Economy

The Most Flagrantly Dishonest and Idiotic Trump Tweet of 2020 (So Far)

Posted by on March 18, 2020 at 3:28 pm. 16 Comments :

In recent days Donald Trump has shifted his tone on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) to one that appears more appropriately concerned about the threat that it poses to Americans and the world. But while he seems to be reluctantly recognizing the risks going forward, he is still fixated on assigning blame to others and paying undeserved tribute to himself.

Donald Trump, Toilet, Bathrobe

When asked how he would rate his response to the coronavirus crisis, Trump inconceivably gave himself a “10.” Sure, if that’s out of 100. He also claimed, in an epic feat of gaslighting, and after downplaying the matter for weeks, that “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic” (see video below that documents his lies). But for sheer stupidity and/or rabid dishonesty, Trump has still not surpassed this tweet from February 24:

In that one Twantrum, Trump managed to get two very consequential things horribly wrong. First of all, as noted above, the coronavirus was very much NOT under control. On February 24, there were only 42 confirmed cases and zero fatalities in the U.S. That has now risen to more than 7,300 infected people and 135 deaths. If that’s what Trump considers “control” we are all gonna die.

Trump’s management of this crisis has been an unqualified disaster. He ignored the peril for far too long. He disbanded the pandemic office at the National Security Agency. He refused to use the test kits provided by the World Health Organization. He relied more on his Fox News sycophants than on scientists. He trivialized the matter as a political “hoax” that he imagined was perpetrated by Democrats. And he sought to blame previous administrations (translation: Obama) for burdening him with an archaic and inefficient system. The truth is that he gutted the system himself and did nothing to restore it.

As for his investment advice, it’s hard to image that it could have been worse. The stock market that was “starting to look very good” to Trump on February 24, has dropped more than 7,000 points (30%) since then. And that was after the Federal Reserve gave Trump the ill-advised interest rate cut he lusted after. All of the gains for the past three years – the whole of Trump’s presidency – have been wiped out. Anyone who acted on Trump’s analysis has lost a fortune. But then, it’s hard to sympathize with anyone who would take financial advice from a trust fund baby with six bankruptcies, a long list of defunct companies, a failed, phony “university,” and a charitable foundation that was found to be fraudulent?

There is, however, a bit of relatively good news. The American people aren’t buying Trump’s BS. A recent poll found that only 37% trust what he says about the coronavirus. That’s the predictable result of having lied more than 16,000 times since he was inaugurated.

Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous position for a nation to be in when it faces the sort of hardships that the U.S. faces today. Under the circumstance, we should have someone at the helm that isn’t a malignant narcissistic and a pathological liar. And with any luck (and a lot of hard work) we will have new, respectable leadership by next January. That is, if Trump hasn’t killed us all before then.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Here’s Why The Fed Rate Cut Makes Trump ‘Very Happy’ But Signals Trouble For America

Posted by on March 15, 2020 at 6:14 pm. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump joined his Coronavirus Task Force for their press briefing on Sunday. He took the podium and began his remarks by saying that “I think we have some great things to talk about.” That’s a bizarre opening for a briefing where medical experts are about to disclose how many more Americans are infected and dead, and how much worse it’s going to get before it gets better.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

The reason Trump could start off so upbeat is that he wasn’t there to talk about the coronavirus. He immediately launched into the news that the Federal Reserve Board just announced an emergency cut in the interest rate and the intention to purchase up to &700 billion of treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities (quantitative easing). For much of his presidency, Donald Trump has been railing against the Fed for not being a mindless functionary that obeys his every command (like his incompetent Cabinet and the GOP jellyfish in Congress). What he obviously doesn’t understand is that there is a reason that the FED was designed as an independent agency that is insulated from pressure by the White House. Their objectives are often not aligned. Nevertheless, he was giddy about this rate cut and burst into celebration (video below):

“I’ll start by discussing the Federal Reserve. As you know, it just happened ten minutes ago, but to me, it makes me very happy. And I want to congratulate the Federal Reserve. For starters, they’ve lowered fed rate from what it was, which was 1 to 1.25 and it’s been lowered down to 0 or 0.25. […] That’s really great for our country. It’s something that we’re very happy, I have to say this, I’m very happy.”

