Ch 4.5 | 😡Let's talk about Trump

Since 2015, I’ve watched as Donald Trump and his enablers within the GOP have torn our country apart. It really has been too much for me to bear. How can so many people still believe in this man? I realize people are angry,or maybe scared. Or perhaps they have reached the point where they just want to see the existing system torn down. On that point, we might find common ground — I disagree with the tactics. 

I agree with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who, on the night Trump won the 2016 election, impulsively wrote a column that went viral within seconds. He stated: 

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. 

Fascism is not our future — it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so — but this is surely the way fascism can begin. 

More recently, in the Free Press, Bill Barr, attorney general for George H. W. Bush and Donald J. Trump, shared his opinion: 

I am firmly opposed to Trump’s candidacy. While I think it is critical the Biden administration be beaten at the polls, Trump is not the answer. He is not capable of winning the decisive victory Republicans need to advance conservative principles. And his truculent, petty, and toxic persona—unconstrained by any need to face the voters again—will damage the country. 

I also tend to agree with Bret Stephens, the only reason I regret canceling my New York Times subscription, in "The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose."

It shouldn’t seem strange to Trump’s opponents that a man whom we regard as an agent of chaos should be seen by his supporters as precisely the man who can sweep the decks clean. 

I happen to think that’s exactly wrong — you don’t mend damaged systems by breaking them even further. Repair and restoration is almost always better than reaction or revolution. 

He outlined many of the same concerns that I have addressed throughout this project when wrote: 

You can’t defeat an opponent if you refuse to understand what makes him formidable. Too many people, especially progressives, fail to think deeply about the enduring sources of his appeal — and to do so without calling him names, or disparaging his supporters, or attributing his resurgence to nefarious foreign actors or the unfairness of the Electoral College. 

Trump got three big things right — or at least more right than wrong. 

First, he contends, and I agree, that: 

Arguably the single most important geopolitical fact of the century is the mass migration of people from south to north and east to west, causing tectonic demographic, cultural, economic, and ultimately political shifts. Trump understood this from the start of his presidential candidacy in 2015, the same year Europe was overwhelmed by a largely uncontrolled migration from the Middle East and Africa. As he said, “A nation without borders is not a nation at all. We must have a wall. The rule of law matters! ”. . . . 

Many of Trump’s opponents refuse to see virtually unchecked migration as a problem for the West at all. Some of them see it as an opportunity to demonstrate their humanitarianism. Others look at it as an inexhaustible source of cheap labor. They also have the habit of denouncing those who disagree with them as racists. But enforcing control at the border — whether through a wall, a fence, or some other mechanism — isn’t racism. It’s a basic requirement of statehood and peoplehood, which any nation has an obligation to protect and cherish. 

Second, and again I agree: 

The second big thing Trump got right was about the broad direction of the country. Trump rode a wave of pessimism to the White House — pessimism his detractors did not share because he was speaking about, and to, an America they either didn’t see or understood only as a caricature. But just as with this year, when liberal elites insist that things are going well while overwhelming majorities of Americans say they are not, Trump’s unflattering view captured the mood of the country. . . . . 

Labor-force participation remains essentially where it was in the last days of the Obama administration. Deaths of despair keep rising. The cost of living has risen sharply, and while the price of ordinary goods may finally be coming down, rents haven’t. Only 36 percent of voters think the American dream still holds true, according to a recent survey, down from 48 percent in 2016. If anything, Trump’s thesis may be truer today than it was the first time he ran on it. 

And thirdly, and literally the entire point of Fairness Matters, he explains: 

Finally, there’s the question of institutions that are supposed to represent impartial expertise, from elite universities and media to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the F. B. I. Trump’s detractors, including me, often argued that his demagoguery and mendacity did a lot to needlessly diminish trust in these vital institutions. But we should be more honest with ourselves and admit that those institutions did their own work in squandering, through partisanship or incompetence, the esteem in which they had once been widely held. 

I recognize that some of you voted for him in 2016 and 2020. And some of you are still supporters and are committed to voting for him again in 2024. My intention here is not to insult you or condescend to you. On the contrary, my intention is to provide a different perspective so that we can have a dialogue about what we can expect if Trump has a second term in office. 

First and foremost, as relates to Trump himself, I want you to know that my conclusions here are not entirely drawn from the mainstream media. My family has had personal dealings with the man. My father has been in the New York real estate business since 1975 and has done business with the Trumps. He can speak from personal experience. My family told me of their dealings, and their colleagues’ dealings, with Trump, and they warned me about him back in 2015 when he was first flirting with a campaign. I warned as many people as I could, to no avail. 

Beyond my second-hand knowledge, I believe it’s critically important that anyone attempting to understand Trump’s “playbook” watch the documentary “Where is my Roy Cohn? ” This man had an unbelievable influence on Trump. If, after watching, you don’t see that Trump has followed Cohn’s playbook, then I’d love to hear what I’m missing. Let me know in the comments.

If you want to bring more conservative leadership back to the executive branch, I'm on board and I’m sure there’s much we'd agree on! But I believe that those policies can be achieved with far greater effectiveness with a Republican leader other than Trump. 

As a lifelong independent and a centrist, I was never a fan of many neoconservatives because of their illiberal beliefs when it comes to advancing social change as well as their foreign policy stance and support of aggressive militarism/neo-imperialism. 

That said, God bless Liz Cheney for having the courage to stand up for America! Here is an interview that demonstrates how thoughtful a leader she has been. 

While I may not have agreed with all of her politics, I am extremely disappointed that as a result of her courage — both during the Jan. 6 committee and her vote to impeach Trump — she was ousted from the party leadership and lost her congressional seat. Her leadership will be missed and our country is weaker for it. 

In "Reviewing Trump's presidency", published in January 2021, Isaac Saul wrote: 

Critics of his presidency loathe to admit it, but he was — for better or for worse — one of the most consequential presidents in American history. He was also historic: the wealthiest president ever, the first president to be impeached twice, perhaps the most “outsider” president of all time, one of the oldest presidents ever, and — by party differences in approval ratings alone — the most divisive president in modern U.S. history. 

It's an interesting assessment that is worth reading. 

Must the president be a moral leader? 

University of Washington professor Michael Blake, writing in The Conversation, examined whether the president needs to be a moral leader. 

The best presidents – including figures such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington – are celebrated not only as good leaders, but as good men. They embody not simply political skill, but personal virtue. 

