Replies to post #483732 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Art Candee's portrait in points of the 'failed once wannabe again' is tops. As is is the 1st video

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s disastrous speech in Miami where
he hit a new low and Meiselas compares it with President Biden’s speech at the NATO Conference.

Trump's malignant narcissism and lying nature in full view. It's in your post for any who haven't watched it yet. we
don't need it here again. Yes, 'let's see again what a president looks and sounds like'

Biden looked strong. And never forget it's 14th vs 45th. Biden ranked 14th by presidential historians, sitting president Biden is the
same ranked 14th guy. Trump, four years since his failed term is obviously more unhinged, and he was ranked last back then.

Good job.

[fuagf]

Trump Caught Lying About Project 2025, Biden Insists He's Staying in Race: A Closer Look

Late Night with Seth Meyers
1,622,134 views Jul 9, 2024

Seth takes a closer look at the political fallout from Joe Biden and Donald Trump's first debate
in the 2024 presidential election while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he wouldn't eat dogs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPh_WFheeLA

[fuagf]

Trump airs list of false grievances at Florida rally: ‘We don’t eat bacon any more’

"Oh boy. Trump’s Doral rally tonight was a doozy. Let’s recap it:"

Ex-president returns to campaign trail in Doral and makes baseless accusations but doesn’t name running mate

Richard Luscombe in Miami
Wed 10 Jul 2024 12.01 AEST
Last modified on Wed 10 Jul 2024 21.21 AEST


Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, on 9 July 2024. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail in Florida on Tuesday night, hurling insults at Joe Biden and airing a litany of familiar grievances, but declining to name a running mate for November’s general election.

The former president and presumptive Republican nominee was speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters at his golf club in Doral, a western suburb of Miami, keeping them waiting in 90F heat for a freewheeling monologue that began more than an hour later than scheduled.

There was speculation that he might use his first public appearance since last month’s debate with the president to announce Florida senator Marco Rubio, who was present, as his vice-presidential pick, six days ahead of the Republican national convention (RNC) in Milwaukee.

Instead, Trump delivered a rambling 75-minute speech that included a succession of attacks on Biden and his faltering debate performance, which has raised questions among Democrats about whether the 81-year-old president was robust enough for a second term of office.

He seized on the post-debate turbulence that has prompted calls from some senior Democrats for Biden to step down and for Kamala Harris to be nominated.

“The radical left Democratic party is divided in chaos, and having a full-scale breakdown all because they can’t decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala,” he said, repeating previous derogatory terms for the pair.

“Despite all the Democrat panic this week, the truth is it doesn’t matter who they nominate because we are going to beat any one of them in a thundering landslide.”

Trump has kept a lower than usual profile in the days since the debate, a strategy an aide described as designed to allow Democrats to tear into each other following Biden’s dismal debate performance.

His remarks on Tuesday were notable for adding the vice-president’s name to numerous attacks on Biden policies, and sprinkling in mentions of both Rubio and Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman also believed to be on Trump’s shortlist for vice-president.

Otherwise, it was a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US “most of their prisoners”; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.

It also touched on the surreal. Biden, he insisted, had raised the price of bacon four-fold.

“We don’t eat bacon any more,” Trump said.

Electric cars, he said, “cheated” the US public because drivers had to stop for three hours to recharge their vehicles after every 45 minutes of driving. And, in an echo of one of the more bizarre debate exchanges with Biden over who was the better golfer, he challenged his White House successor to 18 holes over the Doral course while granting a 10-stroke concession.

“It will be among the most watched sporting events in history, maybe bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters,” Trump said, pledging $1m to a charity of Biden’s choosing if he lost.

Returning to politics, Trump assailed Democrats for tax hikes he said they wanted to impose; criticized Biden for the US military’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan; and promised to build an “iron dome” missile defense system for the US, if he was elected in November.

