Trump Wants To Be A Strongman But His Failures Show His Weakness

 

During his campaign, Donald Trump promised to solve all the country's big problems - both at home and abroad. He thought he could use the plan in Project 2025 to get it done. But after numerous executive orders and meetings, he has yet to accomplish a single one of his promises.

He promised to end this country's trade deficit with other countries. He instituted a 10% tariff on nearly every country in the world (whether we had a trade deficit with them or not), and imposed an even higher tariff on many countries (even our best allies). He has since backed down, reimposed, and backed-off the tariffs. He had expected all the other countries would flock to the White House and beg for a deal. That hasn't happened, and to date, not a single trade deal has been signed with any country.

He promised to lower the prices of groceries and other goods. But prices keep going up. Last month the inflation was over 2% more that May of 2024. And it very likely will get worse as importers start to have to pay the tariffs imposed.

He promised to deport a million undocumented immigrants a year, and said they would be the dangerous criminals that we don't want in this country. But he has fallen far short of his deportation goal, even though the arrest and deportation of noncriminals has skyrocketed by 800%. Polls are now showing most Americans don't like the cruel way the deportations are being done, or who is being deported (it's not the criminals).

He said he would end the Russian invasion of Ukraine on day one of his presidency. In his ignorance, he thought his buddy Putin would stop when asked and settle for the territory he has seized. But while Putin continues to flatter Trump, he has ignored his pleas to stop the war. Putin continues his bombing of Ukrainian citizens and his efforts to seize more territory.

Trump promised to broker a peace in Gaza. But his "friend" Netanyahu has also ignored him. Netanyahu has re-invaded Gaza, and continues to not let adequate food and medicine to enter. And he is now bombing Iran - even though Trump asked him not to do that.

Trump has claimed to be a great negotiator and deal-maker, but all negotiations have failed and no deals have been made. He has failed in everything he has tried. The one possible exception is his attack on American citizen's rights - and even that remains tied up in the court system.

Trump's fervent desire is to be a strongman (like the dictators he admires), but his string of failures show his real weakness.

Trump Is Doing What He Said He Would Do (People Should Have Listened)

The following is part of a post by economist Paul Krugman:

When democracies die, big business and wealthy individuals often play a crucial role in their demise. They provide a would-be strongman with financial support; their control of or influence over news media ensures that he receives favorable coverage, while his opponents are trashed. They do this because they expect to be rewarded with policies that favor their interests and imagine that they will in effect be shareholders in the new autocracy.

What comes next is familiar to anyone who studies history (which the oligarchs don’t.) Eventually it becomes clear that they don’t own the dictator they’ve helped install; he owns them. Maybe they’ll like some of his policies, maybe they won’t, but in any case they’re not in control — and they soon learn that criticizing the big man isn’t just fruitless, it’s dangerous.

In the past this script has typically taken a few years to play out, but this is the internet age, so right now in America the process seems to be taking only a few weeks.

Donald Trump’s decision to launch an all-out trade war, not with China, but with our neighbors and allies — who are gearing up for large-scale retaliation — probably isn’t the most important thing happening right now. I’ll talk in a minute about what is. But it has certainly come as a wake-up call for business.

It would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Actually it is funny if you’re into gallows humor. Trump spent the entire campaign proclaiming that he was a Tariff Man, promising high tariffs and asserting that we were somehow subsidizing Canada and Mexico. Yet businesses and bank analysts blithely assumed that he didn’t really mean it. On Inauguration Day he made a very specific promise: 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico by Feb. 1. Yet the newsletter I receive from Goldman Sachs summarized the day with the headline “A More Benign Tone on Tariffs.” 

The question, however, is, what did they expect? The Wall Street Journal has spent decades promoting the economic ideas of charlatans and cranks; now it’s upset to find out that cranks are in full control, but they aren’t their cranks. And Trump spent the entire campaign signaling his intention to start a destructive trade war. It’s a bit late to be shocked, shocked that he meant what he said. . . .

The trade war, drastic as it is, isn’t the most important story right now. It takes second place to what looks like a quiet takeover of the machinery of government.

