As 2017 draws to a close, President Donald Trump and his amen corner are bragging about his “year of solid policy accomplishments.” Despite approval ratings only slightly higher than the Ebola virus, Trump took to Twitter to soak up praise from Maria Bartiromo, who gushed that “Year One has been excellent from an economic standpoint.” Echoing Byron York of the Washington Examiner, former Sarah Palin bath water drinker Rich Lowry proclaimed, “Trump’s first year is starting to look like a big win.” While Lowry rejoiced in “the welcome ascension of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court” and that “Trump’s deregulation has been in full gear,” the occupant of the Oval Office boasted in all caps, “DOW RISES 5000 POINTS ON THE YEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER - MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” With Congressional Republicans on the verge of passing the massive $1.5 trillion tax cut windfall for the wealthy, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders crowed on Dec. 17, “Amazing how much safer & more prosperous America is after only one year of President @realDonaldTrump.” Ignoring the 800-pound bear in the room, Sanders asked:
Of course, that Donald Trump would try to appropriate the credit for whatever went well during his first year was entirely predictable. As it turns out, many of us predicted the very things—like the strong economy and the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria—for which Trump would claim paternity. But that’s not all. His successes, his failures, the promises he kept and, more importantly, the promises he broke pretty much went according to script. There’s no mystery as to why. Candidate Trump’s narcissism, braggadocio, and pathological lying weren’t going to end when he planted himself in the Oval Office.
Take, for example, the claims of the supposed conqueror of the Islamic State.
Who gets credit for “the stunning fall of Mosul?” Not this guy.
In June, President Trump congratulated Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for what Sanders described as “the stunning fall of Mosul.” After the defeat of ISIS fighters in their self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa in Syria, Trump boasted on Oct. 25 it was all because “we have done more in eight months than the previous administration has done in many years.” Only now was ISIS “giving up,” he said, because before “you didn't have Trump as your president.”
As it turns out, all of this transpired exactly as many of us foretold. Less than a month after Trump took the oath of office, Middle East expert Andrew Exum on Feb. 17 wrote, “Donald Trump will defeat ISIS and it will mostly be due to the work of his predecessor.” Reviewing the facts on the ground in Iraq and Syria as well as the plans and recommendations the Obama administration passed on, Exum concluded:
The dysfunction at the highest levels of the American government right now obscures a dramatic reality: Donald Trump is going to defeat the Islamic State, and Americans need to be fine with that.
Americans should be happy about the fall of the ISIS “caliphate,” but that doesn’t mean they should develop amnesia about how it came to pass. It’s true that the president did delegate more decision-making to U.S. commanders on the ground and loosened rules on air strikes, especially in civilian areas. But Candidate Trump fiercely criticized the joint Iraqi-American offensive against Mosul. And led by soon-to-be terminated national security adviser Michael Flynn, the Trump administration delayed for months in delivering heavy weapons to Kurdish fighters out of fear of alienating Turkey.
You’ll recall that Trump promised “my generals” would deliver a new strategy to defeat ISIS within 30 days of his taking office. As Kimberly Dozier (“Who Invented Trump’s ISIS Plan? Obama.”) put it on Feb. 27:
Trump ordered up a whole new plan to beat ISIS. Instead he got a rough sketch that strongly resembles what was drawn up under Obama.
As the New York Times portrayed the scene when the secretary of State met in Washington with representatives of the 68-nation anti-ISIS coalition in March, “Trump’s ISIS plan, as described by Tillerson, sounds like Obama’s.”
Ultimately, Trump’s plan was largely the same, but it didn’t start that way. Especially when it came to the pivotal liberation of Mosul. Mosul, of course, is the second-largest city in Iraq. Its recapture was a strategic necessity if ISIS was to be beaten back and crushed. That it must and would be liberated was certainly no secret. Signs of the build-up to encircle the city would be unmistakable. Iraqi forces would need to give civilians time to flee and allow those fighters who would to drop their arms. As U.S. military experts like retired colonel and former dean of the Army War College Jeffrey McClausland made clear, “What this shows is that Trump doesn’t know a damned thing about military strategy.”
Nevertheless, Trump’s kept up his withering criticism of the Mosul operation. As the New York Times recounted after that debate:
In the debate on Wednesday and on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has all but accused the military of aiding and abetting the escape of the Islamic State’s top leaders from Mosul. “By the time we attack them, all the guys that we want are going to be gone,” Mr. Trump told supporters in Charlotte, N.C. last week. “They’re very smart. How stupid are the people that run our country?”