Trump has good reason to be happy. Contrary to his thoroughly bogus branding, Trump is failed businessman who has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, much of it with variable-rate loans. When he took office in 2017 he was the most indebted president in history, owing more than $350 million to Deutsche Bank alone. That debt is expensive to service. But when interest rates go down, so do the costs of servicing debt. Bloomberg reports that prior rate increases “may raise President Donald Trump’s cumulative cost from the U.S. central bank’s hikes since his inauguration to $6 million per year.”

So Trump has a distinct personal financial benefit when interests rates decline. He also seeks a political benefit due to rate cuts artificially (and temporarily) goosing the stock market. That’s something he has been relying on to advance his reelection prospects. He often uses the market as a gauge for the health of the economy. That’s a viewpoint that only someone utterly ignorant about these matters could hold. The performance of the stock market only tells you what institutional investors think about the valuation of equities, which fluctuate independent of the broader economy. The economy, on the other hand, is comprised of many other factors such as consumption, employment, wages, trade, and inflation.

Along with his joyful reception for the rate cut, Trump also made a prediction that “People in the market should be very thrilled.” Maybe not. Shortly after the announcement was made the Dow Jones futures took a dive, forecasting an opening decline of more than 1,000 points on Monday morning. That’s because investors recognize that the Fed’s decision to make this emergency cut is confirmation that there is economic trouble on the horizon. [UPDATE: Trump’s foolish craving for a rate cut and quantitative easing didn’t produce the results he hoped for or predicted. The market opened sharply down Monday, dropping as much 2,500 points]

Trump’s slaphappy elation notwithstanding, professionals understand that rate cuts are a reaction to negative economic conditions. It could mean that we are headed downhill. Home sales, wage stagnation, depressed treasuries, illiquid credit, and the exploding debt, are all indicators that generally forecast a recession or worse. Which explains why futures have cratered in the few hours since the announcement. And little of this has anything to do with COVID-19. These economic realities were in place before the virus began to spread. It was just a trigger and an accelerant.

As usual, the people who would be hurt most by that would be the lower and middle income families whose savings would deplete and whose jobs would disappear. The rich would suffer a decline in their net worth, but would remain rich and well positioned to profit when the economy turns around. That is a built-in inequity in our economic system that advantages the wealthy by design. And Trump is purposefully exploiting it for personal financial and political gain, without the least bit of consideration for the harm it will cause to millions of working Americans. Even worse, he’s celebrating it.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News and Trump are Infecting America with Lies About Viruses and Economics

Posted by on March 9, 2020 at 1:51 pm. 9 Comments :

Just at the time the country needs a steady hand to guide it through difficult times, we are unfortunately stuck with Donald Trump, an ignorant, narcissistic, sociopath, who is more concerned with his public image than with the lives of the American people. A budding pandemic is threatening to engulf the nation, and simultaneously collapse an economy that is already on thin ice.

Donald Trump, Fox News

Trump has been mishandling the Covid-19 (coronavirus) outbreak from the first days it was identified. He has stubbornly tried to downplay the seriousness of its impact on both people and economics. And he continues to this day trying to dismiss the risks that we are facing. Especially among his own supporters who are the most vulnerable to his alternative facts.

On Monday morning he posted several tweets intended to pacify the public with phony platitudes. In one tweet Trump compared the coronavirus to the flu. “At this moment,” he tweeted, “there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Having thought about it, it’s apparent that Trump can’t do math, because that data shows that the coronavirus, which is just beginning to spread, is 200 times more lethal than the flu. That isn’t exactly comforting.

Of course, Fox News has Trump’s back. They are promoting equally as troubling distortions of reality that are intended more to boost Trump’s polling than to protect people’s lives. Devoted Trump-fluffer Jeanine Pirro unleashed an extended rant that also used flu data to diminish the potential harm from the coronavirus (video below):

“Now they say the mortality rate for coronavirus is higher than the flu. But consider, though, that we have a flu vaccine, and yet in 2019, 16,000 Americans died from the flu. Imagine if we did not have the flu vaccine the flu would be a pandemic. So all the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn’t reflect reality. Without a vaccine, the flu would be far more deadly.”