Here’s how it works: Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary — whose selection was, financial types assured me, an indication that Trump wouldn’t go wild — has given associates of Elon Musk, who as far as we know aren’t even government employees let alone officials with the right security clearance, access to the computers at the Treasury department that control the federal government’s financial plumbing — that make payments to contractors, workers, everything.

This situation gives Musk’s minions the ability to download millions of Americans’ private information. But people who understand the system better than I do say that it also effectively gives them control of public spending. Congress may have passed a law mandating that money be spent for some public purpose; but Musk and company may simply, in effect, tell the system not to cut the checks.

If this is really the case, and serious people say that it is, we may already have experienced what amounts to a 21^st-century coup. There may not be tanks in the streets, but effective control of the government may already have slipped out of the hands of elected officials. . . .

All of this was entirely predictable. But there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Trump Is Again Making Promises He Won't Keep

The following is part of an op-ed by Ross Douthat in The New York Times:

Trump is back at the salesman’s game. In the last week, the man whose judicial appointees overturned Roe v. Wade and whose administration was reliably hostile to unions has condemned the six-week abortion ban signed by DeSantis, promised to magically bring the country together on abortion and indicated he’s going to counterprogram next week’s Republican presidential debate by showing up on the U.A.W. picket line.

You can see these forays as proof that Trump thinks he’s got the nomination in the bag, that the pro-life movement especially has no choice but to support him and that he can start presenting himself as a general-election candidate early.

But I suspect it’s a little more complicated than that, and that Trump’s willingness to show ideological flexibility — or, to be a bit harsher, to pander emptily to any audience he faces — has its uses in the primary campaign as well. Because what it showcases, even to primary voters who disagree with him, is an eagerness to win even at the expense of ideological consistency, an eagerness that much of American conservatism lacks.

And showcasing electability is arguably even more important for Trump in 2024 than in 2016, because he was at his weakest after the 2022 midterms, which seemed to expose his election fraud obsessions as a political disaster for the G.O.P. So by moving to the center early, while DeSantis and others try to run against him from the right, he’s counteracting that narrative, trying to prove that he’s committed to victory and not just vanity. . . .

Does Trump actually have a labor-friendly solution to the U.A.W. strike or a coherent pro-worker agenda? The answers are no and not really. But if showing public sympathy for workers and promising a 10 percent tariff on foreign goods are respectively an empty gesture and a dubious gambit, they are still a better political message than, say, what we got from Tim Scott, the candidate of pre-Trump conservatism, who suggested that the U.A.W. workers should be fired the way Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. (This kind of nonsense position, invoking Reagan’s firing of federal employees in the completely different context of a private-sector fight where employers can’t fire strikers, is exactly what the term “zombie Reaganism” was invented to describe.)

Likewise, can Trump actually mediate a national compromise on abortion by stiff-arming the pro-life movement? I wouldn’t bet on it; for better or worse, I expect his transactional relationship with anti-abortion organizations to survive in a potential second term.

But his sudden pro-choice outreach is a cynical response to a real political problem for Republicans. If you aspire to restrict abortion beyond the reddest states in a politically sustainable way, you need at the very least a rhetorical modulation, a form of outreach to the wavering and conflicted. And better still would be some kind of alternative offer to Americans who are pro-choice but with reservations — with the obvious form being some new suite of family policies, some enhanced support for women who find themselves pregnant and in difficulty.

But most Republicans clearly don’t want to make that kind of offer, beyond a few pro forma gestures and very modest state-level initiatives. DeSantis was quick (well, by his standards) to attack Trump for selling out the pro-life cause, and any abortion opponent should want to see Trump punished politically for that attempted sellout. But nothing in the DeSantis response was directed at the outreach problem, the political problem, the general-election problem that Trump in his unprincipled way was clearly trying to address.

And so it has been throughout the primary season thus far. Trump makes big bold promises; his rivals check ideological boxes. Trump talks like a general-election candidate; his rivals bid against one another for narrower constituencies. Scott and Nikki Haley rerun the Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio campaigns; DeSantis aims to improve on Ted Cruz’s Iowa-first strategy … but the only candidate really promising the Trumpism of 2016 is, once again, Donald Trump himself. 