Perhaps worn down by the energy-sapping humidity .. https://x.com/GlennaWPLG/status/1810743561387921802 , the crowd appeared mostly subdued, including yawns in the bleachers behind him as Trump drew to a close with slow music playing, and others tapping disinterestedly on their phones.

His campaign had touted the possibility of Trump announcing a vice-presidential pick on Tuesday, but in the end his only reference to the post was suggesting that Rubio might or might not still be in the Senate to vote to allow Nevada waitresses to keep their tips untaxed.

There was no mention of Ohio senator JD Vance, or North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, other Republicans .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/republicans .. said to be on the shortlist. Trump will rally again on Saturday in Pennsylvania, close to the Ohio border, with Vance expected to be a speaker.

Earlier on Tuesday, Democrats, on a Biden campaign call featuring the first lady, Jill Biden, and previewing Trump’s Doral rally, mocked him for his low-key approach since the debate.

“I hope he hasn’t exhausted himself with all the golf that he’s been playing,” Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar said.

What is Project 2025 and what is Trump’s involvement?
Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/26/what-is-project-2025-trump

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[Insert: * Project 2025 Google searches surpassed both Taylor Swift and NFL football.
Good news for America. The people are waking up.

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174731976
* How Far Will Republicans Go To Bring America to Her Knees on Behalf of Putin & Trump?
[...]Most recently, the three-year “Biden bribery” hysteria Republicans in the House have been running — including thousands of hits on Fox “News” and all over rightwing hate radio — turns out to have been a Russian intelligence operation originally designed to help Trump win the 2020 election. The Russian spy who’d been feeding this phony info to “Gym” Jordan and James “Gomer Pyle” Comer is now in jail.
[...]He sold over $100 million worth of condos to more than sixty Russian citizens during that era, and partnered with professional criminals and money launderers to raise money for Trump properties in Azerbaijan and Panama. According to Trump himself, he sold $40 to $50 million worth of apartments to the Saudis.
P - He then partnered with a former high Soviet official, Tevfik Arif, and a Russian businessman, Felix Sater, who’d been found guilty of running a “huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia.”
[...]“A Senate inquiry has concluded that a Russian fake-news campaign targeted ‘no single group... more than African-Americans.’ …
P - “Thousands of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and You Tube accounts created by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) were aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and supporting Donald Trump, the committee concludes.
P - “More than 66% of Facebook adverts posted by the Russian troll farm contained a term related to race.
P - “African-American community voters were discouraged from voting, and from supporting Hillary Clinton.”
[...]Meanwhile, under Trump’s and Putin’s direction, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to damage the people of the United States.
P - They believe it will help them in the 2024 election if they can ruin the US economy while convincing American voters that our system of government is so corrupt (“deep state”) that we should consider replacing democracy with an autocratic strongman form of government like Putin’s Russia. Tucker Carlson is even suggesting that Russia is a better place to live than the US.
P - They revel in pitting racial, religious, and gender groups against each other while embracing a form of fascism that pretends to be grounded in Christianity, all while welcoming Putin’s social media trolls who are promoting these divisions.
P - Republican-aligned think tanks are working on Project 2025, a naked attempt to consolidate power in the White House to support a strongman president who can override the will of the people, privatize Social Security and Medicare, shut down our public school system, fully criminalize abortion and homosexuality (Sam Alito called for something like that this week), and abandon our democratic allies in favor of a realignment with Russia, China, and North Korea.
February 22, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173900429
* Christian Nationalist Insiders Are Prepping for Trump's 'Dystopian' Return
[...]Politico, which obtained the documents, reported .. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/20/donald-trump-allies-christian-nationalism-00142086 .. that staffers at the Center for Renewing America (CRA) included "Christian nationalism"—the promotion of the belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian country and should emphasize "Christian values" in its policies—on a list of priorities for a second Trump term.
P - CRA's president is Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, who Politico reported believes his continued close ties to the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee "will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term." The two speak at least once a month, the outlet reported.
P - Vought has been frequently named as a potential White House chief of staff should Trump win a second term, which could position him to carry out other proposals in the CRA document, including:
P - * Invoking the Insurrection Act as soon as Trump takes office, allowing him to deploy the military to stop protests;
P - * Impounding .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html .. federal funds, or refusing to spend money appropriated by
Congress, as former President Richard Nixon did to block agencies from taking on projects he opposed before Congress banned the practice; and
P - * Creating .. https://newrepublic.com/post/179150/christian-nationalist-second-trump-term-plans?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_medium=social //
other new ways to expand Trump's presidential power.
March, 2024 -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174005098]
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“Speaking of staying off the campaign trail, Trump has been hiding a lot recently, not just from voters and from the press, but from Project 2025.