On Oct. 23, Donald Trump took to Twitter to answer his own question:
The attack on Mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!
As NPR documented on Nov. 1, Trump wasn’t done there:
In the debate on Wednesday and on the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has all but accused the military of aiding and abetting the escape of the Islamic State’s top leaders from Mosul. “By the time we attack them, all the guys that we want are going to be gone,” Mr. Trump told supporters in Charlotte, N.C. last week. “They’re very smart. How stupid are the people that run our country?”
And Trump still wasn’t done slandering President Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Pentagon, and the Iraqi government. As CNN reported just one day before voters went to the polls in the U.S.
The Republican presidential nominee knocked US officials as a "group of losers" for not launching a "surprise" attack and said he was convinced the offensive -- which is led by the Iraqi military -- was launched "for political reasons" to benefit his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. He suggested she would get "credit" for its success…
"Who benefits by us getting Mosul?" Trump asked the previous night during a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "You know it's going to benefit Iran. We're not going to benefit. Because Iran is taking over Iraq." [Emphasis mine]
Of course, Iranian influence in Iraq was guaranteed the moment the first American troops crossed the border from Kuwait in March 2003. As for who benefited by “us getting Mosul,” in the U.S. no one more so than Donald Trump.
That goes double for the state of the American economy. In his September address to the United Nations, Donald Trump declared history began with his election.
"Fortunately, the United States has done very well since Election Day last Nov. 8. The stock market is at an all-time high, a record. Unemployment is at its lowest level in 16 years, and because of our regulatory and other reforms, we have more people working in the United States today than ever before. Companies are moving back, creating job growth the likes of which our country has not seen in a very long time."
Or as Sarah Sanders tweeted in response to a CNBC story noting that the Dow had risen by 5,000 points in a year for the first time in its history:
Amazing what happens when you put a businessman instead of a liberal politician in the White House.
Leave aside for the moment that last businessman in the White House was George W. Bush, a man whose eight-year economic record was less than amazing. (Herbert Hoover was a businessman, too.) Ignore, too, that the Dow Jones grew faster in Barack Obama’s first year in office (29.9 to 25.0 percent) than under Trump, as did the S&P index (36.9 to 18.4 percent). Instead, focus on this. Barack Obama inherited a devastated economic cataclysm from President Bush. In contrast, with a 4.1 percent unemployment rate, a stock market that jumped by 138 percent during Obama’s time in the White House, and a job market that averaged over 2 million new positions annually since 2013, Donald Trump was handed the reins to an economy hitting its stride.
Amazing what happens when liberal politicians precede and succeed a businessman in the White House.
Luckily for him, Donald Trump didn’t inherit a recession, but instead the Obama boom. By almost every indicator from job creation, GDP growth, income, and the unemployment rate to stock market performance, consumer confidence, health insurance coverage, and so much more, President Barack Obama handed off a far stronger economy than George W. Bush bequeathed to him eight years earlier. And Obama produced this record not thanks to cooperation from Republicans in Congress, but despite unprecedented GOP obstruction that stretched across his two terms in the White House. Nevertheless, even in the face of that sabotage Barack Obama became just the latest occupant of the Oval Office to show that the U.S. economy almost always does better under Democratic presidents.
Consider Obama’s jobs record. During his two terms, the U.S. economy generated 11.3 million new jobs. Since the middle of 2010, the Obama economy produced 15.5 million new private sector jobs during 75 consecutive months of employment gains. That’s not only a dramatic turnaround from January 2009, when more than 800,000 workers were laid off in a single month, but significant improvement over the anemic 1.3 million jobs added under his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. (It’s no wonder that the Wall Street Journal summed up Dubya’s jobs performance as the “worst track record on record.”)
Sorry, Donald, but the job market did very well before Election Day, too.
The unemployment rate, too, has improved markedly since Barack Obama first took the oath of office. Already 7.8 percent then, the jobless rate hit nearly 10 percent in early 2010. But while 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promised a 6 percent rate by the end of his first term, Obama went far beyond that, leaving office with the unemployment rate down to 4.7 percent.
Trump’s job on the economy? Don’t screw it up.