Trump's Big Campaign Promise Is REVENGE!

 

The following is an op-ed by Paul Waldman in The Washington Post:

As Donald Trump rambled his way for over 100 minutes through a stream-of-consciousness speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, there was at least one moment of clarity. “In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” the former president said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

“Retribution” wasn’t an explicit catchword in Trump’s previous two campaigns, though the idea was implicit in much of the argument he made to voters. Now it might as well be the campaign’s explicit slogan: If you want revenge, vote for Trump.

The vow of “retribution,” which is now everywhere in right-wing politics, is another sign the Republican Party has put victimhood at the center of its identity, perhaps to a greater extent than ever before. To be on the right today is to believe yourself oppressed by impossibly powerful forces, including the government, the news media, the education system and a changing society that increasingly rejects your beliefs.

Every part of who you are — your race, gender, religion, ideas about the world — supposedly makes you a victim. Every “Happy Holidays” sign is an attack, every openly gay person an affront and every election you don’t win a theft of what is rightfully yours.

Enter the vow of “retribution.” This does not mean wrongs will be righted, that conditions will be improved or that if you’re hoping for concrete, material benefits from the next presidency, you’ll be satisfied. It’s not about you at all. Retribution is about the enemies who oppressed you. It’s about making them suffer, at least as much as you think you have suffered, if not more.

It takes a strong person to be victimized (even if only in their own mind) and not want to make the ones they blame suffer. But is it enough to build a presidential campaign on?

Trump has always been a curator of people’s darkest impulses, their resentments, bigotries and rage. But focusing on retribution might be an admission that after a chaotic term in office and the emergence of smarter rivals with serious potential to win over the GOP base, he doesn’t have much else to offer.

That’s not to say it couldn’t be effective. While Trump always got the most attention for his most repugnant beliefs and utterances about immigrants, members of minority groups and women, he made an argument that powerfully resonated with large swaths of the country: You have been wronged by an economic and political establishment that didn’t care about you. Vote for me and we can do something about it.

Retribution was the mostly unspoken part of that argument. First, Trump would bring boundless prosperity to neglected small towns and rural areas. Next, he would “drain the swamp” of entrenched elites so the interests of ordinary people would prevail. And if the “establishment” that never did anything for you was appalled by him, that was proof he was your best choice.

Even if he didn’t bring boundless prosperity and even if draining the swamp turned out to mean installing grifters and cronies in the federal government, you might count his presidency a success, at least on a symbolic level, if revenge was what you were after. Trump was a giant middle finger thrust in the face of everyone you hate, and he continues to drive them to distraction. Isn’t that a kind of success?

Most of his voters thought so. Though he lost his bid for reelection, in many of the Trumpiest places he performed better in 2020 than he had in 2016. You could see it in rural counties such as Cimarron County, Okla., where he went from 89 percent of the vote in 2016 to 92 percent in 2020, or Garfield County, Mont., where he went from 91 percent to 94 percent. Some people were clearly happy to reaffirm the brand of retribution he offered.

But today other candidates have a clearer idea of the future they want to create — one where retribution takes concrete form. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won’t just mock snooty intellectuals on Twitter, he’ll also engineer the ideological takeover of one state university and impose a right-wing agenda on the others. If you’re mad about an LGBTQ-friendly company, he’ll take away its cherished tax status. Take that, libs.

Other candidates can say they hate the same people the base hates. But the trick might be convincing them that, if given the opportunity, they’ll make them pay.

That’s one thing Trump can plausibly claim. This time he might not be able to credibly promise So Much Winning You’ll Get Tired of Winningagain. But a promise to make his and your enemies suffer is one he just might be able to keep.

He Didn't Make U.S. "Great" - He Leaves It In Terrible Shape

When he was running for office, Donald Trump promised to make this country great. That became his slogan -- Make America Great Again.

But it was a lie! His rich buddies may be in great shape now (after the massive tax cut they got), but most Americans are worse off than they've been in many years.

Instead of making the country great, Trump has come close to destroying it, and has seriously damaged its democratic institutions. 

To be blunt: Trump is leaving the country in worse shape than any president in modern history!