How does someone this stupid get their own TV show? The mortality rate for the flu would not increase were there no vaccine. Pirro seems think that the mortality rate is based on the percentage of deaths from within the entire national population. Actually, the base is just those infected. So without a vaccine there would surely be more deaths, but they would likely occur at the same percentage rate. Pirro is also assuming that the coronavirus isn’t going to infect more people than the flu. At this time there is no way to predict that. And the fact remains that the mortality rate for the corona virus remains far higher than for the flu.

As for Trump, he is spinning furiously to avoid any negative repercussions from the dramatic drop in the stock market. He is alternately blaming it on coronavirus panic, the media, oil prices, Democrats, and probably Hillary Clinton’s emails. He’s frantic because he knows that a faltering economy will be the death knell for his reelection hopes. But he was never a particularly good market analyst. Just two weeks ago Trump tweeted that…

Everything about the tweet is utterly and painfully wrong. The coronavirus was hardly “very much under control.” on February 24. There were only a handful of confirmed diagnoses – and zero deaths – in the U.S. then. There over 600 known infections now, and 26 deaths.

Trump’s remarks about the stock market were triggered by a 1,000 point drop that day. But if anyone took Trump’s advice and acted on what he thought was a market that looked good, they took a considerable beating. The market has declined another 3,500 points since Trump’s grossly miscast, optimistic tweet. In fact, the market has declined to a level last seen in November of 2017. So anyone who invested in the last two years has lost money. And the more recent their investments, the more they lost.

With the challenges facing the nation today, it would helpful if we didn’t have to rely on a president who has been documented lying more than 16,000 times. It would also be nice if we didn’t have a propaganda outlet like Fox News covering up Trump’s failures, falsehoods, and mental infirmities. Getting through the next few months would be hard enough under normal circumstances. Remember “normal circumstances?” Yeah, those were the days.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Visits Fox News to Wax Idiotic About Both Economics and Pandemics

Posted by on March 6, 2020 at 12:32 pm. 2 Comments :

From the first days that the coronavirus was reported to be spreading throughout the world, including in the United States, Donald Trump has sought to minimize the risks and the potential that it could escalate into a full blown pandemic. He has understated the infection rate and the number of fatalities. And he has focused his attention on the economic impact, rather than the cost of human lives.

Donald Trump TV Set

On Thursday evening Trump appeared on Fox News for a town hall meeting. it was his second Fox News interview in as many days (the first being a suck up phone-in with Sean Hannity). The Fox News town hall was rife with the sort of lies and disinformation that is the hallmark of both Trump and Fox. For instance, Trump claimed that he would protect Social Security, even as he explicitly said he would be cutting entitlements. He also promised to provide “great healthcare,” despite never having offered any proposals, and actively fighting in court to kill Obamacare.

With regard to the coronavirus, which is currently the most pressing issue on the table, Trump continued his efforts to trivialize the very real vulnerabilities the nation faces. “I think we’re in great shape,” he lied, and “I think we made a great move. We closed it down. We stopped it.” Of course, he has not come close to stopping the coronavirus. It has actually spread to twenty-one states with over 225 cases in the U.S. And its containment is far from certain because we don’t even have enough test kits to identify those infected.

RELATED: Are Trump’s Cult Rallies Breeding Grounds for the Coronavirus?

However, perhaps the most troubling remarks Trump made were in connection to how the virus might impact the U.S. economy. He presented his deranged viewpoint that there is a fiscal silver lining to the suffering and death that the virus has already caused. Surely the families of the victims will be pleased to hear this (video below):

“A lot of people are staying here. They’re going to be doing their business here. They’re going to be traveling here. They’ll be going to resorts here. And, you know, we have a great place … we’re going to have Americans staying home.”