“Donald Trump tried to pretend that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 despite the fact that it was written for him by the people who know him best. And yesterday, his campaign preview of the RNC platform was just as unhinged and extreme as Trump himself. They left out some of the most unpopular specifics .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/09/republican-abortion-ban-policy-platform-trump .. that we know they support.

“As usual, they’re trying to hide the ball from the American public.”

Trump, in his speech on Tuesday, avoided mention of Project 2025 or his policy on abortion.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/09/trump-doral-florida-campaign-rally

[fuagf]

Many remember solid economy under Trump, but his record also full of tax cut hype, debt and disease

"Oh boy. Trump’s Doral rally tonight was a doozy. Let’s recap it:"


FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, May 1, 2024,
in Waukesha, Wis. Numbers show that the economy during Trump’s presidency has never lived up to his own hype.
But polling shows Americans are more confident about his economic leadership than that of President Joe Biden.
The question of who can best steer the U.S. economy could be a deciding factor in who wins November’s
presidential election.( AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

By JOSH BOAK
Updated 2:07 PM GMT+10, May 20, 2024

All links

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a time of fear and chaos four years ago.

The death count was mounting as COVID-19 spread. Financial markets were panicked. Oil prices briefly went negative. The Federal Reserve slashed its benchmark interest rates to combat the sudden recession. And the U.S. government went on a historic borrowing spree — adding trillions to the national debt — to keep families and businesses afloat.

But as Donald Trump recalled that moment at a recent rally, the former president exuded pride.

“We had the greatest economy in history,” the Republican told his Wisconsin audience. “The 30-year mortgage rate was at a record low, the lowest ever recorded ... 2.65%, that’s what your mortgage rates were.”

The question of who can best steer the U.S. economy could be a deciding factor in who wins November’s presidential election. While an April Gallup poll found that Americans were most likely to say that immigration is the country’s top problem, the economy in general and inflation were also high on the list.

Trump may have an edge over President Joe Biden on key economic concerns, according to an April poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. The survey found that Americans were more likely to say that as president, Trump helped the country with job creation and cost of living. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans said that Biden’s presidency hurt the country on the cost of living.

But the economic numbers expose a far more complicated reality during Trump’s time in the White House. His tax cuts never delivered the promised growth. His budget deficits surged and then stayed relatively high under Biden. His tariffs and trade deals never brought back all of the lost factory jobs.

What to know about the 2024 Election [1 of 4]

Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.
[A sitting president tried to overturn an election and his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop the winner from taking power. Supporters of that attack launched a campaign against local election offices, chasing out veteran administrators and pushing conservative states to pass new laws making it harder to vote.]
https://apnews.com/article/democracy-threats-trump-2024-election-lies-biden-716360db82a28a023bbee0d99f607a76

And there was the pandemic, an event that caused historic job losses for which Trump accepts no responsibility as well as low inflation — for which Trump takes full credit.

If anything, the economy during Trump’s presidency never lived up to his own hype.

DECENT (NOT EXCEPTIONAL) GROWTH

Trump assured the public in 2017 that the U.S. economy with his tax cuts would grow at “3%,” but he added, “I think it could go to 4, 5, and maybe even 6%, ultimately.”