Here is part of what Stephen Collins had to say at CNN.com: 

President Donald Trump is leaving America in a vortex of violence, sickness and death and more internally estranged than it has been for 150 years.

The disorientating end to his shocking term has the nation reeling from a Washington insurrection. The FBI warned Monday of armed protests by pro-Trump thugs in 50 states, which raise the awful prospect of a domestic insurgency. Lawmakers have been briefed about a plot to surround the US Capitol by extremists inspired by Trump's false and dangerous claims the election was stolen. Health officials fear 5,000 Americans could soon be dying every day from the pandemic Trump ignored. Hospitals are swamped and medical workers are shattered amid a faltering rollout of the vaccine supposed to end the crisis.

It took 200 years for the country to rack up its first two presidential impeachments. Trump's malfeasance has led the country down that awful, divisive path twice in just more than a year. With House Democrats expected to formally impeach the President for inciting a mob assault on Congress on Wednesday, he will rely on the Republican enablers who refused to rein in his lawlessness to save him from conviction again.

Millions of Americans have bought into the delusional, poisoned fiction that an election Trump lost was stolen, and there are signs that some police and military forces have been radicalized by the grievance he stokes.

The city Trump has called home for four years is being turned into an armed camp incongruous with the mood of joy and renewal that pulsates through most inaugurations. In a symbol of a democracy under siege, the people's buildings -- the White House and the US Capitol -- are caged behind ugly iron and cement barriers.

This is the legacy President-elect Joe Biden will inherit in eight days when he swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution -- an oath that Trump trampled when inciting the Capitol attack last week from behind a bulletproof screen while buckling the cherished US chain of peaceful transfers of power. . . .

The virus is meanwhile running rampant. Eleven states and Washington, DC, just recorded their highest 7-day average of new cases of Covid-19 since the pandemic began. For the first time, the country is averaging over 3,000 deaths from the pandemic per day. Trump's outgoing head of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield warned in a recent interview with McClatchy newspapers that the pandemic would get worse for the rest of January and parts of February and that the country could see 5,000 deaths a day.

And hopes that the nation could soon turn a corner are being tempered by the glitches in the vaccine roll out. Just as with the early stages of the crisis, poor coordination between federal and local and state authorities and the overall lack of a broader distribution plan are hampering the effort.

Like everything else, it will be up to Biden to fix it.

National Debt - Another Broken Campaign Promise By Trump

(Cartoon image is by R.J. Matson in Roll Call.)

During his campaign in 2016, Donald Trump bragged that he would completely eliminate the huge national debt in 8 years. And when he took office, he had Republican majorities in both houses of Congress (the party that has always bragged that it is the party of "fiscal responsibility"). Did they take any action to eliminate, or even lower, the national debt? NO!

In fact, they did just the opposite. They passed a big increase in the military budget and then passed a tax cut (which mostly benefitted the rich and corporations). These two actions have contributed to increasing the national debt by debt by $2 trillion in Trump's first two years -- and promise to increase that debt by another trillion dollars each year in the future.

This is not just a broken campaign promise. It is terrible economic policy -- and it must be reversed.

Here is how CNN describes the ballooning national debt:

The US national debt stood at $21.974 trillion at the end of 2018, more than $2 trillion higher than when President Donald Trump took office, according to numbers released Thursday by the Treasury Department.

The national debt has been rising at an accelerated rate in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when Congress and the Obama administration approved stimulus funding in order to keep the economy afloat. 

The debt began to level off at the beginning of Trump's term, but bounced up again last year as the tax cuts passed at the end of 2017 took effect and the dramatically lower corporate tax rate lowered Treasury revenues.

As a candidate, Trump promised to "get rid of" the national debt, telling the Washington Post in 2016 that he could make the US debt-free "over a period of eight years." 

According to the Congressional Budget Office, total public debt stood at 78% of America's gross domestic product in fiscal year 2018, the highest percentage since 1950. The deficit -- or the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in over any one year -- jumped to 3.8% of GDP in 2018, up from 3.5% in 2017.

That's particularly unusual in such a strong economy without major new expenditures. If no changes are made, the CBO projects that public debt will rise to 96% of GDP by 2028. A big chunk of that -- $1.9 trillion between 2018 and 2028 -- will be due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,the CBO reported last April.

