Civility, Principles, Decorum, Deficit, Debt & Other GOP Hits, Fake It ’till You Make It, God Bless the USA Bible, Project 2025, State of the Union Rebuttal, The Facts, Please, Trump ’25-Make America Corrupt, Trump Absurdities, Unintended Consequences, Voter Motivations, Voters: DUI or Asleep??
I have been inundated with MAGA misinformation and outright lies for weeks now. It has risen to a fevered pitch with an ignorance level that seemingly knows no bounds. I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.” No where is that more clearly evident than in the discourse in today’s America. Still, I find it necessary to at least TRY to educate those who still might give a damn. So allow me to endeavor to elucidate.
Let me start by stating the obvious. This misinformation blitz is different. It’s not the usual Border Control misinformation. There are plenty of facts out there that are publicly available for any INTELLIGENT person to easily find and discern fact from fiction. It’s not even the typical age complaint, as if the 4 year difference between Trump’s and Biden’s ages was some wide gap making the two clearly definable. They are both geriatric age, let’s just get that out of the way right out front. Neither of them are on the top of their cognitive acuity days.
Trump throws out what can only be described as incoherent word salad hoping a couple of the words resonate with the unintelligent or blindly loyal, even when the words are contradictory in the same string of words he spewing like his Gettysburg Battle rant that ran the gamut of “horrible …and beautiful…” in the same sentence to describe the battle, to a new take on Robert E. Lee with an Irish brogue admonishing his men to never fight uphill.. The linguistic gymnastics attempted by the former President was as painful to watch as it was to hear. But don’t take my word for it, see it here.
Biden, is more coherent, but slow and deliberate with his speech and sometimes stumbles with a word or two as he searches his mind for the right word. He has clearly lost a step or two, but he IS able to recover.
Neither of them are truly charismatic.
OK, SO what are we left with?
Divisive, antagonistic, vengeful, disrespectful to our servicemen and women, indicted on dozens of charges by both Republican as well as Democratic locations around the country, not respected on the world stage with most of our allies, power hungry regardless of consequences and collateral damage in the pursuit of that power are a few words and phrases that sum up one candidate.
Consensus building, compromising, respected by our allies, respected by our military, sincere, compassionate are a few descriptors of the other candidate.
OK…So I say again, what are we left with? I want to elect a true leader. I’m not interested in their ages, their motivations, their personal lives unless it interferes with their ability to govern properly. All that stuff is simply window ornaments. As a working-class Joe, I want to know who has MY interests at heart. Who has DEMONSTRATED the ability to lead without hurting others to do it? I do not want to profit from another’s pain. It’s the same reason I would not buy a foreclosed home even though it was cheap. The idea that someone lost it so that I could own it seemed callous and shameful to me. I have never stiffed anyone I owed. And I never wanted to be stiffed by those that owed me. It’s a simple rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s found in the same bible that Trump is selling under HIS name to pay for his campaign and his legal fees.
That comparison is much cleaner for me. There is literally no contest when the facts are viewed in their rawest version, without political rhetoric or manipulations to make the statistics appear to say something different than what they actually say. There is only one candidate that has shown an ounce of integrity and compassion for the working class, ordinary guy or girl working their shift work in a hostile work environment more often than not. One candidate that has demonstrated what his policies do for the average person. One candidate that wants the filthy rich and tax-dodging mega corporations to pay their fair share in taxes and to add a windfall tax to the corporations that have bilked the average consumer with artificially high costs for goods in order to boost their profits while paying zero taxes. ONE… That’s it.
Here are the facts as raw data:
EMPLOYMENT:
Biden has created over 15 million jobs. While it is true that post pandemic rehires helped with those numbers in the first year, 6 million jobs were actually more than what was lost in the pandemic, and the trend has continued. He has had the longest stretch of BELOW 4% unemployment since the 1940’s after his first year where he inherited a climbing rate of 6.3% from Trump in the midst of the pandemic closures.
In contrast, Trump inherited a falling unemployment rate of 3.9% from Obama, which continued to fall to 3.5% but climbed to 4% 5 months BEFORE Covid and kept climbing once the pandemic hit …to 6.3% when he gave it to Biden.
GDP/INFLATION/WAGES:
Biden saw a 22% Average GDP Growth in first 3 years even with the first year being the midst of the pandemic. It has come back to a more modest growth rate recently. But inflation, created by the supply chain interruptions, started to become evident in the final months of Trumps presidency where the inflation rate was just over 5% then peaked t 9% in the first year of Biden’s presidency before his policies opened up the supply chains and brought the inflation numbers down to the current 3.1% level. However, wage growth has outpaced inflation under Biden… even with the 3.1% rate.
Conversely, under Trump, average GDP Growth was 14% over 4 years with the last year being the midst of the pandemic. Meanwhile, inflation was fairly steady until the last couple months of Trump’s Presidency when the supply chain issues first started after inventories ran dry. The inflation rate was still climbing when Biden took over.. However, wage growth stagnated and did not keep pace even with the low, 2% rate under Trump. This negatively affected the working class and especially the working poor much harder.
BIPARTISANSHIP:
Biden promised bipartisanship and he delivered. The infrastructure Bill, the Chips and Science Act and the failed immigration bills were all bipartisan efforts. After Trump called key lawmakers to discourage passing any bills that might benefit Biden’s reelection, efforts to push other economic bills through were met with cries from the GOP about the debt ceiling and threats to close government or default on our debt service.
Under Trump, there was literally zero effort to work with fellow lawmakers across the aisle by Trump and his GOP lawmakers. They denied Obama a Supreme Court pick and left the seat open for a full year. Then the ramrodded another one through in the final days of Trump’s presidency, denying Biden a pick. They passed a $2+ Trillion tax cut for businesses and quadrupled the national debt and doubled the deficit without so much as a whisper of the debt ceiling being an issue.
IMMIGRATION/BORDER
There is no doubt that the Border Crisis was exacerbated under Biden, but there is an important detail that is being ignored here. Trump declared that he had the authority under Title 42 to close the border. He also deported undocumented immigrants back to their home countries even when doing so placed them and their families in immediate jeopardy. These actions, while they effectively closed the border, were illegal under international law and treaties and our own laws. Trump’s own appointed judges ruled his actions were illegal and had to be rescinded. International courts came to the same conclusion. Trump was out of office by the time these ruling came down and Biden was left holding the bag having to undo what Trump did in order to comport with international law and treaties. Trump was, indeed, better on the border issue, but did so illegally. Biden tried to work with the GOP and Democrats to fashion a bipartisan bill which was actually done, but railroaded by Trump’s calls to lawmakers mentioned earlier.
VIOLENT CRIME:
According to the reports by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, murders in large cities were up by 33.4% from 2019 to 2020 under Trump. However, under Biden, they report a decrease of 10.7% from Jan. 1, 2023 through Sept. 30, 2023, as well as a decrease in 2022. By these metrics, violent crime was far worse under Trump, despite controlling the Border; albeit, illegally, and far less under Biden even with the exaggerated “illegal immigrant crime” misinformation being circulated by the hard right.