Worse than inflation: Let’s remember Trump’s real record in office

Anyone who looks back on the Trump years as a golden time when things were so much better isn’t remembering reality

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Columnist

PUBLISHED JUNE 7, 2024 9:48AM (EDT)

Public opinion polls about the current presidential race are mystifying in a lot of ways. How can it be that the twice impeached, convicted felon Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party again? As inexplicable as it is to many of us, I think after eight years we have to accept that almost half the country is beguiled by the man while the other half looks on in abject horror and carry on from there. But as much as we may be dismayed by this adoration and fealty to Trump the man, it’s still maddening that so many voters — including even Democrats — insist that everything was so much better when Donald Trump was president. I can’t believe that people have forgotten what it was really like. By almost any measure it was an epic sh**show. 

One obvious explanation is that Trump lies relentlessly about his record. So after a while people start to believe him. According to Trump, we had unprecedented prosperity, the greatest foreign policy, the safest, the cleanest, the most peaceful world in human history and it immediately turned into a toxic dystopia upon his departure from the White House. 

What people think they miss about the Trump years was the allegedly great pre-pandemic economy and the world peace that he brought through the sheer force of his magnetic personality.

The reality, of course, was far different.

From the day after the election, Trump’s presidential tenure was a non-stop scandal. Even in the early days of the transition, there were substantial and well-founded charges of corruption, nepotism and collusion with foreign adversaries. There was the early firing of Trump’s national security advisor, the subsequent firing of the FBI director and eventually the appointment of a special counsel. He did manage to set a record while in the White House: the highest number of staff and cabinet turnovers in history, 85%. Some were forced out due to their unscrupulous behavior, others quit or were fired after they refused to carry out unethical or illegal orders ordered by the president. This continued throughout the term until the very last days of his presidency when a handful of Cabinet members, including the attorney general, resigned over Trump’s Big Lie and refusal to accept his loss. 

Yes, those were really good times. Let’s sign on for another four years of chaos, corruption and criminality.

Don’t let MAGA theatrics fool you: Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions are not helping him

But, let’s face facts. What people think they miss about the Trump years was the allegedly great pre-pandemic economy and the world peace that he brought through the sheer force of his magnetic personality. None of that is remotely true. The Trump economy was the tail end of the longest expansion in history begun under President Barack Obama and the low interest rates that went with it. Nothing Trump did added to it and he never lived up to even his own hype:

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.”If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%. By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

Inflation started its rise at the beginning of the pandemic (Trump’s last year) and continued to rise sharply in the first year of the Biden administration before it started to come back down. The reasons are complex but the fact that it was lower under Trump is simply a matter of timing. Trump’s economy was good but it wasn’t great even before the pandemic. He had higher unemployment than we have now, he blew out the deficit with his tax cuts and his tariffs accomplished zilch. Sure, the stock market was roaring but it’s even higher now.

Unlike Trump, who simply rode an already good economy, Biden started out with the massive crisis Trump left him and managed to dig out from under it in record time. No other country in the world has recovered as quickly and had Trump won re-election there’s little evidence in his record that he could have done the same. All he knows is tariffs and and tax cuts and he’s promising more of the same. 

On the world stage, he was a disaster. From his ill-treatment of allies to his sucking up to dictators from Kim Jong Un to Vladimir Putin, everything Trump did internationally was wrong. He was impeached for blackmailing the leader of Ukraine to get him dirt on Joe Biden, for goodness sakes! Does that sound like a sound foreign policy decision? The reverberations of his ignorant posturing will be felt for a generation even if he doesn’t win another term.

And despite the alleged peacenik’s boast that he never had a war while he was president, it’s actually a lie. The US had troops in Afghanistan fighting throughout his entire term despite his promise to withdraw and there was a very ugly drone war carried out throughout his term. Trump bombed Syria and assassinated Iranian leaders and did all the things American presidents had been doing ever since 9/11. His only answer today to the vexing problems that are confronting Biden in Ukraine and Israel is to fatuously declare “it never would have happened” if he were president. On Gaza, Trump’s solution is “finish the problem” and I don’t think there’s any question about what he means by that. 

Trump’s labor record was abominable, his assaults on civil rights and civil liberties were horrific and he did nothing positive on health care. There was the Muslim ban, family separations, the grotesque response to the George Floyd protests and the rollback of hundreds of environmental regulations. And then there was January 6.