Abraham Lincoln, for instance, consistently and publicly referred to the same set of moral values throughout his life – values centered on a deep, while imperfect, belief in the moral equality of people. These principles provided him with guidance throughout the horrors of the Civil War. 

A president whose decisions are not grounded in the right sort of ethical values may be less well-equipped to respond well – and, more importantly, might be frighteningly unpredictable in his or her responses. 

He continues: 

These arguments have been met with powerful objections. Political philosophers – including, most prominently, Niccolò Machiavelli – have argued that the nature of political life requires a willingness to demonstrate habits of character that would ordinarily be understood as vices. The good leader, insisted Machiavelli, is morally right to do what is usually taken as wrong. He or she must be cruel, deceptive and often violent. 

The philosopher Arthur Applbaum refers to this as role morality. What a person is right to do, argues Applbaum, often depends upon the job that person is doing. The good lawyer, for instance, may have to bully, browbeat or humiliate hostile witnesses. That is what a zealous defense might require. Machiavelli notes simply that, in a hostile and brutal world, political leaders might have similar reasons to do what is usually forbidden. 

Modern philosophers such as Michael Walzer have continued this line of reasoning. If the world is imperfect, and requires a politician to lie, cheat or otherwise do wrong in the name of doing good, then there is sometimes a moral reason for the politician to do that wrong. 

George Washington, for example, was quite happy to engage in deception, if that deception would help protect the United States. He consistently sought to deceive his adversaries about his intentions and his resources – and, importantly, sought to deceive his own subordinates, reasoning that a lie must be believed at home for it to be useful abroad. 

A president who refused to engage in this sort of deception, argues Walzer, would be choosing to keep his or her conscience clear, instead of providing some genuine and concrete help to others. Walzer’s conclusion is that a good political agent must often refuse to be a good person. It is only by sometimes doing what is ordinarily wrong, that the politician can make the world better for all. 

I want to be crystal clear in my view: Machiavelli was dead wrong. We should never (again) elect an immoral person to be the president of the United States. Full stop! 

Trump is a problem but he is not THE problem

Many people I meet believe that Trump himself is the problem. I disagree. I believe he is an immoral person and his behavior both in his personal and professional life, and most importantly during his time in office, has proven to me that he’s unfit for the White House. But that doesn’t mean Trump is the problem. (Many people often conflate causation with correlation). I believe Trump isa symptom of what’s really going on in America and, more specifically, in politics today. Here is an observation by Sam Harris that I agree with and hope you can relate to: 

It's often said that Trump is a symptom. The problem isn’t Trump, because the problem precedes him. I think there’s some truth to that, but he’s also a cause of further symptoms. He's the product of hyper partisanship on both the right and the left, but he’s also made that partisanship much worse. He’s also a symptom of the loss of trust in institutions, but he’s also made everything on that front worse too. So, there’s obviously a dialectical nature to all of this. So, he’s made the right worse, but he’s also made the left worse. And, then as the left becomes worse, has given much more energy, justification even, for Trumpism. So it’s like almost everything that Trumpists decry on the left, is something that is worth worrying about on the left, and as the left has turned up the volume of their moral panic over pronouns or whatever, it is understandable that that is causing the right to go berserk. It’s this mutual reinforcement which is really unhealthy. 

So here we find ourselves in an unhealthy cycle of mutual reinforcement. 

In my opinion, the real problem is that tens of millions of Americans are angry and frustrated because our elected officials are not addressing their needs. They are scared and don’t know what to do to change their lot in life. 

Politicians use fear to elicit an emotional response that enables the Democratic and Republican parties to retain power and fuels a business model for the media (both broadcast and technology driven) that has created the most prolific propaganda apparatus history has ever seen. And the kerosene on the proverbial fire is greed! 

Greed has led corporations and the ultra-rich to spend their fortunes entrenching a system and backing any candidate (even a morally bankrupt candidate like Trump) who can protect their interests, help them retain power and ensure they get richer at any cost. 

But there is an even uglier side to the rise of Trump that has become more and more apparent — and more insidious. That is his pandering to the far right. Why are people so afraid of power shifting to another gender or another race? Could so many people be so small-minded that they think that those who were once oppressed will rise up and, in retribution, oppress those who once oppressed them? That’s certainly what the white supremacists who marched Charlottesville believe: “Jews will not replace us.” Sad how our political, religious and community leaders have decided that the best way to stay in power is to trigger the worst fears of people. 

But that doesn’t fully explain Trump’s victory in 2015. Racism might have mobilized many rural white male voters, but he won many states by small margins thanks, in part, to a lack of voter turnout among Black people. It seems that enough Black people who were disillusioned with Obama. That, combined with GOP gerrymandering, led millions of Black people voters to stay home. That was pivotal in his victory. 

Perhaps most shocking is the fact that 42% of women would choose to vote for Trump. Given his outright misogyny, I struggle to see the female perspective here. Sadly, I often remind myself (and almost anyone who will listen) that it was actually conservative women who killed the Equal Rights Amendment. Hard to imagine, but true. 

Do you believe Trump is a successful businessman? 

If so, how do you define “success”? Is integrity a critical component of being a success? Does integrity matter in business or does the end always justify the means? 

Trump has had six Chapter 11 bankruptcies and numerous failed businesses including Trump Taj Mahal; Trump’s Castle; Trump Plaza Casinos; Trump Plaza Hotel; Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts; Trump Entertainment Resorts; the Trump payroll corporation (convicted on 17 criminal counts including conspiracy to commit fraud falsifying business record and taxes); Trump Vodka; Trump Mortgage; Trump: The Game; Trump magazines; Trump Ice; the New Jersey Generals; Tour De Trump; The Trump Network; Trumped! Inc; Trump University (shut down due to criminal activity and issuing fake diplomas); Trump Steaks; Trump Shuttle (ceded control to the banks only to avoid bankruptcy); Trump foundation (dissolved under court supervision for a “shocking pattern of illegality“). According to Forbes Magazine, “The biggest takeaway from the New York Times tax exposé? Trump is a lousy businessman.” In 2022, Trump’s real estate “empire” was convicted on all charges in a 13-year criminal tax fraud scheme. 

One question for you to contemplate when it comes to Trump: Would you hire him to be the CEO of your family business? Be honest. If your answer is no, then why would you want to hire him to run your country? 

