Now that the days of Trump are nearly over, all the talk about how much was accomplished during the Trump 4 years will hopefully be brought to light.  Of course there were some positive things but many that are credited to Trump would have been credited to whoever was President at the time. I never saw any evidence that the tax cuts actually did much to help the middle and lower income groups. The flood of companies to bring jobs back to the US did not happen. Those companies that did move to bring some jobs did so for reasons nothing to do with Trump. Automation was the driver of those jobs. The new NAFTA deal was only slightly better than the last one so all the fuss about NAFTA being the worst deal ever was just political theatre.

Meanwhile Trump never knew the details of it anyway.  Just like the Iran deal. He never knew its contents either and in fact Iran is now much further ahead in nuclear development precisely because Trump cancelled the deal and never moved to replace it with a better one. Getting out of the environmental accord? Leaving the WHO? What did those moves accomplish.

Then there is the wall. Not a bad idea in my opinion but highly overblown and Mexico was and did not pay for the small amount of fencing he actually got erected. The talk of the military was mainly fake news and Trump’s idea of a strong military was as relevant as the French building the Maginot line.  He was thinking about fighting World War 2 and meanwhile did little to face the real threat of the digital age which is the future. It costs billions to build an aircraft carrier but only a million to sink it. 

What happened to eliminating Obama Care and replacing it with something better? Replace never came up. Of course that also led to the disaster of the Covid crisis. Health – no matter which way you cut it this was an unmitigated failure and it is Trump’s fault.

Then there is China. What was gained? Higher costs to the American consumer and meanwhile China was given carte blanch to set up its own trade deals as the US opted out. Incredibly stupid and short sighted. The only way US farmers made out was the Trump payments to farmers (paid by US tax payers) to keep them from going broke. Sounds pretty much like socialism to me. Government not picking winners and loosers? yea sure.  And China did NOT pay the tariffs, US importers did who then passed the higher costs on to the US consumer. Trump kept saying China was paying the tariffs which was a lie – is still a lie and will always be a lie.

North Korea? All that was accomplished was making Kim more accepted by his own people and making the US look stupid. There was never going to be a war so all that talk was bullshit.

Peace in the Middle East? Still no deal with the Palestinians and now even further away from a possibility than ever before. Peace with countries far away doesn’t mean anything especially as the US gave them what they really wanted to get the peace deal. Weapons, off the sanctions list, acceptance of a land grab etc. Moving the embassy? How is that an achievement?

He never showed his tax returns. He never gave up his ownership of companies. He played golf more than any other President in history even though he said he would not have time to play golf and criticized Obama for doing it. He complained about how unfair he was treated, forgetting his consistent espousing and pushing his Obama not born in the US conspiracy theory. 

His loyalty to Putin will have us scratching our heads in wonder until the truth comes out. Must be the reason he has hidden his taxes for so long.  Selling out the Kurds? A black mark on US foreign policy forever. The stock market?  Well it did not tank when Joe Biden was elected. In fact it went up to a new record. Elimination of regulations? Which ones? Most will come back to haunt us.  Regulations were put in place for a purpose – usually to correct a danger and prevent ones in the future from lessons we learned from disasters or dangers of the past.       

Meanwhile all the bullshit about Joe Biden raising taxes, socialism etc is just that – bullshit. Of Course taxes have to go up. No country can give away so much money to save its people and jobs during a pandemic and imagine there are no financial consequences. If Trump was elected he too would have to raise taxes. He would have no choice. Meanwhile all the nonsense about “radicle socialist programs” being espoused by the Democrats are at best gross exaggerations and show a complete lack of understanding to the meaning of the words. Just more political theatre. Of course BOTH Democrats and Republicans are prone to exaggerate, that’s the nature of Politics. BUT during the Trump years the Republicans encouraged and forced by Trump took the exaggerations to a new level that included outright fabrications and “alternative facts”. Trump proved over and over that one could get away with lying and lying made good TV. The message resonated with pundits who found themselves a new larger audience resulting in more money to them personally. The word “News” grew a new meaning.  Say what ever gives you a bigger audience – and keeps that audience coming back for more – that is the new meaning of the word “news”.  ;’