Trump, who called himself the greatest jobs president in history, was the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to depart office with fewer jobs in the country than when he entered. He can say that doesn’t count because of the pandemic but so much of that was his fault that it actually is. It was his crucible and he failed miserably.

His administration had disbanded the pandemic office and failed to replenish the stockpiles of medical supplies so we already started out ill-prepared. He denied the crisis at first, and we learned from Bob Woodward’s interview that he knew very well how deadly it was, he lied, he put his son-in-law and some college buddies in charge of logistics. He pushed snake oil cures and disparaged common sense public health measures because they threatened his desire for a quick economic revival despite the fact that Americans were dropping dead by the thousands every single day. And, as always, he blamed everyone else for his problems. COVID killed far more Americans than other peer nations and it was due to Trump’s failed leadership. 

For all these reasons, anyone who looks back on the Trump years as a golden time when everything was so much better isn’t remembering the reality of those four awful years. There are worse things in life than inflation. 

• “The American Dream is dying”: Democrats’ main selling point “is not a winning message”
• “Trump is all dominance, all the time”: New research reveals “his most formidable political asset”
• Biden baits Trump into a debate trap

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

The GOP Then!

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 7, 2023

On August 6, 1880, Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield gave one of his most famous speeches. Then a congressional representative from Ohio, Garfield was in New York City to make peace with Roscoe Conkling, a Republican kingmaker who hated him and his insistence on clean government.

In the evening, Garfield spoke to a crowd of well-wishers, made up in large part of men who had fought in the Civil War, as Garfield had. The one-time college professor spoke directly to the “Boys in Blue,” telling them “how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it.” He told them that they, the soldiers of the Civil War, represented the same ideas of union embraced by the men who framed the Constitution.

“Gentlemen,” said Garfield to great applause, “ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet to-night as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war.”

In 1880, four years after unreconstructed southern Democrats had taken control of all the former Confederate states and cemented the process of taking the vote away from Black men, Garfield promised that “we will remember our allies who fought with us.” He explained: “Soon after the great struggle began, we looked behind the army of white rebels, and saw 4,000,000 of black people condemned to toil as slaves for our enemies; and we found that the hearts of these 4,000,000 were God-inspired with the spirit of liberty, and that they were all our friends.”

As the crowd applauded, he continued: “We have seen white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union; but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black skin.” To great cheers, he went on: “Our comrades escaping from the starvation of prison, fleeing to our lines by the light of the North star, never feared to enter the black man’s cabin and ask for bread.” “That’s so!” yelled a man in the crowd. “In all that period of suffering and danger, no Union soldier was ever betrayed by a black man or woman.”

“[S]o long as we live we will stand by these black allies,” Garfield said. “We will stand by them until the sun of liberty, fixed in the firmament of our Constitution, shall shine with equal ray upon every man, black or white, throughout the Union. Fellow-citizens, fellow-soldiers, in this there is the beneficence of eternal justice, and by it we will stand forever….” To wild cheers, Garfield concluded: “[T]he Republic rises on the glorious achievements of its dead and living heroes to a higher and nobler national life. We must stand guard over our past as soldiers, and over our country as the common heritage of all.”

In an era in which the smart money said the Democrats, with their promise to overturn the Reconstruction laws that established a legal framework for racial equality, would win the 1880 election, Garfield squeaked into the White House.

But he did not live long enough to put his vision into law. After his death, the Republican Party slid away from the protection of equal rights, focusing instead on protecting big business, its leaders looking the other way as state laws increasingly kept Black Americans and immigrants from voting so long as that same focus on state power prevented national regulation of business.

But those who believed in civil rights never gave up. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organized “to promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States,” and worked to secure “complete equality before the law,” including voting rights.

NAACP members publicized racial atrocities and insisted that authorities enforce the laws already on the books. By the 1960s, those protecting Black rights ramped up their efforts to register voters and to organize communities to support political change. When voter registration workers disappeared during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, popular anger at their disappearance gave Democratic president Lyndon Baines Johnson leverage to pressure Congress to act. It passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in part to make it easier to vote.

After voters put Johnson back into the White House in November 1964, voting rights activists stepped up their efforts. In Selma, Alabama, where the voting rolls were 99% white even though Black Americans outnumbered white Americans, law enforcement officers harassed activists. After officers beat and shot an unarmed man marching for voting rights in a town near Selma, Black leaders planned a march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to voter suppression.