If your answer is yes, then there isn’t much I can do to persuade you here. But I’ll give it a shot: In June 2016, USA Today published an analysis of litigation involving Donald Trump. The story found that over the previous three decades Trump and his businesses had been involved in 4,095 lawsuits in U.S. federal and state courts. Is this how you do business? 

Let's not forget that he is not the self-made man he purports to be. He inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his slumlord father and made most of his fortune once he catapulted his brand by becoming a reality TV personality. 

Was (and is) Trump unfit for office? 

In my estimation, Trump was one of the most troublesome presidents in American history. During his 2016 campaign, he encouraged violence at his rallies. He levied harsh attacks against his opponents and even called one a “devil.” When he assumed office, he demanded complete loyalty and levied attacks against the press that conjured up memories of notorious autocrats. And when he lost a free and fair election in 2020, he discontinued a 225-year-old tradition and a hallmark of American democracy — the peaceful transfer of power — by inciting an insurrection when he unsuccessfully overturned the election’s results. 

Despite it all, Republicans have continued to swear their loyalty to him, and those who challenge him, like Liz Cheney, are harshly rebuked by the party. If Trump wins this year, he will continue his authoritarian tendencies from day one and have the experience to better accomplish his authoritarian goals. Even if he does not win, GOP candidates who act like him (DeSantis is at the top of the list) will have success because an overwhelming majority of Republicans still believe in a distorted view of liberty. Trump has thrown a wrench in American democracy, yet his influence in American politics is still enormous. 

Time and again, from his “very fine people, on both sides” comment defending the Charlottesville white nationalist protesters, to talking up vile dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un, Trump’s shown a repeated and disturbing tendency to embrace the worst, most bigoted people in the world. Everyone tries to reframe his comments at the “Unite the Right Rally” saying that he was taken out of context. But it really wasn’t. What they rely upon is an interview the day after. Here’s what he said while speaking in the lobby of Trump Tower the day after the event where he attempts to compare the tearing down of Confederate monuments to the hypothetical removal of monuments to the Founding Fathers:

“What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?”

Trump said. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”

“I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me,” he said.

“You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists,” Trump said. “The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he said.

If you read the entire interview transcript, I don’t think it exonerates Trump and of course this is just one of many times that Trump has embraced white nationalists.

I’m sure you’ve seen memes that show Trump and his MAGA disciples parroting (often verbatim) speeches by Adolph Hitler. But, did you know that Trump told John Kelly in 2018 that "Hitler did a lot of good things"? Are you ok with that? How’s about the time he wanted military leaders to act more like Nazis? Did you know Ivana Trump said that from time to time her ex-husband read a book of Hitler's collected speeches, “My New Order,” which he kept in a cabinet by his bed? 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (who, for the record, I loathe in no small part because of his duplicitousness surrounding all things related to Trump) once described Trump as “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.” That characterization echoes what many psychological researchers and therapists have long concluded. Although the American Psychiatric Association strongly discourages mental-health professionals from mental-illness labels to public figures, some clinicians have even suggested that President Trump has narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. 

An article in The Atlantic, conservative lawyer George Conway argued that Trump exhibits all the classic signs of NPD and, for that reason among others, he is unfit for office. Conway wrote back in 2019 that “Donald Trump’s narcissism makes it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.”

Psychiatrists and mental health professionals have been discussing Trump’s “pathology” since before his presidency. “Narcissism, disagreeableness, grandiosity—a psychologist investigates how Trump’s extraordinary personality might shape his possible presidency,” one for The Atlantic. PsychCentral featured “Donald Trump and the Narcissistic Illusion of Grandiosity,” which argued: 

Donald Trump has grown an empire of wealth and power, but is it enough? He admits that it isn’t the money that motivates him (The Art of the Deal, 1987). What drives narcissists are their fears of feeling weak, vulnerable, or inferior. Consequently, for male narcissists, achieving power is their highest value — at any cost. Trump is “certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred (Trump on Trump).”

For a bit of levity, check out Bill Maher’s commentary. 

Alright so you don’t want to listen to trained mental health professionals or a comedian. I get it. So, what about people who know Trump personally? 

Here is Fox News’ Brett Baier, in a June 2023 interview with the former president, discussing the litany of Trump’s closest advisors who have come out against him in the 2024 election. 

Many people I speak to push back on this point by saying that “in the end, he did leave office.” Well … sure, but only after every single attempt failed, including failed violent insurrection. It was self-preservation and nothing else that forced him to leave the White House. 

But why continue to support a morally bankrupt person? A person who has been accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from innocent people who can’t even afford to donate and yet they have been hypnotized by Trump to believe the Big Lie. 

During his speech to the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Trump let loose with this line explaining his strategy on polling: 

If it’s bad, I say it’s fake. If it’s good, I say that’s the most accurate poll ever. 

This is a man who has never done right by anyone but himself. This is a man who said: 

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? 

How can you feel good about hearing those words spoken? Can’t you see the utter contempt that he has for the American people? 

But if you don’t conclude based upon what has been presented thus far that Trump is unfit for office and has autocratic tendencies, then I really want to hear from you with concrete examples of the positive aspects of the man, his businesses or his legacy. How do you rebut the fact that many of his own officials and his family have turned on him? Drop a comment below.

Are you OK with the fact that many of Trump’s appointees have links to far-right, neo-Nazi organizations. Are you OK that he has, time and again, retweeted white nationalist and fascist messages? Are you OK that he struggled to disavow support from arch-racist and former KKK leader David Duke? And his Svengali, Steve Bannon, is obsessed by nationalism and seems nostalgic for a sort of Third Reich world, in which powerful nations and races impose their might on helpless, and thus rights-less, nations and races. Do you agree “there were very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville? If not, how do you countenance a leader of the GOP who does? 

What really worries me is that given the nation’s failure to unite against him and especially given the GOP’s failure to repudiate him, Trump or any other GOP-nominated candidate will be in a much better position to succeed in the next coup attempt! 

Did Trump uphold the Constitution and faithfully execute his office? 

On Jan. 19, 2021, long before the Jan. 6 committee provided verified and damning evidence, New York University history professor Tim Naftali wrote that “Three particular failures secure Trump’s status as the worst chief executive ever to hold the office.” Naftali was the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. 

