This is the periodical trump trash thread. Check back for occasional updates.

Today's update: 20 Reasons Why Trump Is The Worst Of Humanity

1. The man lies all the time. Trump is a Bull-Sh[b]i[/b]t Artist

Like the skilled liar he is, he does it with impunity. “I watched in Jersey City, NJ when thousands and thousands of people were cheering as the World Trade Center collapsed.” “The last quarter the gross domestic product was less than zero.” “The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is 30 million, it could be 34 million.” “ The Mexican government forces bad people into our country.” “The unemployment rate may be as high as 42 percent.”

All these things have been said by Donald, actually often yelled by him, and many times over and over in front of large crowds. How about the whopper, “Crime statistics show blacks kill 81 percent of white homicide victims”? One has to wonder why this lie would be conceived, much less told. Donald Trump says all of these things forcefully, so they must be true. But they are not!

Unambiguously, they are what is described as “pants on fire” untruthful, as in, not a shred of truth. In passing, you have to ponder whether yet another of Donald Trump’s oft made statements about the fervor of his Christianity and the Bible being his favorite book are also not grounded in truth. Clearly, “thou shall not lie” is not his favorite of the Ten Commandments.

2. It is actually not all about the candidate.

“It’s amazing how often I am right?” “I alone can fix this.” “I have a big brain.” “I advise myself.” “I am very, very rich.”

Donald really said all these things. His ego seems to know no bounds. When Donald feels insulted by someone, he obsesses without control. He fusses, he fumes, and he says unbelievably inappropriate things. He is in his glory when he can bully his way to a result he covets.


Did you ever notice that those real people stories other candidates are always telling about someone they just met, struggling with a difficult problem, are just not in the Trump lexicon? He keeps telling us he is all about winners. I guess these folks don’t qualify. Said another way, Donald Trump doesn’t play well in the sandbox with others.

First, he has his own ideas as to who can be in the sandbox with him. He also wants to run the sandbox. He is the kid who gets his way or stomps off in a huff. What happens when he figures out, even our nation’s highest office is not all about him? Do we want him with the codes to nuclear weapons?

3. U.S. presidents are by design not kings.

The Constitution makes them share power. Donald Trump who uses the “I” word more than anyone who has ever aspired to the job, has a brazenly authoritarian bent. He wants to be a “strongman,” not a president.

One has to wonder what would happen if he actually had to govern or make one of his deals in a zero sum world of politics where the other side just says no. What then of his notoriously short attention span, temper or non-stop need to tweet his every frustration?

4. The devil IS in the details.

“Winning so much we will get tired of winning,” “Make good deals with China,” or even “Make America great again” are slogans that don’t actually say anything. We are not stupid; share some details with us, so we can figure out whether you know what you are talking about. For Donald, however, in the few instances when specifics do follow, like perhaps the 1,000-mile, 35-55 foot wall or the deportation of 11 million immigrants, the details never come.

Never are we told that to build the wall, even to the lower 35 feet, (by actual construction estimates) would cost $25 billion dollars, even if you could get the land to build it (most of the border Trump wants to wall is in the middle of a river and land in many cases could not even be secured for a fence).

His magic to make Mexico pay for it? The only suggestion I have heard is take it out of remittances from folks mailing money back home or one of his “45 percent tariffs.” How is that going to work for the Americans sending the money to relatives or all of us paying 45 percent more for Mexican-made merchandise or the American company doing the manufacturing? How about the fact that the wall would do little to stop illegal immigration, more of which is “overstays” of visitors than “over the border” and likely will generate few, if any, jobs for the folks Trump has whipped up into a xenophobic frenzy.

Then let’s take the deportation and just focus on the big stuff. How exactly do you round up and deport 11 million people? Is he going to use stadiums and nationalize cruise ship lines? Who will be doing the rounding up, certainly not the police, the army perhaps? The children left behind? How about the fact that American farms, restaurants, not to mention landscaping and construction labor jobs will go unattended? Vital jobs for sure, but are these the jobs that Trump plans to provide for his “real Americans” to make America great again?