To put that performance in perspective, it’s worth looking back at the economic devastation President Obama inherited eight years ago. As bad as it was believed at the time the administration formulated its $787 billion stimulus program, it later became clear the situation was much, much worse. In 2011, The Economist described the context for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed in February 2009:
The White House looked at the economic situation, sized up Congress, and took its shot. Unfortunately, the situation was far more dire than anyone in the administration or in Congress supposed.
Output in the third and fourth quarters fell by 3.7% and 8.9%, respectively, not at 0.5% and 3.8% as believed at the time. Employment was also falling much faster than estimated. Some 820,000 jobs were lost in January, rather than the 598,000 then reported. In the three months prior to the passage of stimulus, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers, not 1.8m. In January, total employment was already 1m workers below the level shown in the official data.
Nevertheless, the February 2009 stimulus had a tremendous impact in driving economic growth and job creation. As then-director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Douglas Elmendorf explained in June 2012 to Republicans claiming “Obama made the economy worse:"
Most economists not only think it should have worked; they think it did work, Elmendorf replied. CBO's own analysis found that the package added as many as 3.3 million jobs to the economy during the second quarter of 2010, and may have prevented the nation from lapsing back into recession.
“American carnage?” The economy returned to consistent growth by the end of 2009.
As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities summed it up, “The economy began growing in 2009, and has averaged 2.1 percent annual growth since then.” Economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, who by 2011 concluded that federal intervention to save the economy “averted Great Depression 2.0,” went even further in 2014. The combined federal efforts to rescue the American economy from its greatest collapse since 1929 "dramatically reduced the severity and length of the meltdown that began in 2008; its effects on jobs, unemployment, and budget deficits; and its lasting impact on today's economy." The impact of the measures taken in 2008 and 2009, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $800 billion Obama stimulus program, Obama's auto bailout, and the Federal Reserve's "quantitative easing," is simply staggering. Without those policy responses—almost all of which were opposed by Congressional Republicans—Blinder and Zandi estimate:
- The peak-to-trough decline in real gross domestic product (GDP), which was barely over 4 percent, would have been close to a stunning 14 percent;
- The economy would have contracted for more than three years, more than twice as long as it did;
- More than 17 million jobs would have been lost, about twice the actual number.
- Unemployment would have peaked at just under 16 percent rather than the actual 10 percent;
- The budget deficit would have grown to more than 20 percent of GDP, about double its actual peak of 10 percent, topping off at $2.8 trillion in fiscal 2011.
The Dow Jones has been setting records for years.
That said, while the economy added more than 2 million jobs annually for each of President Obama’s last six years in office, the number of manufacturing jobs has not returned to its pre-recession levels. In addition to that net 300,000 job loss, the workforce participation rate has dropped from its 2007 rate of 66 percent to around 63 percent now, a level not seen since the late 1970s. The aging population might explain between one-third to one-half of that loss. The rest reflects those who have simply dropped out of the workforce and are now looking for a job.
Nevertheless, it was no surprise when the president-elect and his water carriers in the right-wing media began touting the “Trump Rally” even before he was sworn in on January 20, 2017. Well, there better be a Trump rally and it’s going to have to be a big one. After all, on Inauguration Day, President Trump didn’t just portray the U.S. economy as a blighted hellscape he deemed “American carnage.” Trump also promised 25 million new jobs and 4 percent economic growth, an average no President has hit since LBJ.
Which in theory is where the big GOP tax bill comes in. As Vice President Mike Pence put it at the Wednesday White House event celebrating its passage:
Mr. President, you’ve fulfilled the promise you made to millions of Americans struggling in this economy, to cut taxes across the board for working families and businesses large and small.
In August of this year, the President laid out his vision for a tax cut that would be a middle-class miracle, and that’s exactly what the Congress passed today. (Applause.) This tax cut will put more money in the pockets of the American people; it will make our tax code more simple, more fair, more easy to understand. It will make businesses across America more competitive to create good-paying jobs and raise wages for working Americans.
Unfortunately, U.S. economic history and the overwhelming consensus of economists are clear that these developments will not come to pass.
No one should be impressed by either the size of performance of Ryan’s package.
The bill drains $1.5 trillion from the United States Treasury over its first decade and comes nowhere close to paying for itself. House Speaker Paul Ryan boasted that the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” would produce only 890,000 jobs, a historically horrible return on investment. Business leaders have been very clear that their windfall from corporate tax rate reductions and repatriation of overseas profits will go to lowering debt, buying back stock or increasing dividends, and funding mergers. It’s no wonder, as Vox reported this week:
By 2027, more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — would pay more in taxes under the tax bill agreed to by House and Senate Republicans, a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center finds. That year, 82.8 percent of the bill’s benefit would go to the top 1 percent, up from 62.1 under the Senate bill.