If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, growth after inflation averaged 2.67% under Trump, according to figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Include the pandemic-induced recession and that average drops to an anemic 1.45%.

By contrast, growth during the second term of then-President Barack Obama averaged 2.33%. So far under Biden, annual growth is averaging 3.4%.

MORE GOVERNMENT DEBT

Trump also assured the public that his tax cuts would pay for themselves because of stronger growth. The cuts were broad but disproportionately favored corporations and those with extreme wealth.

The tax cuts signed into law in 2017 never fulfilled Trump’s promises on deficit reduction.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit worsened to $779 billion in 2018. The Congressional Budget Office had forecasted a deficit of $563 billion before the tax cuts, meaning the tax cuts increased borrowing by $216 billion that first year. In 2019, the deficit rose to $984 billion, nearly $300 billion more than what the CBO had forecast.

Then the pandemic happened and with a flurry of government aid, the resulting deficit topped $3.1 trillion. That borrowing enabled the government to make direct payments to individuals and small businesses as the economy was in lockdown, often increasing bank accounts and making many feel better off even though the economy was in a recession.

Deficits have also run high under Biden, as he signed into law a third round of pandemic aid and other initiatives to address climate change, build infrastructure and invest in U.S. manufacturing. His budget deficits: $2.8 trillion (2021), $1.38 trillion (2022) and $1.7 trillion (2023).

The CBO estimated in a report issued Wednesday that the extension of parts of Trump’s tax cuts set to expire after 2025 would add another $4.6 trillion to the national debt through the year 2034.

LOW INFLATION (BUT NOT ALWAYS FOR GOOD REASONS)

Inflation was much lower under Trump, never topping an annual rate of 2.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The annual rate reached as high as 8% in 2022 under Biden and is currently at 3.4%.
Advertisement

There were three big reasons why inflation was low during Trump’s presidency: the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis, Federal Reserve actions and the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump entered the White House with inflation already low, largely because of the slow recovery from the Great Recession, when financial markets collapsed and millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

The inflation rate barely averaged more than 1% during Obama’s second term as the Fed struggled to push up growth. Still, the economy was expanding without overheating.

But in the first three years of Trump’s presidency, inflation averaged 2.1%, roughly close to the Fed’s target. Still, the Fed began to hike its own benchmark rate to keep inflation low at the central bank’s own 2% target. Trump repeatedly criticized the Fed because he wanted to juice growth despite the risks of higher prices.

Then the pandemic hit.

[Insert: [...]Insert: Remember Trump cuts to major agencies caring for the health of American citizens. One unarguable
point arising from the information around that is that Trump has never cared for the care or welfare
of one American more than he has cared for his own political interests. See again:
P - Trump's cult is a death cult. At least, on the best evidence available, it is accurate, fair and just to say Trump's
cult, energized by Fox News, was a death cult. And it has cost both American families and the GOP big time. ]
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174722438

Inflation sank and the Fed slashed rates to sustain the economy during lockdowns.

When Trump celebrates historically low mortgage rates, he’s doing so because the economy was weakened by the pandemic. Similarly, gasoline prices fell below an average of $2 a gallon because no one was driving in April 2020 as the pandemic spread.

FEWER JOBS

The United States lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s presidency, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the pandemic months are excluded, he added 6.7 million jobs.

By contrast, 15.4 million jobs were added during Biden’s presidency. That’s 5.1 million more jobs than what the CBO forecasted he would add before his coronavirus relief and other policies became law — a sign of how much he boosted the labor market.

Both candidates have repeatedly promised to bring back factory jobs. Between 2017 and the middle of 2019, Trump added 461,000 manufacturing jobs. But the gains began to stall and then turned into layoffs during the pandemic, with the Republican posting a loss of 178,000 jobs.

So far, the U.S. economy has added 773,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s presidency.

JOSH BOAK
Boak covers the White House and economic policy.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-economy-biden-election-president-e3a153c9b0c615ea6e0f2afb91cdc785