In 2023, Trump was indicted in New York on multiple criminal counts of business fraud. Nothing about the indictment was particularly new or surprising. It was, basically, what was expected. I’m fairly confident that Trump committed the acts he is accused of, but whether it sticks or not remains an open point. That said, I am also of the opinion that this was not the smartest move. There are far more serious, and damning, charges, including in Georgia for interfering in the election and in D. C. related to the insurrection. But that said, I felt it is worth sharing something from Jonathan Katz’s newsletter, The Racket. While sympathetic to the view that the New York case could get dismissed, and while agreeing the other cases carried more convincing and serious charges, Katz wrote: 

Good! Charge all of those too. . . Let the man spend his entire miserable 2024 reelection campaign enduring the daily monotony and fear of court proceedings, while the nation is reminded at every turn of his repeated attempts to steal elections through fraud and violence, and the rampant criminality that has defined his entire adult life. 

Not only that, Katz argued: 

Let’s get George W. Bush and Dick Cheney indicted for torture, illegal wire-trapping, and various war crimes. Investigate, indict, and prosecute Bill Clinton for the alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick. Prosecute every politician who’s engaged in insider trading, illegally destroyed documents, or engaged in other kinds of fraud. This would be a better country by leagues if everyone who puts on a dark suit and takes an oath of office understands not only that the law applies equally to them, but that the power they wield to shape and execute those laws means they will have to endure more scrutiny — and potentially harsher consequences — than ordinary citizens. 

Hard to argue with him. If you disagree, please use the comments to articulate why you feel that our politicians should be above the law. 

How can we all not support special counsel Jack Smith deciding to bring the classified documents case forward? Have you taken the time to read the indictment? It’s pretty damn obvious that Trump is unfit to lead this country! Whether you believe he didn’t “intend” to do harm and is just a narcissist, the fact is he did do harm and continues to do harm to our country. Even Bill Barr has made it clear that Trump is guilty. In this opinion piece, Barr writesc: 

He’s the victim. Since President Trump was indicted in Florida last week, those of us who read and listen to conservative media have heard that singular message. The longer version goes like this: he’s the victim of a political witch hunt being carried out by the deep state during a presidential campaign in order to take out the Republican front-runner. 

If anyone is sympathetic to this kind of logic, it’s me. 

Trump has been the victim of witch hunts by obsessive enemies willing to do anything to bring him down. On those occasions—most prominently Russiagate, and more recently the civil and criminal actions against him in New York—I have never shied away from defending him. As his attorney general, I witnessed firsthand the unfair and venomous treatment he, and those in his administration, often received. 

It is also true, as I know well, that Trump is a deeply flawed, incorrigible man who frequently brings calamity on himself and the country through his dishonesty and self-destructive recklessness. Even his supporters, who can’t help but acknowledge that he is own worst enemy, know it. 

For the sake of the country, our party, and a basic respect for the truth, it is time that Republicans come to grips with the hard truths about President Trump’s conduct and its implications. Chief among them: Trump’s indictment is not the result of unfair government persecution. This is a situation entirely of his own making. The effort to present Trump as a victim in the Mar-a-Lago document affair is cynical political propaganda. 

And in May 2024, Trump was convicted in New York of charges of making felony hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels so she wouldn’t tell the sordid details in the run-up to the 2020 election. So if elected, we’ll have a felon occupying the White House.

As mentioned earlier, some have told me that they don’t vote for a person as president… they elect his platform and his Cabinet. Let’s say that’s true (not saying I agree, but there is merit to the statement). So how do you get comfortable with the fact that at least 18 people connected to President Trump have been locked up, indicted or arrested since the real-estate mogul announced his candidacy in 2015? Do you care that Trump lined his pockets during his tenure as president? Again, does integrity matter? Did you know the federal government spent $144 million on the 300 times he played golf? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court was able to avoid waying in on the “emoluments” issue, determining the case was moot because he was no longer president. 

OK, maybe so you still don’t believe the anecdotal evidence, nor do you want to define Trump by what he says (I hear this from so many of my friends — “Oh, just ignore what he says. Look at what he does”). Well, here’s one thing he did do: Trump rolled back rules on racially segregated housing. The Trump administration succeeded on several fronts in reversing Barack Obama’s efforts to combat racial segregation in housing. Arguing that the main barrier to broader homeownership is affordability rather than racial discrimination, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson was eager to pare back an Obama regulation he’d once derided as “social engineering. ” Carson scrapped the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which threatened to withhold housing funds from cities that fail to take active steps to end segregation. The new version also revamped the agency’s “disparate impact” rule to make it harder for plaintiffs to bring claims of unintentional discrimination. 

In addition, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gave small banks an exemption from data collection requirements that help track racial discrimination in the mortgage market. The agency also dramatically cut back on enforcing fair lending laws during the Trump administration. The reduced focus on fair housing comes as the gap in homeownership rates between Black and white Americans yawns as widely as it ever has, including when housing discrimination was legal. About 70 percent of white households own their homes, compared with about 40 percent of Black households — a disparity that is expected to worsen. 

Moreover, his policies and those of the GOP led to economic outcomes that exacerbated the “wealth gap” in America and embraced corporate greed at an unsustainable level. The federal government’s addiction to spending money runs contrary to my definition of fiscal “conservatism” that the GOP had once embraced. But the GOP has kept the party going for Wall Street, further fueling inequality. 

He conspired to overthrow the 2020 election

Did you watch the Jan. 6 committee hearings? Even if you believe it was just political theater or a “witch hunt,” take the time to hear the evidence against Trump. Here is the committee’s report. In the end, if you don’t want to believe any single proffered testimony that’s fine, but the sheer magnitude of the testimony especially from insiders within the Trump presidency, is compelling. And further evidence has come out that demonstrates he knows that his claims about election fraud are a lie. 

Please read this article about the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines in Georgia. Or, let's look at the actions of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who joined Trump's personal legal team in April 2018. His activities as Trump's attorney have drawn scrutiny due to allegations that he engaged in corruption and profiteering and his promotion of conspiracy theories, most notably about the 2018 and 2020 elections. 

In July 2023, Forbes in reporting about Guiliani admitting that he made false statements about two Georgia election workers: 

After about a year and a half of battling in the courtroom, Rudy Giuliani stated late Tuesday night that he lied about two Georgia election workers stuffing ballots and committing election fraud, but did not say that he had caused any damages to them, despite harassment the two faced—this case is part of a string of 2020 presidential election fraud cases. 

The article also cites: 

Giuliani insisted his false accusations were protected by first amendment rights of free speech. 

And in spring 2024, Giuliani (among others) was indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Arizona. 

The indictment alleged Giuliani spread false claims of election fraud in Arizona after the 2020 election and presided over a downtown Phoenix gathering where he claimed officials made no effort to determine the accuracy of presidential election results. 