5. Words matter.

Everything is not a “disaster,” “stupid” or a “disgrace.” Neither is it “tremendous,” “huge,” “fantastic” or “amazing.” Everyone is not a “loser,” “low energy” or a “bimbo.” Talk of former presidents being liars ― or his favorite, “a disaster” ― and foreign dictators being great leaders does not advance the discourse.

Americans are mostly not prudes, but vulgarity from the dais, peni-s size allusions, reveling in sexual conquests, menstruation-based criticism and crass insults of every shape and form just does not cut it from a president. We have children.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd6yodO1DNY

6. Reading is good. So is studying.

Donald Trump recently told us that he does not read much. We know from the recent revelations by Tony Schwartz, his ghost writer on The Art of the Deal (yes, I do have my copy from when it first came out, autographed with Donald telling me to “keep up the great work”), which Donald says is second only to the Bible as the must-read book, that he certainly has not written a book ― at least not that one.

Even though for many years I owned a bookstore and would not let my kids watch TV on weekdays to help them become readers, I do not believe you must read to lead. I do believe, however, that those who seek to lead us need to study hard, seek to gain wisdom from others, and try to master very complex ideas and relationships. I think being president is hard. I am glad that after a long day, President Obama retreats to his private study almost every night for 3 or 4 hours of quiet study... and reading.

Any fair interpretation of Trump’s many bizarre statements and flip-flops makes it clear he has not the slightest inclination to read or study. In his own words, he makes decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I already had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have lots of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.” It is a special and unique form of arrogance to think you could even consider being literally the leader of the free world without doing the work to deeply understand the job.

7. The new vocabulary we are adjusting to is not a good one.

Xenophobe (intense dislike or fear of people from foreign countries); misogynist (strong prejudice against women); nativist (preference for established inhabitants as opposed to immigrants); fascist (authoritarian and dictatorial); bigot (intolerance for those with a different opinion); demagogue (inflaming passions based on popular desires not on rationale arguments); dystopian (describing a place, typically totalitarian, where everything is unpleasant and squalid); racist (oh, you know what this one is).

We have all had to get the dictionary out to understand many of the not household terms that had to find their way into print to describe the unique phenomenon that is Donald Trump. The scary thing is that these strange words are at least close to the mark. What happened to statesmanlike, well-qualified, or even brilliant, as words we can use to describe people we want to elect to high office? Haven’t heard any of these associated with the Donald.

8. We need to be careful with “tough.”

Donald Trump said of a protester at one of his rallies, “in the good old days they would have carried him out on a stretcher.” His world reveres this brand of toughness. This toughness is not about the strength it takes to use restraint or to make really hard decisions. It is about “punching that guy in the face,” or at a minimum, saving face ― his.

I will resist the temptation to belabor the nuclear codes point again, and rather just query do we really want a thin-skinned president who, as he suggested, if a government leader (Castro) was not on the tarmac to meet his plane, “would turn around Air Force One and come home.” Or one who when confronted with the fact that whether or not his careless re-tweet of a white supremacist-created Jewish star and dollar bill-backed attack of Hillary Clinton was anti-Semitic, can’t even just give one of those non-apology-apologies, “I am sorry if I offended anyone.” A “tough-guy” who instead declares major newscasters stupid and sick and makes it all about the media who dare to criticize him, with never a word to David Duke and the ugly element high-fiving him and resending his initial offensive post.

Whether or not the post was intended to even more firmly entrench this segment of support, Trump demonstrates his version of tough, one that glorifies his opinion and his being right over all else. Nowhere in his world can tough be humble, respectful, restrained or diplomatic.