Virtually everything in that comment is patently false and without even a hint of factual basis. First of all, there is no evidence that Americans are traveling more within the U.S. To the contrary, more people are avoiding all travel, even domestically. Airlines are canceling flights due to the absence of bookings. As for doing more business, that too is unsupported by any data. Many Americans are staying home rather than risk exposure in public places like restaurants and theaters. Businesses themselves are canceling participation in conferences and trade shows, and they are limiting their employees’ travel.

What’s more, even if there were some sliver of truth to Trump’s bizarrely rosy scenario, it wouldn’t provide an economic benefit for the country. That’s because the U.S. makes more money from the spending by tourists coming here than it would lose from Americans going overseas. So there would be a net loss of revenue if Americans spend at home, while foreigners decline to visit.

There is also something notable about the alleged revenue that Trump falsely claimed would be realized by a virus-driven quarantine of travelers. Virtually all of it would come from businesses that Trump himself operates (hotels, resorts, etc.). How convenient! But the fact that the stock market has declined sharply indicates that most investors believe that the broader American business landscape is going to be hurt severely by the repercussions of this budding pandemic.

The impact on the economy by the coronavirus is really the only thing that Trump cares about. And even that isn’t because he’s concerned about people’s financial welfare. He’s only worried about how it will affect his prospects for reelection. Consequently, he needs to lie about both the inherent dangers the virus portends for human life, as well as how it influences the direction of the market. And anyone dumb enough to believe Trump’s self-serving blather is going to end up much sicker and poorer.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

HOLY CRIPE: Fox News Blames Stock Market Plunge On – Bernie Sanders?

Posted by on February 24, 2020 at 12:15 pm. 3 Comments :

American investors woke up Monday morning to see a devastating sell off on Wall Street and other markets around the world. The uncontested view of economic experts is that the sharp decline resulted from growing concerns about the coronavirus (Covid-19) as it continues to spread. Factories in China are shut down. Trade is being curtailed. International festivals and conferences have been canceled. The global financial impact is undeniable.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

Well, undeniable everywhere but on Fox News, where good news is always due to the heavenly inspired works of Donald Trump, and bad news can only be the work of Satan’s minions in the Democratic Party. Fox News host Charles Payne, in what may be the most idiotic economic analysis of the year to date, sought to carry out that doctrine during an in interview as the markets were in the process of imploding (video below). He was asked by the allegedly “straight news” anchor, Ed Henry, this brazenly leading question:

“Is the sell off all coronavirus, or is this the first time the markets are open since Bernie Sanders took control of the Democratic battle?”

The audacity that it takes to allow that question to slither through one’s lips is impressive. It certainly is the first time the markets have been open since the Nevada primary caucus, but that has nothing to do with the sell off on Wall Street. How would that explain the sell off in markets around the world where Sanders is not running for anything? What’s more, Sanders’ win in Nevada is hardly “taking control” (a loaded term in itself) of the Democratic battle. It is just the third contest out of fifty (plus territories), and represents a small percentage of votes cast and delegates acquired.

Payne’s response to Henry’s stridently biased question was that “The Bernie factor is finally rearing its head in the stock market.” He then rattled off a list of companies in the health sector that are suffering big losses. Of course health-related companies would naturally be hurt by news of an impending global pandemic. And that harm would be throughout the world, just as it is currently playing out. But that obvious fact was incomprehensible to Payne and his Fox colleagues. Their deliberately dishonest banter continued with the following exchange:

Sandra Smith: Can you directly attribute that loss to Bernie Sanders?
Payne: Absolutely…there’s absolutely no doubt. [later adding] This is the first time, I think, that Wall Street has taken Bernie Sanders very seriously.

“Absolutely no doubt”? Neither Wall Street, nor anyone else, should take Fox News seriously. Payne is not just speculating on a possible contributing factor. He is insisting that Wall Street’s alleged fear of Bernie Sanders is undeniably the only cause of the worst drop in the Dow since December of 2018. That’s not just glaringly false, it’s painfully stupid and grossly irresponsible. Ironically, throughout this segment the chyron on Fox News read: “STOCK MARKET SELLOFF ON CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS”

Payne is supposed to be one of Fox’s financial experts (his own program is on the Fox Business Network), although like everyone else at State TV, he weaves his right-wing opinions into all of his comments. He recently made the bizarre assertion that “Wall Street Loves Donald Trump,” as if that was a positive endorsement for his reelection. And like many of the men on Fox, Payne has been charged with sexual assault. Fox settled a lawsuit with Scottie Nell Hughes, a former contributor, who had accused Payne of rape.