It also accused him of pressuring Maricopa County officials and state legislators to change the outcome of Arizona’s results and encouraging Republican electors in the state to vote for Trump in mid-December 2020. 

Our country deserves better than this! 

Take Tony Schwartz, for example. Schwartz was the co-author of Donald Trump’s bestselling 1987 book “The Art Of The Deal.” Did you know that in November 2016 he predicted exactly how the president would respond to losing the election? Following a speech at Oxford University, Schwartz warned of a “tense time” to come in the United States if Trump lost the vote to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s worth watching. 

Even Michael Cohen, Trump’s “fixer,” predicted that if Trump lost the 2020 election, there won't be a peaceful transition of power. In his closing remarks before a congressional committee, he said his loyalty to Trump had "cost me everything," including his job, his relationship with his family, his reputation, and "soon, my freedom." 

"Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power," Cohen said. 

For those still apt to believe Trump's lies about the election because of “liberal media bias,” the National Review — a conservative publication — suggested the Jan. 6 committee’s work should have led to Trump being charged with additional crimes. 

The current contention is that Donald Trump led an insurrection against his own government, attempted to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, and brought violence and bloodshed to the legislative branch — but somehow, he did all of that without violating any U.S. laws. If a U.S. president tries to disrupt the actions of another branch of government through brute force and the direction of enraged mob violence, is the proper consequence a prime-time congressional hearing where various lawmakers and witnesses denounce him? Or is the proper consequence charging him with a crime? 

And after nearly two years, in August, 2023, former President Donald Trump was criminally charged with illegally conspiring to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden. 

The first charge alleges a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. “by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election,” according to the Justice Department.

The second details “a conspiracy to impede” the Jan. 6, 2021, congressional proceeding where the election results were certified.

The third was “a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted,” said DOJ in a statement.

I implore you to please take the time to read the 45 page indictment. 

And, in addition to facing federal charges, he and 18 other defendants face 41 counts (vs. four in the federal indictment) of election crimes in Georgia, like solicitation of violation of oath by public officer (for Trump’s infamous demand to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to just “find 11,780 votes”) and offenses like forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery (for creating fake electoral certificates) and conspiracy to commit computer trespass (for unlawfully accessing election machines in Coffee County to attempt to prove that votes were stolen). 

Fulton County, Ga., district attorney Fani Willis ties them all together by levying one charge against Trump and each of the 18 other defendants under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO, accusing Trump and his co-conspirators of functioning as a criminal gang. And, unlike the federal case, Trump and the others could not be granted presidential pardons by Trump or another Republican president because this is a state case. And pardons in Georgia are awarded by the State Board of Pardons and Paroles (rather than the governor) — and are not even available until five years after completion of all sentences. 

I know that whenever the discussion of Jan. 6 comes up in political discussions, the GOP loves to throw the “antifa riots” back at me. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone can make that false equivalency. These issues aren’t really the same. Those riots were a response by private citizens to police brutality and actual murder. The insurrection was planned, facilitated and encouraged by a sitting president to prevent the peaceful transfer of power based upon a lie that the election was stolen. They simply are not the equivalent even if, as some of my friends have claimed, the antifa riots were funded by political operatives of the far left. Plus, they are a distraction from the issue at hand, which is whether Trump should be re-elected and whether the GOP has gone off the rails fueling wild conspiracy theories to retain power at any/all costs. It’s simply irresponsible. 

Our collective failure to repudiate Trump is creating a groundswell of unqualified/corrupt candidates

It’s not just Trump. His Big Lie is fostering a climate of distrust that has far-reaching consequences. Investigations into the 2020 election aftermath furthermore revealed several problems with our current laws that leave open the possibility for another insurrection or other efforts to undermine our elections. Through devices such as the Electoral Count Act, emergency power declarations, the Insurrection Act, and voting changes that disproportionately benefit one political party, it is possible for leaders to exploit statutory deficiencies and gain power through undemocratic mechanisms. We need to close these loopholes and codify these “best practices” that have been upheld as “traditions” that were never codified as law. This leaves us exposed as a country to another coup attempt. (Congress, to its credit, did take steps to close Electoral College loopholes when it passed the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act in 2022. )

Would it surprise you to learn that 60% of Americans had an election denier on the ballot in the 2022 midterms? Are you concerned that our collective failure to set the record straight and repudiate Trump may result in very dangerous candidates being elected to govern our nation? Do you know that since the 2020 election, politicians – primarily Republicans – are knowingly lying about voter fraud to justify passing laws that make it harder for people to vote? They’re weaponizing disinformation to get what they want: more power for them, less power for the voters. 

In total, more than half of states (27) had an election liar on the ballot for governor, secretary of state or attorney general in 2022. Prominent examples, such as the Republican nominees for Pennsylvania governor (Doug Mastriano) and Arizona secretary of state (Mark Finchem), attended the Jan. 6 riot and continued to tell lies about the 2020 election. Depending on the state, these positions oversee, defend, or certify election results. Does anyone really think liars should oversee their state’s elections? Thankfully, those two individuals lost their bid that year, but that doesn’t mean they are done seeking office. And given how close the races were, we are not out of the woods yet! Can you see how dangerous Trump is? Has he gone too far? Isn’t it time to hold our elected officials to a higher standard? 

If you agree, then how do you believe we get there from here? Do the likes of Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and that ilk qualify as “leaders” to you? Imagine you woke up after the 2024 presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman. And, according to a report from Axios, Trump plans to purge the government of career employees with actual expertise, replacing them with only the most hard-core loyalists. Is this something you support and would like to see? 

Foreign policy and international relations

During his term in office, Trump fractured the United States’ relationship with its European partners with actions like his sudden decision to remove 9,500 U.S. troops from Germany. That move that sent shockwaves through NATO. 

One of Europe's most senior politicians recounted how Trump privately warned that America would not come to our European allies’ aid if they was attacked militarily. 

According to European Commissioner Thierry Breton, Trump told the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, in 2020: 

You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you. By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO

But this is just one of many instances in which the United States has shown disregard for the wishes and concerns of European partners. Despite international pushback, Washington withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 and from the Open Skies Treaty in 2020. But wait a minute … I kept hearing that Trump held NATO accountable! Well, no surprise here — a simple fact check determined that most of his rhetoric was untrue. 