9. Success does matter.

Donald Trump’s business success is greatly exaggerated and his skills limited. Donald Trump is a great salesman and a showman/promoter in a league only with PT Barnum. This we can give him. He has also been very good at making his name a brand and selling its use. For a while, he had some pretty high TV ratings by telling out of work celebrities they were fired. However, even in his own playing field, ask any large New York real estate developer, of which—surprise, surprise—he is not one, at least not as to large (14th in New York City on the latest list), and you will learn his successes are few.

Four business bankruptcies (1991, 1992, 2004 and 2009), the Plaza Hotel, Trump Air, all three casinos (a couple times) the steaks, the water, Trump Centre in New Jersey that I worked on, Manhattan’s West Side rail yards (where buildings do bear his name as a consolation), the much-hyped $35,000 get-rich scheme Trump University ― all failures by any measure except of course to Donald, who “has no regrets, whatsoever.”

Then there are basic business ethics: 3,500 lawsuits, the fact that he has penchant for not paying bills fully or on time, or that he calls himself the “King of Debt” ― a king made rich by running up debt, then renegotiating it. Is this the skill set we want for the president?

Even with Trump’s fabled net worth, always exaggerated by billions more than others calculate, one has to wonder if his true net worth wouldn’t be just as much if he took his considerable inheritance from father Fred and just passively invested it. We’ll never know from Donald ― certainly not from those tax returns he won’t release.

10. We could not be the great country we are without the First Amendment, but our media may kill us.

The media is not Donald’s enemy as he keeps announcing from the stage. It may be the enemy of the rest of us, however. It sure feels like it lately. The air time Donald gets, and his ability to phone in his rants (especially with the cable media) is nothing short of, to use one of his words, “disgusting.”

Donald, who lives by polls and ratings, understands it is ratings and not news worthiness that dictates what is on the airwaves. Donald dominates almost every news cycle, simply by being more outrageous than anyone or anything else. The “false equivalency” created by point-counterpoint talking heads then makes over-the-top positions seem legitimate. It is reality TV writ large and it is very out of control.

11. Temperament, demeanor and character are important.

In many ways, Donald represents the very worst in all of us, or at least many of us. He is all about continuous gratification. He is the petulant child who wants his way. He is the selfish teenager with no big picture yet. He is the spoiled young man of privilege with the “right” race and religion, education, good looks, and family fortune to succeed easily, and who looks down on others lacking in any of the above who do not.

He is a man who thinks it is okay to call someone fat or ugly or stupid or to make fun of a person with a disability. He is the collector of trophy wives and trophy properties, the guy who wins, or so he thinks, because he has the most toys.

12. The emperor and his clothes.

Donald says he knows more about the military than anyone else. Why? Because he went to an expensive prep school where they wore uniforms and sometimes marched? How about, “I know more about ISIS than the generals.” Please, can some real soldiers evaluate this?

Donald says America never wins anymore. Compared to whom, and at what? No doubt we have problems. Democracy is messy. Witness the present campaign, and the long slow recovery from the 2008 recession has not included the middle class nearly enough. And, yes, trade in a world that is now fully connected and integrated is hard to figure out. But by what measure is America, as Donald tells us, a “disaster”?

How do you actually say and believe, “This country is a hell-hole. We are going down fast.” Compared to whom? Mexico, China or his most bizarre new favorite, Russia, that he tells us “beat us all the time ... because our leaders are stupid”? Give us a break.

13. Sophomoric speech tricks don’t work ― at least not with most of us.

Says Donald, “I am not going to talk about” the libertarian VP candidate’s alcoholism. “I refuse to say... I cannot stand to say... that I cannot stand the sound of Clinton screaming into the microphone all the time.” You just did, Donald. We get it that with these statements, even you know you are on shaky ground so you are trying to play it both ways. Doesn’t work. Nor does your even more insidious, not-so-clever trick of attributing to others wild accusations that even you are afraid to make, but that you want to advance.

