Hollow Words from 2017

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

“Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.

“Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

“The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

“Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

“That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

“It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

“This is your day. This is your celebration.

“And this, the United States of America, is your country.

“What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

“January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.”

– newly elected President Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2017, Washington, D.C.

None of that was true.

None of that has been true.

None of that is true.

Contrary to what the Liar in Chief said, neither he, nor the Banana Republican Party, have made America great again.

Of course, the logic of his campaign slogan – “Make America Great Again” – is illogical, and inherently contradictory, because a thing can only be made “great again” if it is presently “not great.” And America has NEVER been “not great.”

In its history, America has had trying times, to be certain. And, America hasn’t always been right. But since its founding, America has always been a beacon on a hill, a light shining in the darkness, a leader and an example for the world to follow – confessing when it has been wrong, and changing its ways when it was.

If only what he said had come to pass… had it been true, it would have been remarkable.

But sadly, as we’ve come to experience, the things he says CANNOT be taken at face value, not ever. Liars lie. And he is a liar. Only if he is faced with the possibility of punishment can he be relied upon He cannot ever be relied upon in any circumstance, at any time, to tell anything anywhere remotely near the truth. Not ever.

The sad fact of the matter is that, as POTUS, not only has he disgraced the Office of the President, and made the United States a mockery among its allies, and a laughingstock to its enemies, but he has harmed the American people, fostered strife, animosity, and hatred of our neighbors, our family members. And now, when faced with a domestic crisis, the likes of which haven’t been seen in perhaps 100 years – the novel coronavirus pandemic – he has not merely stumbled and fallen, but has actively ignored the cries of The People, and the sage advise of many more well-seasoned and experienced in policy. Naturally, the multi-millionaire class Banana Republican Congress – primarily as the Senate misled by the Legislative Grim Reaper demon of Senate Majority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell, who has literally prevented well over 400 pieces of legislation from reaching the Senate for debate – has not helped.

Regarding this tally of his lies, falsehoods, utterly brazen dissimulations, prevarications, fabrications, absolute fictions, and every other synonym for lying, the Washington Post and others which have kept count have lost count of the number, and wrote that “Their fact-checking team had kept up until Trump received the Republican nomination this year, on August 27. At that point, they’d counted 22,247 false claims in 1,316 days — just under a 17 per day average. However, in those last weeks of counting, he hit an average of over 50 lies per day — and since the inauguration, their fact-checking team has been unable to keep up.”

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker page, which is an “ongoing database of the false or misleading claims made by President Trump since assuming office” which was last updated October 16, 2020, indicated that “In 1,366 days, President Trump has made 25,653 false or misleading claims.”

• Trump has falsely stated 232 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history — bigger than President Ronald Reagan’s in 1981. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years.

• Trump’s most repeated claim — 407 times — is that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. He’s been forced to adapt for the tough economic times, and doing so has made it even more fantastic. Whereas he used to say it was the best economy in U.S. history, he now often recalls that he achieved “the best economy in the history of the world.”

That’s not true. The president once could brag about the state of the economy, but he ran into trouble when he made a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the pre-coronavirus economy was not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy was already beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump’s trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession.

• Trump’s second-most-repeated claim — 262 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so the project evolved into the replacement of smaller, older barriers with steel bollard fencing. (Only a small portion of the barrier is on land that previously did not have a barrier.) The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past. Nevertheless, the project has diverted billions in military and counternarcotics funding to become one of the largest infrastructure projects in U.S. history, seizing private land, cutting off wildlife corridors and disrupting Native American cultural sites.

• Trump has falsely said 232 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised it would be the biggest in U.S. history — bigger than President Ronald Reagan’s in 1981. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president’s rallies.

The actions of his presidency will not be remembered favorably by historians and rather, will be rendered to the ash heap of history as one of the most ignoble, inglorious, worthless times in American, and world history.

Good-bye, and good riddance to Piece Of Shit 45.