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Listcicle: What Trump Didn’t Do
On the occasion of PDT’s first State of the Union address, let’s go back and take a look at some of the things predicted for the Trump presidency that have not happened, won’t you?
- Trump has not governed as a New York limousine liberal. That may have been the major fear of a Trump presidency, that he would govern like the Democrats (including Chuck Schumer and Hillary) he had donated much money to in the past. Instead, his first year has been, as Mitt Romney might say, “severely conservative” in his judicial and cabinet appointment, his aggressive regulatory repeals, or his outreach to conservative groups. It is unimaginable that Marco Rubio or John Kasich would have governed as conservatively as PDT. Indeed, Anti-Trump “conservative” pundits like Bill Kristol are the ones sounding like limousine liberals these days.
- Trump has not crashed the stock market, confounding the predictions of pundits like tentacle-hentai aficionado Kurt Eichenwald. Indeed, the markets have soared to record highs. Critics claim that Obama actually had more percentage growth in the stock market, but Obama’s stock markets were bouncing off the bottom and the increases were fed by massive infusions of cash from the US Treasury (“quantitative easing”). The Trump gains appear to be organic.
- Trump has not instigated a massive, economy-killing trade war. There have been targeted protectionist actions against Canadian airplanes, Korean washers and dryers, and Chinese solar panels (or, as fans of ‘Rifftrax’ call them, “soar pommels.”) Even if you disagree with these actions, they fall short of all-out trade war, and may be simply negotiating tactics to get to better trade agreements; which Trump promised he would do.
- Trump has not repealed Obamacare, mainly because, as it turns out, “Repeal and Replace” was an empty Republican campaign slogan. Not only do Republicans love government-run health care as much as Democrats do, but they resist even modest, incremental changes to the law, i.e., “skinny repeal.”
- Trump has not built a massive, beautiful border wall; mainly because Republicans really don’t want to stop illegal immigration. Remember, in 2006, Congress authorized the construction of 900 miles of triple-layer border fencing. The very next year in 2007, they stripped out all funding for it. Graham and Durbin tried to pull off the same trick for DACA Amnesty, but PDT didn’t bite.
- Trump has not imprisoned or murdered journalists for opposition to his regime. Indeed, watch CNN or MSDNC for 10 minutes and you can see that nothing is inhibiting the flow of anti-Trump propaganda. Sorry, Jeff Flake, but just because you personally despise PDT doesn’t make him Stalin.
- Trump’s election has not inspired a wave of anti-gay/anti-immigrant hate crime. There was an uptick in reported hate crimes after Trump was elected, but almost all of these turned out to be hoaxes.
- Trump has not set-up concentration camps for gay people, where Mike Pence in a leather Nazi uniform would be hooking up gay teens to car batteries. (Yeah, Rachel Maddow said this would happen.) Gay marriage has not even been repealed. The worst “setback” gays may endure under Trump is that bakeries may be allowed to decline to bake cakes for their weddings, forcing them to go across the street to a different baker who will do so gladly. And that’s only if Anthony Kennedy doesn’t find a right to wedding cake in the Constitution.
- PDT has not been “soft on Russia.” This idea was ginned up as part of the “Trump-Russia” conspiracy theory, that PDT and all who voted for him were puppets of Vladimir Putin. Instead, with new sanctions, a military build-up, and aggressive counters to Russia’s allies, PDT has been stronger against the Red Menace than Obama; who at this point in his term had sold out missile defense for Eastern Europe and was negotiating to diminish the US nuclear arsenal.
- Trump hasn’t launched a global thermonuclear war.
And finally, Trump hasn’t resigned in disgrace or been impeached because of the Trump-Russia scandal, as predicted by Paul Krugman and many, many others.
Published in General
I apologize for the conspiracy theory comment(s).
Agree. I was going to reply with the same. Trump put too much political capital into the wall. He will be seen as a failure if he doesn’t get it. But I still want to emphasize that the wall makes a statement of national sovereignty. I don’t think that’s small potatoes. The wall was never big for me until I realized that recently. And now I really do want it.