How about when discussing the Orlando massacre, “there are a lot of people that think [President Obama] doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it I happen to think he just doesn’t know what he is doing, but there are many people that think maybe he just doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”

Who are these “people” who have placed the president on the side of the terrorists? Perhaps the same people who, with Trump, saw the masses in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the twin towers, or those convinced Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster, that Ted Cruz’s father was working with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill President Kennedy, or that President Obama was not born in the United States nor did he graduate from Harvard or Columbia.

Two possibilities. The likely one: “lots of people are saying” is just Trump code for “I want to now float something so outrageous” even red-faced Donald can’t get it out without this qualifier. Or perhaps the “lots of people” is a select group, the closed loop of the loyalists who attend his rallies that heard it from him!

14. A thin skin does not work for a president.

“The politicians have again chosen this presidential pigmy as their nominee.” So said the long-defunct New York Herald about Abraham Lincoln, now nearly everybody’s choice for our nation’s best president. Consider the statement when George Washington left office: “the time is now arrived for the source of all misfortune of our country… [to be] reduced to a level with his fellow citizens.”

U.S. presidents, all of them, have had their critics, and in our land of wonderful free speech, the critics get to have their say. Thank goodness. That Donald does not do well with criticism is not really open to debate. Ask Megyn Kelly (“third-rate talent”), Rosie O’Donnell (“nice little fat Rosie,” “total loser”) or Elizabeth Warren (“Pocahontas”) or for that matter virtually any of his recently vanquished adversaries: Cruz, Kasich, Rubio or Bush, in just the first tier. Even the one most like him (now apparently looking for a post-New Jersey job with him), Chris Christie felt his sting when he suggested Donald was “thin-skinned.” He just can’t let anything go ever. He obsesses even when he wins.

Republicans who broke “the pledge” to support him, they “should not be allowed to run for office again.” In Donald’s world, disagreeing with him has to have a consequence ― a serious one ― and pursuing this goal is worthy of effort and energy, even when it makes no difference.

Do we really think our president has time for this? Do we really want a man with such sensibilities and such an authoritarian bent in charge of, say, the FBI or the IRS? Does the concept of “secret police,” a favorite of leaders of this type elsewhere, seem too extreme? Probably, yes. But if I was Donald, I would float it with one of his “people are saying” declarations. There, I just used his trick. See how easy it is.

15. Bullies will always exist somewhere, but the White House should not be that somewhere.

What does a bully do? Most of all he or she seeks to intimidate, physically or at least verbally. So far this character trait of Donald’s has been exclusively verbal and aimed at business adversaries and more recently politicians and journalists ― and, of course, then ex-ghost writer of his book and ex-employees or contractors he cheated (those who do not have anti-disparagement contractual handcuffs) who dare to candidly assess his conduct.

What happens when this guy gets the world’s strongest army at his disposal, and a bully pulpit that guarantees him notice? Seem like a bad idea to anyone else?

16. Law and order.

Before it was an Emmy-winning TV show, “law and order” was a campaign theme used by Richard Nixon in 1968 to get himself elected in a year when our country had two very public assassinations and destructive demonstrations, even riots, in 110 U.S. cities. Nixon sought to mobilize what he called the “silent majority” around the need for more police. He also tapped into the racial and economic divide between black and white and working class and “elite Eastern liberals,” and the evil media that his vice president, Spiro Agnew, called “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Is Donald Trump seeking to bring this back? Of course yes, yet no.

Yes, he wants to separate and mobilize angry voters who feel left behind by an increasingly diverse culture. No, because his dystopian version of lawless, besieged, pitifully weak America is not what Nixon preached, nor for that matter Ronald Reagan. It is unique to him, at least in our country. It is, however, a textbook version of the rallying cry of countless dictators and strongmen. It is a demagogue’s basic tool, to gin up a problem then declare he is the “only one who can fix it.”

As bad as all this rhetoric is, what next? He tells us, “On January 20, 2017, the day I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced... crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon―I mean very soon―come to an end.” How’s this work, Donald? Martial law? Does he honestly believe President Obama, and for that matter all of his 44 predecessors, would not have liked to have all laws effective and fully followed? If only wishing could make it so! However, since the states, not the federal government, hold sway over most criminal law, the president acting alone has no Constitutional power to do any such thing. What then? More of the water boarding and killing families of terrorists logic? “I alone can fix it!”

