In a speech broken by more than a dozen protests—including one protester who repeatedly chanted “tiny hands” until she was removed from the room—Donald Trump declared that reforming American economics and generating a “new chapter” of prosperity is “so simple, so simple.”
Trump appeared to be observing a competitive ping pong match as he apparently looked back and forth between a pair of teleprompter screens, observing each side of the room for a paragraph at the time. Perhaps that’s what he means by pivot.
Though Trump’s speech wandered into all areas, and was far more aligned with the platform written by Paul Ryan than previous Trump positions (which are now missing from his web site), it was also not lacking the usual heavy shots of hubris. Trump spent some time reading a flattering New York Post editorial on some of his Manhattan projects, while being careful to say “their words, not mine” before going on to read each fawning paragraph. Trump showed that he has great faith in the media, so long as that media is saying good things about him.
“In other words, it’s not from me. … I didn’t say it. They said it. It’s true.”
Considering how much of Trump’s office is plastered with pictures and articles about Trump, it’s easy to believe that he took this section of the speech from his own wall.
Likewise, Trump fully approves of the media when it’s saying bad things about Hillary. He also took time to read from a Washington Post article that went back to her time as a senator. Trump then blamed Clinton for problems in upstate New York, calling it:
“A disaster. It’s a disaster.”
But Trump failed to note that his article on poor economy in the rest of New York state came from the midst of the Bush administration economic collapse. How is that disaster going now in upstate New York? New York State is running a 4.7% unemployment rate, and that rate is actually better outside of New York City.
Trump continued his idea of good-history-is-what’s-good-for-Trump. If you had any doubt which party had made a historic selection in this election, Trump let you know
Our party has chosen to make “new history,” outside of the very, very proven rigged system.
The other party has reached backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday – who offers only the rhetoric of yesterday, and the policies of yesterday. … There will be no change under Hillary Clinton – only four more years of weak President Obama.
So write it down: Rich, old, white guy = new history. First woman candidate: candidate of the past.
Even as pundits are telling you just how great it was that Trump was not screaming about immigrants or go to war with a child, note that Trump was able to stay on topic, because much of the day’s topic was’t so much economics as simply ‘How Great is Donald Trump?’
A big portion of the speech involved Trump rubbing his crystal ball to predict that Hillary Clinton would support the TPP. She might be against it now, sure, but elect her and she would pass it, because Hillary “is bought, controlled, and paid for by her special interests.”
“She supports it, not now, but very soon, if she wins.”
And the lottery numbers for next week are 8, 11, 14 ...
At many times in his speech, Trump pulled out statistics to bolster his position. But the source and values of those statistics is … questionable is putting it nicely.
For example, Trump said that “Obama’s war on coal” had caused coal-fired power plants in Michigan to make a costly conversion—he didn’t note that the conversion was to natural gas produced by fracking, which he also supports. And he said that the move away from coal cost more than 50,000 jobs in Michigan. Which is pretty amazing, because the number of coal miners in Michigan is, and has been for decades, exactly zero. In fact, 50,000 is about as many coal miners as there are in the whole United States.
Similarly, Trump blamed problems in Michigan on a Democratic legislature, when in fact the entire Michigan state government is controlled by Republicans. That’s the governor, the House, the Senate, the AG, the SOS, and the state Supreme Court, all in Republican control.
Trump’s actual economic plan was a flood of trickle down ideas that involved chopping taxes in half for big corporations, and giving the wealthiest Americans billions of dollars. Much of it was based on the myth of Reagan tax reform, which Trump claimed “unleashed years of growth.” That Reagan’s plan, which was simply a milder form of what Trump is now proposing, marked the exact point at which increasing productivity was uncoupled from salary and the middle class began to fall behind, somehow didn’t come up.
Under Trump’s plan, corporate tax rates would be chopped from a maximum of 35% to “no higher than 15%” which ignores the fact that two-thirds of corporations today pay no tax at all, and the rest average only about 13%. American corporations are not being squeezed out by taxes. American corporate tax rates are actually among the lowest in the industrialized world.
Trump also stated that “small businesses will benefit the most from this plan,” while ignoring that the plan would only affect a very few, very select “small businesses” that produced high incomes from small staffs—such as specialized investment and legal firms.
Regulations came in for a beating, with Trump declaring
“You can not ever start a small business under the tremendous regulatory burden”
Which would be news to the more than 400,000 startups created in 2015 alone.
Trump blamed regulations for making car companies in Michigan 25% smaller, and blamed it for the loss of thousands of jobs. He didn’t mention that the number of people employed in the American auto industry would be 0 if we had followed Trump’s call to let the car companies go under.
How much attention did the Middle Class get in Trump’s speech? They got mentioned several times, but when it comes to actual policies that would help the middle or working classes, here’s what you got.
To help unleash this new job creation, we will allow businesses to immediately expense new business investments. No one will gain more from these proposals than low-and-middle income Americans.
See? Allowing businesses to change the way they report expenses will be great for the middle class? Why? Trickle, trickle. And trickle.
Not mentioned at all in Trump’s speech: minimum wage, That kind of trivial thing somehow slipped from his comprehensive review.
Oh, and those leaving estates over $11 million will be happy to know that Trump wants to completely eliminate the estate tax. So that hard working Americans can support their seaside mansions for generations to come.
Overall, Trump’s speech was a massive heap of self-contradictory ideas, word salad, and old Republican standards—a moratorium on new regulations, and simultaneous repeal of “illegal” executive orders. A threat of “walking away from the table” when trade negotiations didn’t go our way, but no hint of what that means. A repeal of Obamacare. Asking regulators which regulations aren’t needed.
Overall, Trump’s speech was a mixture of distorted statistics sourced mostly from Republican “think tanks” and partly from Trump’s own “very good brain.”
What he promised was exactly what every Republican promised for the last 40 years. Cut all taxes, and generate billions! Give the wealthy billions more, while spending more on highways, more on the military, more on everything. We’ll have gold plated highways, because we’re just getting so much money.
In other words, he promised to Brownback all of America. He’s promising the Bush tax cuts that took us from a balanced budget into a monster debt.
He’s promised to screw the economy in just the same way as the last Republican. And the one before that. And the one before that. And the one …
He really is a historic candidate.