Trump Ignores "America First" In Hiring For His Businesses

One of Trump big promises in the presidential campaign was to put "America First" -- including in jobs. He said he would stop the exporting of American jobs (he hasn't), massively increase the creation of new jobs (hasn't happened), and encourage the hiring of American workers over immigrants.

That last bit must have been either a joke or a lie, because he doesn't even do that on his own properties. Note the charts above. He has not even made an effort to hire American workers at his own properties. Out of the last 144 workers hired, one has been an American while 143 have been foreigners imported to work for Trump.

This is an outrage, and a huge broken promise. Are there no Americans who want those jobs? I imagine there are plenty, but Trump doesn't want them. He wants foreigners. Why?

I suspect it is because those foreigner workers will not complain about the poverty wages he is willing to pay, and they won't try to unionize. He's afraid American workers might do both.

Trump's campaign promise to put American workers first was just campaign propaganda. He didn't mean it. These charts (from Vox.com) expose his hypocrisy.

Most People Say Trump Is Not "Draining The Swamp"

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to "drain the swamp" in Washington once elected. Has he done that? Most Americans say NO. About 65% say he is not draining the swamp (with 39% saying it has stayed the same and 26% saying he has made it worse). Only 25% think he has made progress in draining the swamp.

The chart above was made from information in a new Monmouth University Poll -- done between August 10th and 14th of a random national sample of 805 adults, with a margin of error of 3.5 points.

Trump Is NOT A Friend Of The LGBT Community

That tweet from Donald Trump is from June 14th of 2016 -- when Trump was scrounging for every vote he could get during the presidential campaign. He said he would fight for the LGBT community, and would be better for them than Hillary Clinton would be.

To say that the tweet is a bit disingenuous would be kind. It is nothing short of an outrageous LIE! That became very clear yesterday when Trump tweeted that he would ban transgendered Americans from serving in the U.S. military (a reversal of government policy which allowed them to proudly serve). He tweeted:

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Almost immediately after being sworn in, Trump began to break his promise to the LGBT community to protect their rights. He has made it clear that his administration is NOT a friend to the LGBT community -- and that he is going to try to undo any of their advances that he can.

GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has kept track of all the things the Trump administration has done to hurt the LGBT community. Here is their list of anti-LGBT actions by the Trump administration:

-- 7.12.17 – President Trump grants a one-on-one interview with Pat Robertson, a longtime anti-LGBTQ activist and Televangelist.

-- 7.10.17 – In a closed-door and unannounced opportunity, President Trump poses for a photograph with notorious anti-LGBTQ activists who wish to promote so-called “religious exemptions” that would harm LGBTQ Americans across the nation.

-- 6.29.17 - Reports revealed President Trump hired anti-transgender activist, Bethany Kozma, to the Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Rights at the US Agency for International Development.

-- 6.28.17 - The Department of Justice ejected reporters covering a DOJ Pride event hosted by LGBTQ affinity groups for federal workers.

-- 6.27.17 - The Trump Administration failed to mention the LGBTQ community in their National HIV Testing Day statement. 

-- 6.21.17 - Reporting reveals President Trump hired a lawyer who openly supported Russian President Vladimir Putin's anti-LGBTQ law banning so-called "gay propaganda" from Russia, a law that Europe’s top human rights court found to be illegal.

-- 6.17.17 - Six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS resigned saying that President Trump "simply does not care" about combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

-- 6.16.17 - An obtained internal memo from the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights reveals guidelines to dismiss complaints about bathroom access filed by transgender students. 

-- 6.15.17 - Department of Commerce removes sexual orientation and gender identity from the agency's Equal Employment Policy; LGBTQ protections have been explicitly included since 2010. Only after fierce opposition did Department of Commerce Secretary Ross change it back.

-- 6.15.17 - The Department of Education invites Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, two anti-LGBTQ organizations, to be speakers for a day-long conference on engaging fathers in their children’s education and welfare.

-- 6.15.17 - The Department of Education rolls back the Office for Civil Rights' expansive approach to investigating civil rights complaints that to protect LGBTQ students, and other marginalized communities, from discrimination at school.