The political biases of Fox News are not news to anyone. And with the advent of Donald Trump, they have become even more conspicuously partisan. But this ludicrous attack on Sanders is grotesquely out of bounds, even for Fox. They are fully indoctrinated into the Trump Cult. And nothing better demonstrates that then this asinine attempt to blame Sanders for a pandemic-driven market decline that he clearly had nothing to do with. There is apparently a virus spreading through the Fox News studios that is turning all their brains into oatmeal.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

SO WHAT? ‘Wall Street Loves Donald Trump’ Says Trump-Fluffing Fox News Flunky

Posted by on February 14, 2020 at 12:58 pm. 2 Comments :

Perhaps the most frequently cited argument Donald Trump leans on to convince people he should be reelected is the performance of the stock market and the economy during his presidency. He is anxious for the America people to examine those factors when deciding who to vote for in November. And they really should. Because if they actually do he’ll be in big trouble.

Donald Trump, Stock Market Crash

Contrary to Trump’s relentless assertions that the economy is booming, there were significant weaknesses that are present and getting worse. The manufacturing sector is currently in recession. Consumer spending and industrial output are declining. The GDP grew at a measly 2.3% in 2019, far below Trump’s promised 6%. Wage growth is down, and the only upside was due to the increases in the minimum wage implemented in Democratic states, and opposed by Trump and the GOP.

So based on that record of abject failure, Fox News is getting behind Trump’s cheerleading and rooting for the bad guys on the economic playing field: Wall Street. The stock market has never been an accurate indicator of economic health. It merely represents what institutional investors think about the valuation of equities, which fluctuate independent of the broader economy. The economy, on the other hand, is comprised of many other factors such as consumption, employment, wages, trade, and inflation.

Most Americans do not own stocks, either individually or in retirement plans, such as the 401Ks, that Trump is always bragging – falsely – are making everyone rich. He did this again just this week. But on Friday’s episode of Fox & Friends on Fox News, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes invited Fox Business host Charles Payne to rail on Democrats, saying that “There’s no clear, good candidate on the Democratic side.” He then went on to malign them all for not garnering support from Wall Street, as if that’s a bad thing:

“If you listen to the policies and here on Wall Street, you don’t really want to put a lot of money into any of these candidates. They’re telling you they’re gonna attack your wealth. Wall Street loves Donald Trump.”

Indeed! Wall Street does love Trump. That’s because he panders to them in every way imaginable. His tax cuts for corporations, his termination of regulations that protect workers and the environment, and his constant complaints about the Federal Reserve not lowering interest rates (which would have an enormous benefit for him personally), are all major pluses for big business.

Why Fox News believes that touting Wall Street’s love for Trump is a positive thing for his reelection is puzzling. The majority of Americans have not been looking for Wall Street’s favorite candidate before making a voting decision. They do not value Wall Street’s endorsement. Has anyone ever heard of a candidate boasting support from Goldman Sachs? But on Fox News this was presented as something that would excite average Americans. And the glassy-eyed in-studio audience of Trump cultists obediently applauded the comment.

For the record, this has not always been the position taken by the Trumpists. During the 2016 campaign Trump tried to label Hillary Clinton as being “owned by Wall Street.” But now that Trump is in the White House and his policies are propping up the upper crusters, he is all for being Wall Street’s puppet.