17. Incoherent rants, often contradictory, does not a foreign policy make.

Convince Japan and South Korea to seek nuclear arms. Eliminate NATO. Crush ISIS but do it without Muslim allies and no troops on the ground. Sometimes attack Libya, sometimes not. Sometimes attack surgically, but don’t let it come out the way it did. Sometimes it’s good we attacked Iraq, sometimes not. Do not nation build, but fix Syria. Stop Iran by making better deals.

In fact, come to think of it, that is the solution to almost everything: “just make better deals” everywhere. Oh, yes and never apologize for anything. We are America, very, very rich and beholden to no one. Like us or else. Sound like someone we know?

18. How will anyone effectively be president if we don’t at least respect the office?

In the 1960s during an unpopular war, we all endured a president adorning himself with a flag pin and declaring anyone who did not agree with him (which include a heck of a lot of young people on campuses all across America, including me) somehow un-American. Although political opposition is as old as our nation, we begin to slide down the slope of dangerous disrespect when disagreement is replaced with vilification.

This Republican nominee for the presidency thinks it is okay to accuse a former president of his own party of intentionally going to war on false pretenses and the current President of being in conspiracy with Muslim terrorists. Any thoughtful American of either party or no party, of any political philosophy must see that this must stop.

Truth, or at least a semblance of some, has to come back. Outrageous lies just have no place in meaningful discourse ― outrageous liars even less so. They cannot become the backbone of a point-counterpoint talking-head media circus that is so much more about ratings than truth.

19. Rich and powerful guys have to play by the rules, too.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Trump University was not an academic institution, far from it. It was a get-rich-quick scheme by a guy selling a get-rich-quick scheme. It is not the first or the last of its type. Late night, cheap-advertising-time-television will always feature this fare. Donald’s efforts, however, were on so much a grander scale ― $35,000... “a university.” Really? What this was is an out-and-out fraud scheme by a man now trying to become the leader of our country and the free world.

We all know, or at least have read, that suckers are born every minute. But can’t we at least disrespect those who prey on these poor folks, and when they really go too far, sue them? “No,” says Donald Trump. The court case brought by a whole class of plaintiffs against his scam is only still in court, Donald says, because the long-time and distinguished federal judge is a “hater” not capable of giving him justice because his parents are from Mexico.

In Donald’s world, the only individual capable of judging him would not be Mexican or related to anyone from Mexico, likewise folks of the Muslim faith, and, oh yeah, likewise women. In this world rich, entitled, egotistical, ethically-challenged older white men should then only be judged by rich, entitled, egotistical, ethically-challenged older white men.

20. We must stand for something.

Donald Trump’s version of America does not include folks not like him. Instead, he is all about what Sarah Palin labeled “real Americans.” The fact that all us others seem to be utterly expendable is deeply troubling. Targeting an entire religion ― Islam, with 1.6 billion adherents, 3.3 million being U.S. citizens ― for extra scrutiny or worse is patently inconsistent with traditional American values, if not those of the “real Americans.”

It is also unconstitutional, and, beyond all this, incredibly counterproductive as it hardens the lines of controversy by wholesale moving of the allies we need to solve terrorist problems into the enemy camp. Other similar strategies championed by Donald, like waterboarding and other forms of torture, not to mention targeting families of an enemy, are not just illegal. They are, to use another one of his words, “stupid”. They do not work, very likely making situations worse and our enemies more numerous and passionate.

One has to wonder, what does the America of the “real Americans” look like? A bunch of intolerant, hyper aggressive, folks behind a big wall, isolated (not trading with anyone and thus with a sick economy and very expensive goods) and with a lot of enemies. No “Shining City on the Hill,” for sure. Hard to see anything but ruin ahead for such a place.