-- 6.1.17 - President Trump declines to issue a presidential proclamation designating June as LGBTQ Pride Month, breaking with an eight-year precedent set by President Barack Obama to honor and support LGBTQ Americans during Pride Month.

-- 5.23.17 - The Trump Administration reveals their budget which includes proposed slashes to programs and departments critical to the LGBTQ community, including Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, and the Center for Disease Control’s HIV and AIDS programs.

-- 5.22.17 - The Trump Administration grants White House press credentials to a "reporter" from Infowars, a conspiracy outlet that regularly peddles dangerous, offensive and anti-LGBTQ content. 

-- 5.8.17 - Department of Agriculture issues new so-called "religious freedom" policy statement, a move praised by the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council. 

-- 5.4.17 - President Trump signs a "religious liberty" executive order. Although this EO does not target LGBTQ Americans, it is the first step in what could be a more broader permission slip for discrimination against the overall LGBTQ community. 

-- 4.14.17 - The Trump Administration files to dismiss a lawsuit accusing North Carolina of discriminating against the LGBTQ community in response to HB2, despite the similarities of the HB142 replacement.

-- 4.10.17: A ProPublica investigation reveals the Trump Administration appointed James Renne, a key staffer involved in the Bush-era anti-LGBTQ purge of gay government employees, to a senior role at the Department of Agriculture.

-- 3.28.17: The Trump Administration cancels plans to add the LGBTQ community to its upcoming 2020 U.S. Census, a survey conducted every decade by the federal government to help collect data about living Americans and the United States of America.

-- 3.28.17: Under his proposed budget for the U.S. Congress, The Trump Administration offered to cut HIV and AIDS research funding under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

-- 3.24.17: President Trump appointed anti-LGBTQ activist and former Heritage Foundation employee Roger Severino to lead the Health and Human Services Civil Rights Office, putting the LGBTQ community at risk of losing access to critical and affordable health care. 

-- 3.20.17: Trump Administration erases the LGBTQ community from The National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants and the Annual Program Performance Report for Centers for Independent Living, key surveys that are used to help provide care to American seniors – including disability, transportation, and caregiver support needs.

-- 2.22.17 - With help of Attorney General Sessions, President Trump rescinded Title IX protections for transgender students in our nation's schools. 

-- 2.02.17: ABC News reports that after previously committing to protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination, President Trump and his administration had drafted a "License to Discriminate" executive order which would usher in across-the-board discrimination against the LGBTQ community. 

-- 1.27.17: President Donald Trump issued an executive order to indefinitely ban Syrian refugees from entering the United States. This ban includes LGBTQ refugees fleeing the nation in fear of discrimination. 

-- 1.20.17: Minutes after Donald Trump was sworn into office, any mention of the LGBTQ community were erased from White House, Department of State, and Department of Labor websites. 

Democrats Start To Roll Out Their "Better Deal" Agenda

Some say that the Democrats didn't do well in the last election because the voters didn't know exactly what the party stands for. I'm not sure I buy that, but the party leaders have been trying to develop a plan they can all agree on (and all candidates can run on). They call it "A Better Deal For America".

Here is some of what Senator Chuck Schumer (Senate Minority Leader) had to say about the plan:

Democrats will show the country that we’re the party on the side of working people — and that we stand for three simple things.

First, we’re going to increase people’s pay. Second, we’re going to reduce their everyday expenses. And third, we’re going to provide workers with the tools they need for the 21st-century economy.

Over the next several months, Democrats will lay out a series of policies that, if enacted, will make these three things a reality. We’ve already proposed creating jobs with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan; increasing workers’ incomes by lifting the minimum wage to $15; and lowering household costs by providing paid family and sick leave.

On Monday we are announcing three new policies to advance our goals.

Right now, there is nothing to stop vulture capitalists from egregiously raising the price of lifesaving drugs without justification. We’re going to fight for rules to stop prescription drug price gouging and demand that drug companies justify price increases to the public. And we’re going to push for empowering Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for older Americans.

Right now our antitrust laws are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and airline tickets to food and health care. We are going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition.