To quote Thomas Wright "What a Second Trump Term Would Mean for the World": 

If Donald Trump defies the odds and wins a second term, the next four years will likely be more disruptive to U.S. foreign policy and world affairs than the past four have been. Think of his reelection as a pincer movement, an attack on the international order from two sides. Trump will consolidate his control over the institutions of government, bending them to his will, removing any lingering resistance from the Republican Party. Meanwhile, by confirming that the United States has rejected its traditional leadership role, a second Trump term would make a lasting impact on the world right when it is at a particularly vulnerable moment. U.S. alliances would likely crumble, the global economy would close, and democracy and human rights would be in rapid retreat. 

The internationalimplications of a second Trump presidency loom large! 

Was Trump all bad? 

 As Ray Dalio points out, our ability to be a force for good in the world is dependent, in large measure, upon our leadership. I’ve already tried to make the case that Trump is a deeply flawed individual unfit for the office. And if I were a supporter of Trump and his MAGA movement, I would be very disappointed in his failure to deliver on most of his campaign promises. 

But even though I'm a "never Trumper," I am not so irrational or biased that I can’t acknowledge that he did have some policy wins. Here are a few examples of acts that I support. I’m sure that I could be convinced that there are others, so feel free to share your thoughts below. 

The Abraham Accords

Some have disagreed, especially on the left, but Trump seemed to take a common sense approach to facilitating peace in the Middle East. Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, director of the Israel, The Palestinian Territories, and the Region Program of the United States Institute of Peace, praised the agreement in 2022: 

Nearly two years since the signing of the Abraham Accords — U.S.-brokered agreements normalizing Israeli relations with the UAE and Bahrain — the bilateral hope and promise encapsulated in that diplomatic achievement have borne fruit in several arenas. This is particularly the case between Israel and the UAE, underscored most recently by the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed between the two countries on May 31. Indeed, the agreement follows a steady pace of warming ties and joint endeavors since the two countries agreed to normalize relations in 2020. 

It has been argued that the rationale behind the Arab world's willingness to sign the Abraham Accords was grounded in an acknowledgement that the Palestinians will continue to reject a two-state solution (something that is obvious to anyone who has studied the history), having rejected every overture of peace over the past 100 years. As a result, they posit, the only answer to securing peace was isolation. 

So much so that President Biden adopted the policy and pursued peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Is it possible that the Abraham Accords instilled a misleading sense of security in Israel and the United States that peace was finally accessible? 

Sadly, as has been the case in almost every instance throughout the century-long conflict in Israel and Palestine, every attempt to advance the peace process comes at a grave human cost. 

The Congressional Research Service in October 2023 published a in-depth briefing document that stated: 

The decision to launch the attacks in October 2023 may reflect various Hamas motivating factors, including disrupting Arab-Israeli normalization efforts. The October 7 attacks may have been intended to disrupt existing and potential future normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, including U.S.-backed efforts to promote Saudi-Israeli normalization. Hamas may have assessed that Arab governments’ increased willingness to normalize relations with Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian state—and potential PA acquiescence to this trend—provided an opening for Hamas to portray itself as uniquely committed to the Palestinian national cause. 

The true path to lasting peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians lies in direct negotiations and agreements between the people who share the land. Only through mutual understanding and compromise can a sustainable resolution be achieved. 

Even if that is proven unequivocally true, the Abraham Accords were not a strategic mistake. Any grasp for peace is worth taking! 

But, the sad fact remains, unless and until the leadership of the Arab world decides to stand up against extreme Islamism in all its forms there will never be peace. 

In the wake of Hamas' terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, I pray that the nations that have outstretched a hand of peace to Israel are able to stay the course and support Israel's right to not only exist but to defend its citizens from terror. 

I am hopeful that the IDF will liberate Gaza and end Hamas' reign of terror, without further loss of innocent lives, and that the Arab world will find a solution to the Palestinian "problem" that it caused by failing to accept UN Resolution 181, which would have created a "two-state" solution where Jews and Arabs would live side by side in peace. Had the Arab world embraced it instead of declaring war against Israel, the Middle East would be a very different place. 

Targeted defunding of the United Nations

As I discussed above, I find Trump's general approach to foreign policy to be flawed, but I do think he was "directionally" correct when it came to the United Nations. 

Are you aware that the U.S. government contributed about $12. 5 billion to the United Nations in 2021? About one-quarter of this total was assessed and the rest was voluntary. This represents about a large share of the roughly $70 billion the United States spends annually on foreign aid. By comparison, that contribution is about what the government allocates annually to the U.S. Coast Guard! That's an astonishing sum of money given to an organization whose founding humanitarian mission has been corrupted beyond recognition. 

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, in a report titled "Funding the United Nations: How Much Does the U.S. Pay," overall U.S. contributions to the United Nations have remained steady in recent years but the Trump administration sought to pare down or completely eliminate voluntary contributions to many U.N. programs, targeting peacekeeping operations and several specialized agencies. As CFR wrote: 

Trump rejected the globalism of the United Nations and viewed certain programs as contradictory to his administration’s agenda on Israel, abortion, and other policy areas. 

I strongly disagree with the Trump administration's position (and the GOP's) on abortion. I feel he was incompetent when it came to handling the COVID-19 pandemic. And I completely reject Trump's September 2019 statement about the U.N.: 

The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations. 

I believe that those types of broad, unsophisticated statements are counterproductive. America has derived significant benefits from a global economy and an interconnected world. Where it goes off the rails is when corporate avarice takes hold and our leaders lack the common sense to implement policies that protect America's interests at home and abroad. 

For years, I’ve watched hypocrisy and corruption reign over the U.N. 

I'm not suggesting that we cut off the U.N. entirely, but I can't see how we can continue to support an organization that U.N. critic Claudia Rosett described as follows: 

. . . the UN, in contravention of its own charter, is rapidly evolving into a predatory, undemocratic, unaccountable, and self-serving vehicle for global government. The UN is unwieldy, gross, inefficient, and incompetent. In addition, it is configured as to reach deep into the national politics of its member states and, by sheer weight and persistence, to force at least some of the worst of its agenda upon them all. Indeed, with notable exceptions, generations of American officials and policy-makers have been content to look away from the UN's multiform deficiencies and derelictions while occasionally indulging in minor punitive measures. For many others in public life, and for many ordinary citizens as well … the institution itself is still held in nearly sacred regard. 

I believe that our incompetent elected officials, as a result of a broken political industrial complex, have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars while enabling an incompetent and corrupt organization that betrays our values as a nation. 