However, even in this regard Trump underperforms. The stock market growth under President Obama exceeded that of Trump, but Obama didn’t have to employ short-term trickery like tax cuts or deregulation to succeed. He just managed the country’s affairs in a responsible manner that produced organic, sustainable growth. Trump, on the other hand, is presiding over a sandcastle economy that is heading for a major recession. And that’s something that Trump himself recognized prior to his political career when he said that “I’ve been around for a long time and it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” Here he is in his own words:

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s Dementia Shifts to High Gear as Impeachment Trial Winds Down

Posted by on February 1, 2020 at 2:18 pm. 6 Comments :

On Friday afternoon the cowardly and compromised Republicans in the Senate voted to allow Donald Trump to become America’s first de facto emperor. They endowed him with blatantly unconstitutional powers that would permit him to openly violate laws, suppress dissent, and engage in overt acts of tyranny so long as he deems it in the public interest. That is not what the Founders and Framers intended.

Donald Trump

This congressional betrayal was justified by the flimsiest of arguments. The Senate GOP has taken the position that Trump’s crimes were merely “inappropriate,” as opposed to criminal, and therefore not subject to reprimand. Emboldened by these events, Trump has withdrawn into his Mar-A-Lago bunker to wallow in this ascension to monarchism and virtually unchallangeable reign. In the morning hours of Saturday he celebrated with tweets that exalted himself as “America’s Greatest President” who is putting on “The Greatest Show On Earth.”

Setting aside Trump’s slobbering, narcissistic adoration of himself, everything else in those tweets was either grossly misrepresented or utterly false. Lou Dobbs of the Fox News business channel is one of the Fox family’s most ardent Trump-fluffers. But his show is hardly a national success. It has no business programming competition because CNBC is airing reruns of shows like Shark Tank at the same time. And Dobbs’ audience is about a quarter of the size of his time period competition on MSNBC. As for Dobbs covering Trump “fairly & objectively,” that’s so hysterically ludicrous it hardly warrants a response.

Trump’s claim that his “poll numbers are the highest since election,” is a pitiful statistic to brag about. His approval rating is sitting on an abysmal 44 percent, and has never hit 50 at any time during his presidency. That’s an achievement no other president can claim. Even the Fox News poll shows Trump is broadly unpopular. His disapproval, however, remains well above a majority of the American people, as it has for the last three years. There is even a majority favoring his impeachment and removal from office.

Trump’s ego is now reliant on being fed by his evermore frequent cult rallies. He believes that the glassy-eyed disciples who show up for the free, Trump-vangelical, revival meetings represent the mainstream of America. But what’s even more indicative of his mental infirmity is that he thinks he puts on a “great” show. That’s only true if you really like the tedious repetition of moldy lies and fetid talking points.

Trump also posted a picture of himself “exercising” on the golf course. That’s his way of pretending that he isn’t bothered by having been impeached, which regardless of how the Senate votes next week, will permanently stain his legacy that is already bursting with failures and embarrassments. For instance, he is conspicuously ignoring the news that 2019 was a dismal year for the U.S. economy. It achieved a paltry 2.3% growth rate. 2018 and 2017 weren’t any better (2.9% and 2.4% respectively). And that’s after Trump had promised that his tax scam and other economic policies would produce growth of up to six percent:

TRUMP (Dec 16, 2017): The economy now is at 3%. Nobody thought it would be anywhere close. I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.

Trump also ignored the 600+ point drop on the Dow Jones on Friday. That brings the decline of the last two weeks to 1,100 points. Trump is always quick to tweet about stock market gains, but then clams up when it goes the other way. That’s how his psychotic obsession with exalting himself as all-knowing and infallible drives his obsessive behavior. But as time wears on him, his mental state is showing signs of deterioration. And that is evident in his public appearances more than anywhere else. As seen here:

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Real Horror Show: Trump vs Trump on Democrats and the Economy

Posted by on December 6, 2019 at 11:59 am. 4 Comments :

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report for the month of November on Friday morning. Its top-line numbers looked pretty good, although there are caveats that need to taken into consideration, such as the fact that in November 42,000 striking GM auto workers went back to work at the conclusion of the strike.

Donald Trump Rally Trash

Nevertheless, Donald Trump does what he always does whenever there is some ostensibly good news reported: He takes credit for it. Of course, there is nothing in Trump’s record that can be plausibly cited as having any impact on the labor market. In fact, virtually every initiative that might help American workers has been bottled up in congress by GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, including infrastructure projects and a minimum wage increase. But didn’t stop Trump from tweeting that…

As usual, Trump is speculating about imaginary world that would be a utopia were not for his political foes conspiring against him – and America – at every turn. That is the textbook reaction of a malignant narcissist who has convinced himself of his indisputable supremacy. What it is not, however, is anything recognizable as the truth.

