A Tweet For Everything: What Trump Said About the Stock Market Just Six Months Ago

The current President of the United States has shown repeatedly that he is an unstable and ill-informed custodian of the nation’s resources. Donald Trump has a tenuous grip on the complexities of economics, and reacts out of panic and vengeance more than careful study and reason. As a result the country has been burdened with policies that work against the interests of its citizens.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

About six months ago Trump joined with the Republican Congress to pass a tax reform bill that was widely criticized as a giveaway to the wealthy that would balloon the national debt by trillions of dollars. Trump celebrated the legislative victory at a White House ceremony where he reduced it to flagrantly personal terms saying that “It’s always a lot of fun when you win.” It didn’t get a single vote from Democrats.

Republicans, however, were swelling with pride, despite the unfavorable public response shown in most polls. The Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, said confidently that “When people see their paychecks getting bigger in February […] that’s going to change its popularity, I am convinced.” The GOP Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, gloated that “My view of this is, if we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work.”

I hope he’s dusted off his resume, because the latest polling shows that the Trump Tax Scam is less popular now than ever. It currently has about thirty-four percent approval from the American people. Which isn’t surprising considering the fact that it was crafted to benefit corporations and the rich. Which makes this Trump tweet from December 14, 2017, all the more ironic and sad:

Well, that rosy scenario has wilted. Trump told reporters when the bill passed that “the results will speak for themselves.” Six months later it’s clear that his prediction is true, in the worst possible way. Workers have not received the benefits they were promised. Businesses are taking their profits and putting them into stock buybacks that benefit the executives. Harley Davidson announced today that is the latest company to be moving some of their operations (and jobs) out of the country.

On top of that, the stock market suffered a serious decline on Monday with the Dow Jones down 328 points (1.33%), and the Nasdaq down 160 points (2.09%). The market is negative by almost two percent year-to-date, and is down over 500 points since the tax bill was signed. Even more troubling is that it is off about 2,300 points from its high in January. You don’t hear Trump talking about any of that.

Short term movement in the market is never a good indicator of trends over time. But Trump’s boasting about the market’s performance has blown up in his face because he doesn’t understand it in even the simplest terms. And the trading in the wake of the tax bill, Trump’s punitive tariffs, and associated red flags in bonds and overseas markets are telling us a cautionary tale. At some point the markets are going to reverse course, as they always do, and it may come sooner rather than later. But Trump’s mismanagement of the economy has left us with few and/or weak tools with which to respond. The smart money is taking protective measures, and so should we all.

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

Trump Maligns the Red Hen Restaurant as ‘Filthy’, But It’s Cleaner Than Trump’s Foul Rattraps

True to form, Donald Trump is once again demonstrating why he is such a divisive and embarrassing figure. Following the incident where the Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, Virginia asked Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to leave, Sanders illegally tweeted her reaction. In the process she identified the restaurant, its location, and it’s owner. This made the business and its staff the target of vile assaults and death threats by outraged StormTrumpers.

Donald Trump Chicken

Sanders misrepresented the reason for her ouster as being because she works for the President. That’s not true. I t was because of her own support for discriminatory practices, mistreatment of immigrant children, and lying to the American people on a daily basis. There is reasonable debate over whether the restaurant should have asked her to leave, but there is no question that using her official Twitter account to call out the restaurant was a violation of federal ethics laws. And on Monday morning Donald Trump escalated that violation to the Oval Office by tweeting:

Technically, the ethics law that Sanders violated does not apply to the president or vice-president. They are specifically exempted for some reason. However the underlying ethics still apply. And Trump’s rabid outburst is further proof of his crudeness, dishonesty, and unfitness to serve. His intention is clearly to bring harm to a private business because of political differences. And it’s consistent with his sociopathic tendencies and lust for personal revenge.

What makes this even more disgusting is that Trump is maligning the Red Hen falsely. The restaurant has no outstanding violations of any health regulation. But Trump cannot say the same thing about his gross restaurants. The Daily Beast has compiled the rap sheet on Trump’s businesses. Here are a few excerpts:

The Red Hen “passed its most recent health inspection with flying colors. State authorities found no violations when they visited the restaurant in February, and gave the Red Hen their best possible health-risk rating.”

“In April, Washington D.C. inspectors visited the Trump International Hotel and found 10 health-code violations, including raw meat stored above ready-to-eat foods and containers of flour stored next to a hand sink that lacked a splash guard. Inspectors also found that the hotel was operating a number of on-site kitchens without city permits to do so. The hotel was given a ‘moderate risk’ rating based on that visit.

“Inspectors conducted a follow-up visit in May, and found that the Trump hotel had failed to comply with instructions to correct some of those violations, including the permitting issue. It maintained the “moderate risk” category.”

“BLT Prime, the steakhouse at Trump’s D.C. hotel, had many of the same issues. It was also given a ‘moderate risk’ rating in April, when inspectors recorded the same raw-meat storage issues as the hotel and a lack of signage in the kitchen instructing employees to wash their hands.”

“Trump’s Doral golf club outside Miami has fared even worse: Between its main kitchen, banquet hall, cafe, patio grill, and bungalows, inspectors have found 524 health-code violations since 2013, including a number that resulted in fines. Among inspectors’ findings were multiple spottings of live and dead cockroaches (they noted 20-25 live ones visibly present in the main kitchen during one 2015 visit), ‘slimy/mold-like build-up’ in coolers and freezers, and holes in kitchen walls.”

If Trump really wants people to abide by his “rule,” they should avoid his establishments like the plague (literally). What he’s done by posting this unethical attack is provide additional evidence of what a nauseating person he is, and what nauseating businesses he runs. There is one thing certain about his rule that most Americans can see: Donald Trump really is “dirty on the inside.”

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