Let's discuss UNRWA. 

Looking past my foundational points about the U.N., are you aware that the United Nations has two organizations established to address the needs of refugees around the world? 

1. UNHCR ,also known as the "U.N. Refugee Agency," emerged in the wake of World War II to help displaced Europeans. Despite the fact that the organization was founded with a three-year mission, it still exists today to address the more than 108 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced as a result of conflict or persecution. UNHCR's budget was $10. 7 billion in 2022. That's $99 per refugee. You can find more statistics here. 

2. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) is solely dedicated to responding to the needs of the 750,000 Palestinian refugees. Western countries contribute the lion's share of UNRWA's $1. 6 billion annual budget. I love when people say that Israel has committed genocide or ethnic cleansing when there are now 5 million people characterized as Palestinian refugees because, under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. 

So let's see, $10 billion for the world's 100 million refugees and $1 billion for 5 million Palestinian refugees. 

Simple math: That means the U.N. spends nearly 4x the amount spent per Palestinian refugee compared to every other refugee in the world. You should question why they have that status,especially when you consider the fact that they have rejected multiple internationally brokered land-for-peace deals that Israel approved and that would have resulted in Palestinian statehood (ending their refugee status). But in a report from March 2023, UN Watch found that UNRWA has been indoctrinating Palestinian children, teaching them a false narrative about the history of Palestine and, worse, teaching them to hate Israel and calling for the murder of Jews. The Jerusalem Post reported: 

“With a budget of $1. 6 billion, nearly 60% of which goes to education, and a staff of 30,000, the UN agency might be the most heavily funded educational undertaking in the history of international aid. And yet our report today demonstrates how UNRWA has consistently breached its duty of care to the children attending its schools,” said Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT-se. “UNRWA is obsessed by PR spin and fundraising, but disinterested in the extremism of its educational network. If it had wanted to stop the hate-teaching, UNRWA would have done so years ago.”

The U.N. has been complicit as billions of dollars of aid was stolen by Hamas, making its corrupt leaders into billionaires! Those are our tax dollars that we've "voluntarily" provided to UNRWA. The U.N. has been in Gaza while billions of dollars in humanitarian aid was diverted to fund the tunnels that were built with reinforced concrete and equipped with blast doors! The tunnels are too extensive to have gone unnoticed. They have been there while rocket launchers were placed on school buildings and when heavy weapons were cached in hospital premises. They were complicit and in some regards directly responsible for teaching tens (or perhaps hundreds) of thousands of children to hate Jews and indoctrinated them into radical Islam. 

An entire generation of innocent youth who have been so unconscionably brainwashed that they happily, willingly give their lives as martyrs to further Hamas’ genocidal plan to destroy Israel and murder all 7 million Jews (and nearly 2 million Arabs) living between “the river and the sea.”

The U.S. should not be funding UNRWA. Those who represented these agencies in Gaza, because of their complicity, must be treated as accomplices of terrorism and prosecuted at the Hague for war crimes. 

On this, Trump was right. 

National defense and defense spending

The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy stands out as one of the most important defense policy shifts of the last generation. The 2018 strategy rewired the Defense Department away from a focus on fighting insurgents and terrorists in the Middle East toward a long-term strategic competition with China and Russia. As a result, the military is changing how it trains personnel, which technologies it buys, and the geographic areas of the world where it prioritizes its forces. 

Also, Trump made it possible to follow the Pentagon’s money. The Pentagon makes up the largest portion of discretionary spending in the federal budget, so it might surprise you that until Trump, no one had conducted an audit of where America’s defense dollars go, and its financial accounting systems were notoriously messy and complicated. In 2018, the Trump administration for the first time attempted a Defense Department-wide audit. An army of 1,000 outside accountants and 150 personnel from the DOD’s inspector general’s office fanned out to some 600 locations and collected 40,000 pages of financial documents. In the end, the Pentagon failed the audit. 

Farm aid 

Trump doled out billions in aid to farmers. Faced with years of declining prices and shrunken foreign markets, farmers have been struggling. Trump officials tried to mend food producers’ finances by doling out billions in assistance to keep the industry afloat. The Department of Agriculture steered billions in subsidies to farmers suffering from tariffs imposed by foreign countries as a consequence of the president’s trade wars, an amount that far outpaced the massive auto bailout in 2008. 

If you have other initiatives you think are worth considering, let me know in the comments. I’m happy to dig in further. I found most of his other legislative wins to be fairly unimpressive. 

The First Step Act

Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018, marking the first legislative victory in years for advocates seeking to reform the criminal justice system. The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. It offered relatively modest changes to the federal prison system, but was praised as an important step forward by groups and activists seeking to end mass incarceration. Business Insider's Michelle Mark summarized the key aspects of the legislation after it passed in the Senate: 

• The passage of the bill . . . marked the first major legislative win in decades to address mass incarceration at the federal level. 

• The bill overhauls certain federal sentencing laws, reducing mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies and expanding early-release programs. 

• The bill also makes retroactive a 2010 federal sentencing law reducing the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. 

• The bill also aims to lower recidivism by offering more rehabilitation and job-training opportunities, and it includes provisions intended to treat prisoners humanely — banning the shackling of pregnant inmates, halting the use of solitary confinement for most juvenile inmates, and mandating that prisoners be placed in facilities within 500 miles from their families. 

Killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

ISIS' territorial holdings were the basis for its so-called caliphate, and provided it with a major base of operations to conduct attacks across the world. After a five-year effort led by the United States, the caliphate was finally defeated in March 2019. Trump at times falsely claimed that ISIS is totally defeated, embellishing the extent of the U.S. military's success against the terrorist organization during his presidency. 

Though the terrorist group has lost its territory — its so-called caliphate — it's still estimated to have up to 18,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria. 

In late October 2019, a U.S. raid led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Baghdadi was the world's most wanted terrorist up to that point, and his death represented a major blow to the terrorist group. 

Nothing is black and white. Think critically. 

I believe we are at a crossroads as a society. I believe we must become truth warriors, as it’s becoming harder and harder to know fact from fiction. The First Amendment protects political speech and enables lies to spread like wildfires. But we can't accept talking points as fact. We can't just digest and consume sound bites and regurgitate them as truth. We all need to research claims made by politiciansfrom diverse sources. It’s crucial to ensure we are making our own informed opinions and not believing the narratives we’re being fed … on both sides of the aisle. 