We can do so much better! For me, better comes easily in the form of former Senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. For those who do not come to that conclusion easily (I get it), this year it will have to be the lesser of two evils. No matter what, don’t even think about taking us into the abyss that is Donald Trump.

Very impressed with your posts. You absolutely nailed it. The Emperor has no cloth. One comforting thing to me and millions of Americans is that the national nightmare by name Tramp will go away on November 9 to his con game like useless, worthless and unaccredited Trump University.

[size=13pt]Trump’s Big Economic Policy Address Is Short On Specifics, Other Than Help For Wealthy[/size]

His attempt to reinvigorate the campaign after a horrible week flopped.

Donald Trump is tanking in the polls, but his campaign reportedly hoped things would look up after his Monday speech.
After spending a week picking a fight with the parents of a fallen soldier, Donald Trump on Monday tried to reinvigorate his campaign with an economic policy speech that lacked detail and didn’t deviate much from his previously described plans.

Trump’s camp had hyped the speech at the Detroit Economic Club as a turning point after a week of slumping polls, with the goal of re-energizing the campaign. But in a scripted message, he offered a few variations on his previously proposed economic policies, along with a milder version of the dire message about a declining America that he’s been serving up for months.

Trump’s campaign on Monday pulled down his old tax plan from his website, and replaced it with the text of his Detroit speech. The original plan would have capped income taxes at 25 percent and long-term capital gains and dividends at 20 percent, while adding $12 trillion to the national debt.

In its place, Trump offered the same basic ideas, with some slightly shifted details. More details, he said, would be provided “in the coming weeks.”

He also offered some of his usual refrains: Trump lamented that the country had strayed from an “America First” policy; bemoaned that skyscrapers had been built in Beijing and refugees had been accepted into the U.S.; and called the unemployment rate a hoax.

“All of our policies should be geared towards keeping wealth inside the United States,” he said.

Trump is struggling in the polls after spending the last several days insulting the Gold Star family and refusing to endorse prominent Republicans for office.

On Friday, he rolled out an economic advisory team that was full of white men named Steve, ardent free trade advocates and campaign donors. While the group lacked the actual economists and tax experts you’d expect to develop a typical Republican presidential candidate’s policy plan, it had people who could at least be trusted to deliver a pretty good imitation of one.

The campaign hoped Monday’s economic policy announcement would offer something of a turning point. Trump’s speech contained plenty of good news for millionaires: He called for eliminating the estate tax, cutting regulations “massively,” halting any new federal regulation and cutting the business tax rate to 15 percent from just under 40 percent.

Trump did seem to offer a tiny concession to fiscal sanity by saying he would lower individual tax rates to a simplified system of 12, 25 and 33 percent. The 33 percent would be a big break for top earners, who are currently taxed at a rate of 39.5 percent. But it’s also a tax increase from Trump’s initially proposed rates of 10, 20 and 25 percent, which were far beyond what any Republican presidential candidate was proposing.

For good measure, Trump tossed in a child care deduction that would help wealthy people lower their tax bills, while not actually helping people who can’t afford child care.

In other words, for all the talk of Trump’s unique appeal to disaffected white men without college degrees, his new economic policy offers a heaping dose of what purportedly alienated them.

Trump’s speech didn’t include some of his most common rhetoric: racist and xenophobic threats that have engaged his base. He left out his trademark promise to implement huge new tariffs on goods imported from China and Mexico by American companies, as well as his astronomically expensive plans to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the country and build a wall across the nation’s southern border.

Why would Trump fail to talk about his core economic policies in a speech that was supposed to morph his campaign into something more moderate and acceptable? A Bloomberg News section headline provided a terse explanation: “Donors Watching.

Yarduni:
[size=13pt]Trump’s Big Economic Policy Address Is Short On Specifics, Other Than Help For Wealthy[/size]

His attempt to reinvigorate the campaign after a horrible week flopped.