Right now millions of unemployed or underemployed people, particularly those without a college degree, could be brought back into the labor force or retrained to secure full-time, higher-paying work. We propose giving employers, particularly small businesses, a large tax credit to train workers for unfilled jobs. This will have particular resonance in smaller cities and rural areas, which have experienced an exodus of young people who aren’t trained for the jobs in those areas.

In the coming months, we’ll offer additional ideas, from rebuilding rural America to fundamentally changing our trade laws to benefit workers, not multinational corporations.

Two-Thirds Of Public Say Trump NOT Draining The Swamp

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he would drain the swamp in Washington. Is he doing that? Well, 67% of Americans say he is not doing it (35% saying nothing has changed and 32% saying he has made the "swamp" worse). Only 24% believe he is keeping his promise.

This chart was made using information in a recent Monmouth University Poll -- done between May 13th and 17th of a random national sample of 1,002 adults, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Fewer Americans Now Believe Trump Keeps His Promises

The charts on this page were made from information in a new Gallup Poll -- done done between April 5th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,019 adults, with a 4 point margin of error. It shows that Trump has damaged his own reputation since shortly after being sworn in as president.

Between February 1st and 5th, about 62% of Americans believed Donald Trump kept his promises -- but several broken promises later, now only 45% say that. And the number saying he keeps his promises has dropped in every group -- even the groups that support him.

And it's not just the keeping of his promises that has suffered by public perception. As the bottom chart shows, fewer people now think Trump is a strong leader, will bring needed change to the country, is honest and trustworthy, cares about people like them, or can manage the government efficiently.

Trump has damaged his own brand with the American public. I expect that to continue.

Promise Broken - Trump To Cut Social Security/Medicare

It looks like Donald Trump is poised to break another solemn promise -- this time to the group that gave him the most support in the 2016 election (Seniors). During the election campaign, Trump promised that he would not cut either Social Security or Medicare, and seniors (those 65 or older) believed him. They were conned.

The following article (about Trump's plan to cut the budget) is from Bipartisan Report:

Throughout the course of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump made several major promises, but one of his biggest was that he would make no cuts to entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare. In May of last year, Trump even took to Twitter to brag about his pledge protect Social Security.  Trump’s term hasn’t even began, but it’s looking like we can mark this one as broken.

Trump's transition team have laid out their blueprint for the federal budget and it calls for massive spending cuts on a wide array of programs. Overall, Trump’s plan, which is heavily based on a recent Heritage Foundation proposal, would reduce federal spending by more than $10 trillion over the course of the next decade. The spending cuts would hit nearly every aspect of the federal budget aside from the military, including entitlement programs.

A recent report by Mother Jones found that this plan would cut Social Security by eight percent, Medicare by 41 percent and Medicaid by 47 percent. The plan didn’t provide much in the way of details for changing Medicaid beyond a spending cap, but we know a bit about their plans for Social Security and Medicare.

MEDICARE:

The proposed changes to Medicare would increase the eligibility age, increase premiums for part B and D, add a “temporary” premium to part A, decrease subsides for seniors of “significant” income and reform cost sharing arrangements.

However, the biggest change would be the plan to move to a “premium support” model starting in 2021. The premium support model is a voucher system where seniors would be given coupons in order to buy private health insurance. In a lot of ways, it’s rather similar to the Affordable Care Act. That isn’t too surprising considering the ACA is actually based on a Republican plan.

In short, the Republican’s plan for Medicare seems to be to replace it with a watered down version of the ACA.

SOCIAL SECURITY:

Just like with Medicare, the GOP wants to increase the eligibility age for Social Security and index the retirement age so it keeps going up. We guess the GOP just assumes everyone wants to drop dead in their 90s while working as a Wal-Mart greeter.

In addition, they plan to reduce benefits by adopting chained CPI adjusted for inflation. They also plan to “transition the payment to a flat, anti-poverty benefit focused on individuals who need it most.” We don’t know what that means. In fact, we’re pretty sure the people who wrote it haven’t figured out what it means. If we had to guess, they’re probably planning on privatizing it because that’s been the right’s goal since the program was introduced.