Many studies have been published that prove that the economy almost always does better during Democratic administrations than Republican. Nine of the last 10 recessions have been under Republicans. And since World War II, 24.4 million more jobs created under Democratic presidents. Also, real GDP growth was 44% higher under Democratic presidents. Meanwhile, unemployment has been 18% higher under GOP presidents.

That said, perhaps one of the most relevant voices in this debate is that of Donald Trump who, in 2004, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “I’ve been around for a long time and it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.” Here he is in his own words:

So Trump may have correctly labeled the economic hard times our country has endured as a “horror show,” but he has forgotten who the real monsters are. It isn’t really surprising that Democrats have performed better economically. The Republican agenda is tightly focused on corporations and the wealthy who horde their prosperity. Only when the middle class prospers does the broader economy succeed. The Republican economy is currently running record deficits and running on fumes that will eventually choke the nation into recession. And if the country wants to return to its past healthy economic environment, it had better reject the Republican facade of growth and embrace the real world results of the Democrats.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

BULL SCHITT! Trump Resorts to Infantile Profanities to Sell His Lies About the Economy

Posted by on November 16, 2019 at 1:46 pm. 6 Comments :

Remember when Donald Trump was elected and pundits speculated about when his raw and rancid campaign persona would transition into something more presidential? Yeah, that was great. The naivete of the media persisted for months, and some stubborn holdouts are still expecting Trump to pivot from his bombastic bullying to something closer to a statesman. Good luck with that.


On Saturday morning’s regularly scheduled Trump Tweetstorm, the Crybaby-in-Chief unleashed a typically dishonest tirade. It was plainly intended to thrust the nation into fear of the Democrats’ efforts to hold Trump accountable for his cornucopia of impeachable crimes. Nevermind that a majority of the nation favor his impeachment and removal from office, even according to polling by Fox News. The recent impeachment hearings in Congress have clearly flustered the President, as members of his own administration are testifying to his illegal conduct. Consequently, he is reaching for far flung fantasies to frighten his glassy-eyed disciples into propping up his rapidly deflating ego. He tweeted that…

“Pelosi & Schitt”? Is anyone else concerned that our president has the emotional maturity of six year old who was dropped on his head ten or twenty times? And for those who might try to excuse this as an unfortunate typo, be aware that this isn’t the first time that the Trumplet has sunk to this level of asininity. He is merely expressing himself at the level that is natural for him. And coincidentally, it’s the same level as his cult worshiping followers.

As for his stock market prognostications, Trump could not be farther from reality. Consistent with his recent relentless lying about the economy, his fear mongering that the market would crash and thrust the nation into a depression if he were impeached has no factual basis. Particularly because all the evidence shows that the stock markets have performed better during Democratic administrations than when Republicans were in charge.

What’s more, Trump’s motivations with regard to the economy are uniquely personal. All he is looking for is a short-term stimulative effect on the stock market. That’s partly because he wants to artificially boost the market in advance of the 2020 presidential election to enhance his own reelection prospects. But Trump is also a failed businessman who has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, much of it with variable-rate loans. When he took office in 2017 he was the most indebted president in history, owing more than $350 million to Deutsche Bank alone. That debt is expensive to service. But when interest rates go down, as he has been prodding the Fed to do, so do the costs of servicing that debt, and he saves literally millions of dollars.