Donald Trump is tanking in the polls, but his campaign reportedly hoped things would look up after his Monday speech.
After spending a week picking a fight with the parents of a fallen soldier, Donald Trump on Monday tried to reinvigorate his campaign with an economic policy speech that lacked detail and didn’t deviate much from his previously described plans.

Trump’s camp had hyped the speech at the Detroit Economic Club as a turning point after a week of slumping polls, with the goal of re-energizing the campaign. But in a scripted message, he offered a few variations on his previously proposed economic policies, along with a milder version of the dire message about a declining America that he’s been serving up for months.

Trump’s campaign on Monday pulled down his old tax plan from his website, and replaced it with the text of his Detroit speech. The original plan would have capped income taxes at 25 percent and long-term capital gains and dividends at 20 percent, while adding $12 trillion to the national debt.

In its place, Trump offered the same basic ideas, with some slightly shifted details. More details, he said, would be provided “in the coming weeks.”

He also offered some of his usual refrains: Trump lamented that the country had strayed from an “America First” policy; bemoaned that skyscrapers had been built in Beijing and refugees had been accepted into the U.S.; and called the unemployment rate a hoax.

“All of our policies should be geared towards keeping wealth inside the United States,” he said.

Trump is struggling in the polls after spending the last several days insulting the Gold Star family and refusing to endorse prominent Republicans for office.

On Friday, he rolled out an economic advisory team that was full of white men named Steve, ardent free trade advocates and campaign donors. While the group lacked the actual economists and tax experts you’d expect to develop a typical Republican presidential candidate’s policy plan, it had people who could at least be trusted to deliver a pretty good imitation of one.

The campaign hoped Monday’s economic policy announcement would offer something of a turning point. Trump’s speech contained plenty of good news for millionaires: He called for eliminating the estate tax, cutting regulations “massively,” halting any new federal regulation and cutting the business tax rate to 15 percent from just under 40 percent.

Trump did seem to offer a tiny concession to fiscal sanity by saying he would lower individual tax rates to a simplified system of 12, 25 and 33 percent. The 33 percent would be a big break for top earners, who are currently taxed at a rate of 39.5 percent. But it’s also a tax increase from Trump’s initially proposed rates of 10, 20 and 25 percent, which were far beyond what any Republican presidential candidate was proposing.

For good measure, Trump tossed in a child care deduction that would help wealthy people lower their tax bills, while not actually helping people who can’t afford child care.

In other words, for all the talk of Trump’s unique appeal to disaffected white men without college degrees, his new economic policy offers a heaping dose of what purportedly alienated them.

Trump’s speech didn’t include some of his most common rhetoric: racist and xenophobic threats that have engaged his base. He left out his trademark promise to implement huge new tariffs on goods imported from China and Mexico by American companies, as well as his astronomically expensive plans to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the country and build a wall across the nation’s southern border.

Why would Trump fail to talk about his core economic policies in a speech that was supposed to morph his campaign into something more moderate and acceptable? A Bloomberg News section headline provided a terse explanation: “Donors Watching.

This is what we call Tricke Down Economics. Republicans have been trying it since Reagan in the 80s and it never works and it won't now. George Bush tried it and almost bankrupt America . Tramp talking about taxes and he won't release his taxes after Hillary released 20 years of her taxes. This is unheard of from a presidential candidate of a major party. He's is not only a bigot, he's an hypocrite .

Lucasbalo:
This is what we call Tricke Down Economics. Republicans have been trying it since Reagan in the 80s and it never works and it won't now. George Bush tried it and almost bankrupt America . Tramp talking about taxes and he won't release his taxes after Hillary released 20 years of her taxes. This is unheard of from a presidential candidate of a major party. He's is not only a bigot, he's an hypocrite .

Actually he has an empty brain. All nonsense he said yesterday were not his own words at all, he was speaking because of donor money. The guy is a big phoney.