I've heard Trump supporters assert the following talking points as if it were gospel when it comes to his policy achievements: 

• Largest tax reform in history, giving rise to increased wages and benefits to workers, business investments and much more. 

• ⁠Massive deregulation — helping both workers and businesses. 

• ⁠Historic trade deal (USMCA), to protect American jobs and business (getting rid of NAFTA). 

• ⁠Historic tariffs on Chinese goods to protect American jobs. 

• ⁠Energy independence for the first time in history. 

• ⁠Unprecedented support to the American farmers. 

• ⁠Securing the southern border. 

• ⁠Historic rebuilding of the military and protecting the veterans. 

• ⁠Defeating ISIS. 

• ⁠Successfully withdrawing American troops (unlike what happened in Afghanistan). 

• ⁠Restoring American leadership and respect internationally, and achieving peace through strength. 

• ⁠Abraham Accords, achieving historic peace agreements between four Arab nations and Israel. 

• In addition to the peace accords, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. 

But when you dig in, you'll see that everything is complex and subject to interpretation. 

Tax reform: While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was at least one of the largest tax reforms in U.S. history, its economic impact is subject to ongoing debate. Some argue it boosted the economy and increased wages, while others contend it primarily benefited corporations and wealthy individuals, with limited long-term benefits for average workers. The Congressional Budget Office reported mixed results, with increased economic growth initially but also projected higher deficits in the long run. 

• PolitiFact: Concludes that while the claim "biggest tax cut in U.S. history" is not technically true, the bill did cut taxes significantly for corporations and individuals. 

• FactCheck: Analyzes the impact of the tax cuts on different income groups and concludes that benefits were skewed towards higher earners. 

• Congressional Budget Office: Provides detailed projections of the long-term economic and budgetary effects of the tax cuts. 

Deregulation: Trump implemented significant deregulation across various industries, aiming to reduce government burdens on businesses. Supporters argue it spurred economic growth and job creation, while critics say it weakened environmental protections, consumer safety regulations and worker protections. Evaluating the net benefits and drawbacks of deregulation requires examining specific policies and their individual impacts. 

• ProPublica: Tracks and analyzes Trump-era deregulation efforts across various industries. 

• The American Prospect: Offers a critical analysis of the potential downsides of deregulation. 

• Mercatus Center: Presents the case for deregulation, highlighting potential benefits for businesses and consumers. 

Trade deals: The USMCA replaced NAFTA, aiming to update provisions for the 21st century. Some view it as an improvement, protecting American jobs and intellectual property, while others criticize it for offering minimal gains compared to NAFTA. Similarly, the impact of tariffs on Chinese goods is contested, with proponents arguing they protect American businesses and jobs. Opponents counter that they raise consumer prices and harm U.S.-China relations. 

• Council on Foreign Relations: Provides an overview of the USMCA, highlighting key provisions and potential implications. 

• NPR: Analyzes the impact of tariffs on Chinese goods, including potential benefits and drawbacks for both countries. 

• Peterson Institute for International Economics: Offers in-depth research and analysis of the U.S.-China trade war and its economic consequences. 

Energy independence: During Trump's presidency, the U. S did indeed achieve net energy exports in 2019 and 2020, meaning it exported more energy than it imported. This was the first time this had happened since 1952, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Challenges to the claim: 

• Definition of "energy independence": There's no universally agreed-upon definition of energy independence. Some define it as net energy exports, while others require complete self-sufficiency in all forms of energy production and consumption. 

• Continued reliance on imports: Even during "energy independence" periods, the U.S. still imported substantial amounts of crude oil and other energy products. In 2020, for example, the U.S. imported an average of 7. 9 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products. 

• Role of shale boom: The increased energy production was largely driven by the pre-existing shale oil and gas boom, which started in the early 2000s and accelerated during Obama's presidency. 

• Temporary phenomenon: The "energy independence" achieved under Trump was short-lived. Net energy exports declined in 2021 and 2022, returning to near pre-Trump levels. 

Fact-checking sources: 

• PolitFact: Argues that while the U.S. reached net energy exports, it wasn't entirely independent and the trend was short-lived. 

• CNN: Similar conclusion, emphasizing continued reliance on imports and temporary nature of "independence."

• Forbes: Acknowledges "independence" based on net exports but points out the pre-existing shale boom and subsequent drop in exports. 

Overall, while the United States did achieve net energy exports during Trump's presidency, attributing this solely to his policies and claiming absolute "energy independence" for the first time in history is misleading. The achievement was temporary, relied on pre-existing trends and didn't eliminate reliance on imports. 

Other accomplishments: 

• Congressional Research Service: Compiles a comprehensive list of Trump-era executive orders categorized by topic, including energy, agriculture and border security. 

• Defense Department: Provides information about military spending and budget allocations during the Trump administration. 

• The Brookings Institution: Examines Trump's foreign policy in the Middle East, including the Abraham Accords and troop withdrawals. 

A dictator on Day 1

During a town hall on Dec. 5, 2023, Fox News host Sean Hannity tossed Trump what ought to have been a softball question. “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked. “Except for day one,” Trump replied. 

You think this is hyperbole on Trump's part? Consider this from Letters from an American: 

Last week, Trump formally took over the apparatus of the Republican Party, installing loyalists—including his daughter-in-law—at the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and purging the organization of all but his own people. Indicating its priorities, the RNC has hired Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, former correspondent at the right-wing media outlet One American News Network and promoter of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, as senior counsel for election integrity. 

The definition of "conservatism" that I grew up understanding has been obliterated. 

Trump has promised that if he returns to office, he will purge the nonpartisan civil service we have had since 1883, replacing career employees with his own loyalists. He has called for weaponizing the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, and his advisors say he will round up and put into camps 10 million people currently living in the U.S., not just undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers but also those with birthright citizenship, tossing away a right that has been enshrined in the Constitution since 1868. 

Internationally, he has aligned with dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and has threatened to abandon NATO, a security pact that has protected the U.S. and like-minded nations since 1949. 

We will be faced with a choice in November 2024. And it's going to be an awful one! In “Let’s talk about Biden,” I explain that President Biden and the Democratic Party have squandered an incredible opportunity and have made it more and more likely that Trump will return to the White House. 

Footnote: MAGA wasn't a Trump invention

Let's end with a campaign video from 1980. If you weren't aware, Trump did not invent the slogan “Make America Great Again.” It was created in 1980 by Ronald Reagan.