Law enforcement officers met the protesters on March 7, 1965, with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. On March 15, Johnson addressed a national televised joint session of Congress to ask it to pass a national voting rights act. “Our fathers believed that if [their] noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy,” he said. “The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people.”

He submitted to Congress voting rights legislation, and Congress delivered.

On August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act to guarantee Black Americans the right to vote.

“Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield,” Johnson told the American people in a televised joint session of Congress. The Civil War had promised equality to all Americans, but that promise had not been fulfilled. “Today is a towering and certain mark that, in this generation, that promise will be kept.”

“I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy,” Johnson said.

That resolve did not hold. In the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act. Republican-dominated states immediately found ways to keep minority voters from the polls and their votes from being counted, and in 2020, then-president Trump tried to throw out the votes of people in majority Black districts in order to overturn the results of that year’s presidential election. On July 10, 2023, House Republicans introduced a sweeping “election integrity” bill that would loosen campaign finance regulations and make it harder to vote.

Eight days later, on July 18, Democrats in the House and Senate reintroduced the Freedom to Vote Act, which would make it easier for all Americans to vote, end partisan gerrymandering, require transparency in campaign donations to try to limit dark money in elections, and protect state and local election officials. “The story of American democracy is one of a relentless march towards further equality,” said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “The Freedom To Vote Act would rectify one of the great historic harms of our past and put us closer to our goal of a fully representative democracy.”

And then, on August 1—last Tuesday—the Department of Justice charged Trump under laws Congress passed during Reconstruction to protect the Black Americans’ political rights. Trump is charged with conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding—violating a law passed to stop Ku Klux Klan terrorists from breaking up official meetings in the late 1860s—and obstructing that proceeding: the counting of electoral votes.

Trump is also charged with conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted.”

—

Notes:

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-6-1965-remarks-signing-voting-rights-act

https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=DCA59415-4DFA-4D55-B5E7-392B81285BD3

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-the-american-promise

Upgrade to paid

What Constitutes “National Security?”

The need for a broader definition

DAN RATHER

 AND 

ELLIOT KIRSCHNER

MAY 26, 2023

What constitutes “national security?” 

It’s not meant to be a trick question, but it is one that perhaps needs to be rethought for our modern world. 

This has become all the more apparent as the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy work on a possible deal to avert a United States debt default. We wrote earlier why this is not really a “negotiation” (more like a hostage crisis), but if legislation emerges (still in doubt at the time of this writing), it’s going to contain spending caps. 

Everyone has already taken Social Security and Medicare off the table, so that leaves so-called discretionary spending, which can be divided into two buckets: the defense budget and everything else. 

The Republican viewpoint is that defense spending should remain unaffected while deep cuts are made in the “everything else” category. The Biden administration, which actually asked for more money for defense in its budget, still wants to protect as much of “everything else” as possible. 

Republicans make the point that we live in a dangerous world, with rising threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and others. This is true. And they argue that cuts to the defense department could harm “national security.”

Senate Republican Whip John Thune of South Dakota recently told The Hill, “Once they do the caps, the big fights in the appropriations process will be how money gets prioritized and allocated. For sure, the Republican priority is going to be national security” (emphasis ours). 

The phrase “national security” is often used as a synonym for the military and related functions intended to curb threats from abroad. The Department of Defense website says the agency “provides the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.” The CIA says on its website homepage that “the work we do … is vital to U.S. national security.” Then there’s the Department of Homeland Security, which basically has a synonym of “national security” in its very name. And of course the National Security Agency itself.

But if we were to define “national security” in more holistic terms as the general safety and security of the United States and its people, perhaps we should see it through a much wider aperture. The State Department is vital for our national security. So is our investment in science, the health of our children, education, our infrastructure, mitigating the dangers from the climate crisis, and on and on. 

Many Democrats are making a version of this point. “There are a lot of federal agencies that contribute directly or indirectly to national security,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed of Rhode Island in the same article from The Hill. “They’re trying to set up a zero-sum game: defense wins, domestic loses. But it doesn’t make sense because national security embraces so many different agencies.” 

While this argument is more expansive than the Republican talking points, it’s still too rooted in Washington-speak about agencies and budgets. Yes, those are currently in the crosshairs. But there is a much broader narrative that could resonate with the public to reframe the debate more permanently and may be particularly appealing for younger voters. 