Then I guess we need a wall on the Canadian border too.
I’m for the wall, it does some good (not much), does no harm, and doesn’t cost much, but I disagree that we need it to make a statement of National Sovereignty. Plenty of sovereign states have borders without walls.
Speaking only for me, I accept your apology. The idea that anyone I know of or talk to thinks Cruz’s dad was part of any plot involving Kennedy is pure silliness. Because we support Trump and his policies doesn’t mean we buy into every single word the man says.
I think this is closer to my opinion. I get the wall as a symbol, and symbols are important to an extent. I won’t complain about building a wall. I just think that, rather than just making a statement about national sovereignty, there are several more effective ways to create actual national sovereignty. No one will try to go around/over/under a wall if there is no benefit to them on the other side.
Whatever you think of Trump he is a salesman. Every thing is “the biggest” “the best” ect. I don’t think it would be very hard for him to pitch real changes without a wall as the “greatest” immigration enforcement bill in decades or even ever. Then tell his supporters we still need a wall so vote for me and I will continue to push the Dems to build the wall.
I also think the phrase “conspiracy theory” has been tossed about promiscuous, much like the word “racism.” Calling someone’s alternative view of the case a “conspiracy theory” is just lazy shorthand for dismissing it.
I don’t believe the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers brainwashed Republicans with subliminal cellphone frequencies to vote against repealing Obamacare. But I also believe Republicans really didn’t want to repeal it, for three reasons.
This sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
That’s why it is so important to crater our economy ;-)
I can’t believe anyone would be so gullible as to think Republicans could be brainwashed like that; subliminal cellphone frequencies don’t work against secret lizard people.
I often share your frustration with My GOP. However, I don’t think they’ve got it together enough to conspire to lose the repeal by one vote — and that the last-minute grandstanding vote of an aging and gravely ill Arizona Senator who can’t be counted on to side with anyone except himself. That’s some pretty high-risk conspiring, and I just don’t see it.
No, it’s easy to see Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski caving on anything even remotely bold and conservative. And McCain (great patriot, great American, mediocre Senator, lousy Republican) is, after all, McCain.
But I’m with you on pretty much everything else in your original post.
I have it! How we can persuade Democrats to vote for the Wall!
It gives them something else to tear down at the expense of America and the West! …the humanities, education, the health system, marriage and the family, sexual and gender norms… The Wall! It would be the perfect cap to the next postmodern fascist Democrat president’s career!
I think they might go for it.
LOL, I can see that!
All politicians are inflationists. All developers are inflationists. Trump is an inflationist. The stock market is responding to inflationism.
The End.
To quote Han Solo: “I don’t know, I can imagine quite a bit.”
Such as a Rubio administration that governed conservatively and managed to repeal Obamacare and actually had poll numbers above 50%. Perhaps your imagination is less imaginative than mine.
Point #2 maybe unraveling as we speak. The DJIA has taken a fair beating of the past few days.
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=DJIA&insttype=&freq=7&show=&time=3
The 5 day chart above, looks a little bad… Granted a 1.3% drop in DJIA is not considered a crash by anyone’s measure, but stock prices had moved so far so quickly, that I would absolutely take some profits. (disclaimer – I have zero $$ invested in any form of stock market)
My free investment advice is possibly over priced… Consult professionals before doing something stupid…. General disclaimer!
Yeah, the Dow is all the way back down to where it was on January 16th.
Incompetent, timid, duplicitous. One of the three, or parts of each. That’s been our trouble for many years. I’m willing to believe that the failure to develop an agreeable/workable plan is primarily about incompetence.
Agreed. Since when is everyone an absolutist? Negotiation, compromise, and incrementalism aren’t dirty words. I’m just tired of pretty much everything moving in the wrong direction to a large degree simply because of incompetence, timidity, and duplicitousness. I’ll take some incremental gains, please. If we amass enough gains to make a wall unnecessary then I’m fer it.