillion to be used to repair our crumbling infrastructure and create thousands of jobs.  During an infrastructure meeting at the White House, in a staged move, Trump made a short speech and walked out of the meeting.  He immediately marched outside to a podium set up in the Rose Garden in front of waiting news cameras to announce that he was nixing the infrastructure deal because the nasty Democrats were supporting the Mueller investigation.  Now that that investigation is over and now that it would be in Trump’s best interests to revive this significant investment in our jobs economy, what is stopping him?  Well, I guess that the impeachment hearings could be lined up as his next scapegoat.

6.  The replacement of NAFTA, with the new USMCA, has cleared initial hurdles but it has not been ratified by the three participating countries.  USMCA is essentially a minor update to NAFTA with changes for automakers, enforcement of labor standards, and intellectual/digital property protections.  TPP was never ratified.  A tariff war has been started to the detriment of farmers and various sectors of our economy.  These tariffs and resulting retaliatory actions taken by our trading partners have reduced domestic economic output, income, and employment.  These tariffs have imposed an $87 billion tax on Americans.  I say this because, while businesses may absorb the initial cost increase, they will pass these on to us with higher costs.  It is estimated that, if all the announced tariffs were fully imposed, U.S. GDP would fall by 0.66 percent amounting to $165 billion.  This would offset around 40% of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  Wages would fall by 0.44 percent and employment would fall off by half a million.

7.  The status of Trump draining the swamp and getting rid of corruption would seem to be self-evident.  I have lost track of the number of Trump appointees who have gone to jail, are awaiting sentencing, are under indictment, or are under investigation.  At this moment, Roger Stone has been found guilty of all seven counts in his indictment and he is awaiting a ruling on how much time he will serve.

Where do we go from here?  

The choices will be simple, vote for Trump or “the other guy/gal.”  Right now, the latter choice is unknown.  Trump, however, is a known entity.  Here is what we know to be factual.  I will try to keep opinions and left-wing rhetoric out of this.  We won’t go into the merits of what he has promised but only how effective he has been in his job bringing those promises to fruition.

• Trump has in his favor the fact that he has tried to fulfill many of his campaign promises.  His inexperience in government, however, finds him ill-equipped to fulfill those promises.  No matter how smart he thinks he is, he is a poor negotiator.  He dictates but does not negotiate.  This possibly worked for him as a real estate developer but it is a non-starter in government.  A CEO of a corporation can act in an authoritarian manner, but the president is only one of three co-equal branches of government.  Being decisive can be a good thing, but not when you are wrong.
• Draining the swamp does not mean digging a moat and adding more alligators and snakes.  No one person can do it all; he needs help.  He needs intelligent people who can tell him when he is right and tell him when he is wrong.  He was smart enough to hire some of those people in the beginning but his pride/ego seems to have gotten in the way.  He has fired the people who might have helped him achieve his goals.  Six of the people he hired are now convicted felons.
• Donald Trump has a strange sense of truth.  I don’t think I need to elaborate this point as his conflicting, captured-on-video statements, are put up nightly on the news side by side.  In this department, he is regularly shown to outdo Nixon and the 1919 White Sox.  Ben Franklin was a teller of tall tales and his kite and the key story is pure fiction.  Tall tales are very different from outright lies meant to deceive others and persuade them to take some desired action.  Repeating a lie many times does not make it true.  Robert Ripley used lies that couldn’t be verified with outrageous facts that couldn’t possibly be made up, and he combined that with an enormous sense of audacity and built his “Believe It or Not” empire.  Luckily, Robert Ripley was not our president.
• Trump’s morality as the leader of a civilized society should not be a major point of contention.  Normally, live and let live would be a wise motto to follow and a person’s private life should be their own business.  Donald Trump’s extremes, however, make it a matter for consideration.  I needn’t elaborate on his deviations from societal norms as they are well documented.  His declarations of religious piety are almost laughable.  Evangelicals would do well to look elsewhere for a new messiah.
• Donald Trump’s knowledge of history and foreign affairs is found wanting.  He regularly displays a complete lack of understanding of these areas that are so critical to the proper functioning of the so-called “leader of the free world.”  This wouldn’t be so bad if only he would, as promised, surround himself with smart people who could give sound advice.
• His criminal-like behavior is regularly on full display.  He talks in mob-code so as to avoid incrimination, but he doesn’t seem to be particularly good at this either.  His comments to the president of Ukraine that, Ambassador Yovanovitch would be “going through some things,” was a not too veiled a threat.  The Donald took his mob training from Roy Cohn, a seasoned mob lawyer.  John Gotti might say, “Do me a favor, get rid of that stone in my shoe,” when calling in a hit.  Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, also works for a Ukrainian bagman, Lev Parnas, who gets his money from Dmytro Firtash a Russian oligarch and close personal friend of Vladimir Putin. 

Decision time:

The points above are of serious concern but I have saved the most serious concern of mine for last.  I put this here, separated from the rest, as it is an opinion and not a proven fact.  It is conjecture on my part, but I can’t seem to find another explanation.  Russia is our enemy.  Not the Russian people, almost all of them that I have met have been very nice.  It is the Russian government, in place during my entire lifetime, that is evil.  While children today have active shooter drills, I had duck and cover drills and Saturday air-raid siren tests that were getting me ready for the anticipated nuclear holocaust that would be unleashed by that government.  How Russia, our long-time rival and political enemy suddenly became our nation’s sweetheart, eludes me.

We do know that Donald Trump has financial ties to Russia.  His son, Eric Trump once bragged, “We don’t rely on American banks.  We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”  Donald Trump is guarding his financial information like a state secret.  What is he hiding?  This wouldn’t be of much concern if it were not for his “Russia can do no wrong” attitude.  Putin wants Crimea, no problem; let’s lift the sanctions for their aggression.  Putin wants a foothold in Syria, no problem; we’ll just pull out our troops so you can swoop in and save the Kurds we just abandoned.  Putin wants to counteract American intelligence findings that Russia interfered with our election, not a problem; we'll have Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland get the new Ukrainian president to announce the start of an investigation into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.  Putin wants to bring back corruption to Ukraine so that he and his friends can begin to make billions of rubles, no problem; we’ll recall our ambassador to Ukraine who has been fighting corruption and we will put in a Trump appointee who will cooperate.

Time to choose:

These are all points to consider when you make a decision next November.  Do you want four more years of riding the Trump rollercoaster or do you want what’s behind door number two?  Even if it is a live llama, it might be a better choice.

Your New Llama

A brief note to Senate Republicans:  Perhaps it would be in your best long-term interest to support impeachment and replace Trump with a true patriot for 2020.