For those raised during the Cold War and with memories of World War II still recent, national security could be readily envisioned in tangible military assets like aircraft carriers, missile systems, and standing armies. 

These still remain necessary aspects of the defense of the homeland and our global interests (while recognizing that the defense budget is prone to bloat and even corruption, as we did in this previous Steady piece). 

At the same time, what about national security in an age of a pandemic? Rising sea levels? And artificial intelligence? 

There are some who argue that we don’t need a strong military or that we can slash the defense budget by large percentages. But these are not mainstream positions or likely to happen. Much more concerning are those who still view national security through the antiquated lens of the 20th century. 

And recently, it’s gotten even worse. In fact, many elected officials who rage about the prospect of cuts to defense spending support actual measures that undermine our national security. 

Allowing weapons of war on our streets while obstructing commonsense gun laws undermines our national security, an effect we can measure in thousands of lost lives and the terror and trauma of mass shootings. 

Attacking marginalized groups also undermines our national security because we are weakened by division.

Promoting the “Big Lie” about stolen elections threatens our national security because it undermines our democracy. 

Banning books threatens our national security because we need a citizenry of informed critical thinkers. 

Our adversaries measure our vulnerabilities not only via our troop deployments and fighter jets. They see our political extremism, our animosities, our anger, and our selfishness and seek to exploit them. 

And frankly, they see a faction willing to blow up our economy by threatening to default on the debt unless they get their way. Talk about a threat to national security.

COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

“After the 2020 election and the attack of January 6th, my fellow Republicans wanted me to lie. They wanted me to say that the 2020 election was stolen, that the attack of January 6th wasn’t a big deal, and that Donald Trump wasn’t dangerous. I had to choose between lying and losing my position in House leadership. America cannot remain a free nation if we abandon the truth. So as you go out to change the world, resolve that you will stand in truth. Those who are trying to unravel the foundations of our republic, who are threatening the rule of law and the sanctity of our elections, know they can’t succeed if you vote. So Class of 2023, get out and vote. This means listening and learning, including – especially – from those with whom we disagree. This means running for office.  We need you to work to defend our Constitution and defeat those who deny the sanctity of our elections.  We are entrusting our nation – and the future of freedom – to your care.”

Plus: The Corruption of Lindsey Graham, a new e-book from The Bulwark

JOE PERTICONE

MAY 9, 2023

Good afternoon and welcome to Press Pass. There are two important items in today’s edition. First, my Bulwark colleague Will Saletan has just published a powerful, deeply researched, book-length project about Lindsey Graham’s descent into MAGA corruption following the rise of Donald Trump. It’s really a story about how authoritarianism grows within a liberal democracy like ours, and I encourage you to set aside a few hours to give it the attention it deserves. It’s available to read at TheBulwark.com/LindseyGraham but also via a PDF and Kindle edition.  I’ll say more about that below. 

But we’ll start off today with the peculiar case of a group of American lawmakers whose travels abroad included a meeting with an infamous right-wing demagogue. I wrote in January about the recent Republican love affair with Italian populist ultra-conservatives like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was elected as part of a far-right coalition that swept into power in the country’s September elections. Last week, traveling American lawmakers met with one member of this Italian political movement whose CV is extreme enough that taking the meeting amounted to an act of recklessness on the Americans’ part.

Subscribe to Press Pass. In your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

Join

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a group of his fellow lawmakers met with a range of elected officials and important people during their recent two-week international congressional delegation, which included stops in Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. During a final leg in Italy last week, McCarthy and co. met with Pope Francis and Prime Minister Meloni.

But one of the other individuals the delegation met with in Italy was a man named Lorenzo Fontana. Fontana serves as the president of the Chamber of Deputies, which means that, as the speaker of Italy’s lower legislative house, he is McCarthy’s counterpart in Italian government. Fontana led McCarthy into the legislative chamber to raucous applause, and he also gave the speaker a gift: a copy of McCarthy’s grandfather’s original birth certificate. The whole of the American group—which included two Democrats, Reps. Jimmy Panetta of California (son of Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary who once held the same seat in Congress) and Jared Moskowitz of Florida—posed for a photo with Fontana. 

While meetings with a variety of international politicians made up the core of the congressional delegation’s itinerary, Fontana is different from other figures the Americans met during the trip. To be sure, he shares some beliefs in common with Prime Minister Meloni: Like her, he is an ultra-conservative who advocates the priority of the family, the upholding of tradition, the virtues of nationalism, and the importance of strict immigration policies.