To be sure, there is a recession on the horizon. It is unarguably the Trump Recession that is the result of his reckless policies. Among them, there was the tax scam reform bill that cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy while throwing crumbs to everyone else. That has produced the biggest annual deficit in the nation’s history, reaching into the trillions for the first time. That, in turn, has resulted in the highest federal debt ever, exceeding $22 trillion. Other signs of the recession include…

  • Equity outflows into the relative safety of bonds
  • Interest rate cuts that are generally done when the economy is weak
  • Trump’s tariffs causing bankruptcies and job losses
  • Tepid GDP growth of 1.9% (well short of the 4% to 6% Trump promised)
  • Manufacturing declines
  • Weak wage growth
  • The highest income inequality ever

So Trump’s boasting of the Dow hitting 28,000 doesn’t really mean much. In fact, it’s really just a Wall Street head fake that occurs prior to almost every downturn. Institutions are buying equities to drive prices up so that they can sell high into the rising market. When they do the rest of the market – and most citizen investors – will be stuck holding stocks worth half as much. Smart investors are getting out now, as indicated by the inflows into bonds noted above.

No one can predict with precision when the recession will hit. But when it does you can rest assured that Trump will blame it on Democrats. That’s true whether he’s impeached or not. His story changes to fit the circumstances. In recent weeks Trump has tweeted that his impeachment is a drag on the stock market:

However, now that the impeachment hearings have gone public and are much bigger news than ever, he’s celebrating new highs in the market. So that must mean that impeachment is boosting the markets. Right? Well, only if you expect Trump’s babbling to be honest or consistent or logical. And if you do, you’re probably already headed for a severe depression.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Dumb Trump Lies: My Most Asked Question at G7 is ‘Why Does American Media Hate America?’

Posted by on August 25, 2019 at 12:20 pm. 3 Comments :

The leaders of the seven largest national economies in the world (the Group of Seven, or G7) are currently meeting in Biarritz, France. There is surely much to discuss about international trade, currencies, investments, labor, the climate crisis, and more. But Donald Trump, alone among his colleagues, is fixated on an issue that has long been a fetish that he can’t seem to shake off.

Donald Trump

While in France Trump has predictably tweeted up a storm about a variety of matters that have nothing to do with the G7 summit. He wished happy birthdays to Sean Connery and Regis Philbin. He thanked Fox News clowns Diamond & Silk for a flattering tweet that was more than a month old. He defended his blasphemous assertion that he was “the Chosen One” and the “second coming of God.” And he kept his Twitterati apprised of every time he had a meal.

However, by far Trump’s pronouncements revolved around his paranoid obsession with the media. It’s a topic so consuming that he virtually ignores everything else going on at at this annual gathering. At least seven times he whined about one complaint or another with the press that he regards as “the enemy of the people.” And this hyper-concentration on this subject managed to make the full circle back to a bizarre projection of his own neuroses onto others. In the course of this dissembling, Trump manufactures flagrant lies to support his delusions. For instance:

So Trump wants people to believe that the heads of the world’s biggest countries are all concerned, not with critical matters of international economics, but with Trump’s personal battle with the press that he despises. He tries to pretend that the problem is with media hating America, as opposed to the media simply doing its job by reporting on him and his administration’s efforts to ignore looming threats. He is not America. Trump also accuses the press of rooting for the country to fail when, in fact, they are only covering the very real danger signs in the economy. Dangers that he himself is responsible for, and may even have intended for his own benefit.

In addition to this ludicrous assertion that all the other world leaders are hounding him with questions about the press, Trump also tweeted that “The Media is destroying the Free Press!” Which is like saying that the shoes are destroying those things you wear on your feet. He claimed the press is trying to “force a Recession.” Which, if the past is any indicator, would likely hurt the media more than most other businesses. He said that the media’s purpose in destroying itself is to hurt his prospects for reelection. Which is a pretty unselfish thing to do, don’t you think?

Trump also tweet-bragged about disreputable polling in order to stroke his own fragile ego. But he forgot to note that even a couple of his favorite pollsters showed him at low points of the year. And he twice ranted about Fox News hiring former Democratic National Committee official, Donna Brazile, falsely accusing her of giving Hillary Clinton debate questions. He’s still obsessing over the 2016 election.

It would be nice to say that the American people can rest assured that their President is hard at work in France, hammering out global solutions with other leaders. But no one thought that was going to happen anyway. As usual, he is embarrassing himself and the country with his ignorance, incompetence, and narcissism. And he continues to make the case for his impeachment and/or commitment to an institution – penal or mental, take your pick.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.