That why it comes as no surprise, as David Leonhardt lamented in the New York Times, that the Republicans’ is “a tax plan to supercharge inequality.”
Who wins under the GOP tax bill? Donald Trump and people like him.
Now, if you have the sickening feeling that you’ve heard this from me before, that’s because you have. On Nov. 16, 2016, I warned, “Trump's 'forgotten Americans' will get lower taxes on the rich and higher income inequality.”
Throughout his unlikely journey to the White House, Donald Trump declared himself to be a "blue-collar billionaire" who as President would be the "voice" of the "forgotten man." Rolling out the first of the three versions of his tax plan last December, the real estate tycoon and reality TV star boasted, "it's going to cost me a fortune—which is actually true."
Of course, it's not true.
A week earlier (“Trump voters: Here’s what you’ve won”), I summed up my prediction this way:
You've won a massive tax cut for the very richest people in America! That's right; President-elect Trump has promised to reward the "forgotten" men and women of America with a $6.2 trillion, 10-year tax cut that delivers more than half of its windfall to the top one percent of earners. The top 0.1 percent would grab almost one-quarter of the winnings and save an average of $1.2 million a year. But that's not all! Thanks to changing personal exemptions and other budget cuts, many taxpayers will see their after-tax incomes decline. That's especially true if Speaker Ryan gets his "Better Way" with Trump's tax plan. Ryan's plan to end the deductibility of state and local taxes means those of you living in high-tax/high-service blue states will get battered even more.
But your prizes don't stop there!
You've also won a bonanza for bankers and Wall Street executives. With his plans to repeal the Dodd-Frank regulations on Wall Street, eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that has already saved 25 million Americans $11 billion, and slash the tax rate for all businesses to 15 percent, your favorite populist says what he's not thinking. In his own personal Protocols of the Elders of Donald, Trump warned that "Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends, and her donors." Yet while Clinton was going to raise their (and her) taxes, President Trump will clean up Main Street by redirecting its unsightly cash to Wall Street.
The exact numbers and the details matter less than the headline: Pretty much everything those like me said would come to pass has done so. The revelations surrounding the “Corker Kickback” and the obvious self-dealing for the president and congressional Republican owners of “pass-through” real estate businesses have generated stories like “We are witnessing the wholesale looting of America,” and “On the road to kleptocracy,“ and “America’s 20 largest companies on the tax overhaul,” and “In another country, we would call this corruption.”
Within days of the election, it was already becoming clear that Trump voters would not get what they want or need. As I wrote then:
Now that Clinton has been voted off the island, the question remains: just what did Trump's triumphant supporters actually win on Tuesday? Aside from the Supreme Court, certainly not the grand prizes The Donald promised those "economically anxious" working-class whites. Public opposition, lack of Congressional support, and the already-reduced flow of undocumented immigrants over the Mexican border mean his "big, beautiful" wall will almost certainly never be built. Ditto for Trump's pledge to deport the 11 million already here in "18 months to two years if properly handled;" 70 percent of exit poll voters backed a path to their legal status. While President Trump may get support in Congress for blocking any new Syrian refugees from coming into the country, his larger (and draconian) Muslim ban is probably dead on arrival. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are free-traders who will act to prevent the catastrophic trade war that Trump's steep tariff barriers against China and Mexico would necessarily trigger.
Now, Brendan Nyhan among others posited that many Trump voters simply "discounted" many of his most self-evidently impossible proposals. So, his promises to eliminate the entire national debt of the United States “I would say over a period of eight years” or to become “the greatest jobs president God ever created” and his guarantee that “we’re going to have insurance for everybody” must have been taken with a very large grain of salt. Judging by recent data comparing Donald Trump’s record-setting mendacity to the fibs of Barack Obama, the Make America Great Again crowd didn’t take this August 2016 pledge very seriously, either.
“One thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth.”
Apparently, the bragging, the lying, the vulgarity, the incompetence, the incoherence, and the appeasement of Russia is starting to take its toll. A recent NBC poll found that only 36 percent of voters said they would definitely (18 percent) or probably (18 percent) vote for the incumbent Donald Trump in 2020. As for the growing ranks of Donald’s disillusioned, I have only one message:
We told you so.