What makes Fontana different from Meloni is that his right-wing populism goes far, far beyond hers. His views have pushed him to support some of the worst and most dangerous people across Europe, and he has also carved out a lane as one Italy’s leading homophobes.

Fontana is a member of Lega (the League), Italy’s very far-right party that formed a coalition with Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) last year to win the fall election. While it’s understandable that an American Republican might see conservative groups abroad as fundamentally similar to the GOP, Lega is simply not comparable to the Republican party. If it were operating in the United States, Lega would represent just a sliver of the larger GOP, a faction to the right of the Freedom Caucus whose median member would be someone like Paul Gosar, and whose still-further-right wing might be represented by someone like Richard Spencer.

Here are some highlights from Fontana’s career:

• He has embraced Golden Dawn, a Greek political party and neo-nazi group.
• He called Vladimir Putin “a light for us Westerners, who live in a great crisis of values.”
• During the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, he wore a “no to Russian sanctions” shirt. He was later invited to participate as an “election observer” in Crimea as part of Russia’s propaganda campaign justifying the invasion.
• As the Minister for Families, Fontana fought to restrict adoption and surrogacy for gay couples. He has also said same-sex parents “don’t exist.”

To be clear, McCarthy’s meeting and photo-op with Fontana do not amount to an endorsement of the latter’s views. And yes, the protocols and niceties of diplomacy hold that officials usually meet with their counterparts when traveling abroad. But those protocols are not set in stone. And for McCarthy to meet with Fontana in this way was an act of carelessness, given the way these meetings are advertised to the public. Fontana’s profile will certainly be elevated by pictures of him welcoming an American congressional delegation and presenting a gift to the speaker of the House. Further, Fontana being able to refer to an account of the meeting published on McCarthy’s own official website—where Fontana is mentioned alongside the prime minister and the pope—will do much to further legitimize him as a figure of international standing.

A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Vetting problems seem to be increasingly common for conservative lawmakers; many members of the House Republican Conference have been burned for posing with Proud Boys who were later convicted of sedition, unabashed white supremacists, and more. Of course, it’s possible that these problems might arise from more than simple negligence. Former Rep. Devin Nunes and some of Trump’s children are slated to share a stage with Hitler-praising internet personalities this coming weekend at Trump National Doral resort in Miami. It’s hard to take care to avoid associating with the hateful conspiratorial fringe if you just don’t care that much about it in the first place.

But the highest-ranking elected Republican currently in office should know better and do better, especially considering that during the same trip abroad, he showed that he won’t always take the far-right bait. Then, too, the rest of the international congressional delegation, including Panetta and Moskowtiz, should have had the foresight to have asked their staff to research the officials they met abroad to avoid exactly these problems. (Spokespeople for Panetta and Moskowitz also did not respond to requests for comment.)

Share Press Pass

The Corruption of Lindsey Graham

As I mentioned above, Bulwark writer Will Saletan has just published a remarkable deep dive on Lindsey Graham. Read it and you’ll come away with a clearer understanding of what it looks like when authoritarians corrupt liberal democracies—because you’ll know what it looked like, step by step, when it happened to ours.

Here’s a snapshot:

When an authoritarian rises to power in a democratic country, it can be a shock. But over time, the shock wears off. As the new leader tramples norms and rules, people get used to it. That’s part of what happened to Graham and his colleagues in Trump’s first year. They got used to the president’s behavior. It began to feel normal.

Normalization is corrosive. It numbs you to the authoritarian’s crimes. You stop noticing what’s happening. Or you no longer care. Or you get used to defending the leader’s abuses, as Graham did.

The second stage is more serious. Once the authoritarian’s allies have normalized his behavior, they rally around him just as they would rally around any other leader of their party. And they attack his opponents just as they would if he were a normal president.

Graham’s trajectory over the past eight years brought him very low as he sought power and influence with a leader he once despised, in the process becoming the same kind of demagogue he used to hate. Saletan’s account of this process uses Graham’s story to illustrate the mechanics of emerging authoritarianism. I hope you’ll give the whole thing a read. It is worth every minute you spend on it.

Subscribe to Press Pass

By The Bulwark  ·  Launched 4 months ago

In-depth reporting on Congress, campaigns, and the way Washington works.