Yarduni:


Actually he has an empty brain. All nonsense he said yesterday were not his own words at all, he was speaking because of donor money. The guy is a big phoney.

Gbam.

Read The Republican Letter Calling For The RNC to Cut Donald Trump’s Funding

"This is the family trying to fix itself"

More than 70 top Republican elected officials and party operatives have signed a letter calling for the Republican National Committee to stop funding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Former members of Congress, RNC staffers and other party insiders say the RNC should focus on Senate and House races where Republicans face tough elections.

The letter, first reported by POLITICO, says Trump has alienated “millions of voters” since the Republican National Convention with his repeated comments and gaffes that drew widespread criticism.

“Every dollar spent by the RNC on Donald Trump’s campaign is a dollar of donor money wasted on the losing effort of a candidate who has actively undermined the GOP at every turn,” the letter states. “The RNC should shift its strategy and its resources to convince voters not to give Hillary Clinton the “blank check” of a Democrat-controlled Congress to advance her big government agenda.”

The letter’s signatories include former New Hampshire Senator Gordon Humphrey, former GOP Congressmen Tom Coleman, Chris Shays, Mickey Edwards and Vin Weber. Shays has said he will vote for Clinton while Humphrey and Weber have said they would vote for her if the election was close. It also includes former heads of Communication, Grassroots Involvement, Digital and other departments at the RNC. A Wednesday report said several RNC staffers have left because they do not want to help elect Trump.

“This is the family trying to fix itself,” said Andrew Weinstein, a former press aide to Senator Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich who works in communications consulting, who is circulating the letter. “This is an intervention by former RNC staffers and other GOP officials: ‘Please stop destroying yourselves and protect our Senate and House majorities.'”

Weinstein said he will send the letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus next week.

In 1996, the Republican party explicitly pulled support from Bob Dole’s presidential campaign to focus on down ballot races. A TIME cover story said Priebus told Trump he would consider shifting party funds away from the billionaire’s flagging presidential campaign.

Read the full letter: http://time.com/4449116/donald-trump-rnc-funding-gop/

Debate Gaffe: Did Donald Trump Admit Paying No Federal Income Taxes?

Having predicted that the first presidential debate was Hillary Clinton’s to lose, the media consensus in its immediate aftermath appeared to be that she had won. Some credited the Democratic nominee for luring Trump into taking the bait on his birther obsession and his cruelty to women; some blamed moderator Lester Holt for pressing him more than Clinton; and some disparaged Trump’s arrogant failure to prepare for this crucial moment.

Among the most telling consequences of that poor preparation was what sounded like a very damaging admission that the self-proclaimed billionaire doesn’t pay federal income taxes.

Responding to a question from Holt about his continuing refusal to release his tax returns — as presidential candidates have done for more than 40 years — he again claimed that he was “under a routine audit” that precluded disclosure. (He didn’t produce a letter of notification from the IRS about the alleged audit, which either Clinton or Holt might have demanded.) He said once more that he would produce his tax returns when the IRS completes the alleged audit.


For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns,” Clinton retorted. “You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you’re under audit. So you’ve got to ask yourself, why won’t he release his tax returns?”


Is it because he isn’t as wealthy as he claims to be? she wondered. Is it because he isn’t really so charitable? Is it because he doesn’t want Americans to know how much money he owes to foreign banks (in Russia or China or both)?

Or is it because he doesn’t pay any income taxes at all? Clinton suggested that might well be true “because the only years [of Trump taxes] that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.”


Trump blurted: “That makes me smart.”

As the debate moved on, the casino developer complained that the Treasury has accumulated too much debt while the government has neglected American infrastructure. “We’re a debtor nation,” he cried.

“And maybe because you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years.”

Trump replied: “It would be squandered, too, believe me.”


Snappy as his retorts were, what Trump said suggested strongly that he has indeed paid no taxes. After the debate, while trying to spin the result, he insisted that “of course” he has paid taxes.

It is time for journalists to insist that he prove it.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/debate-gaffe-did-donald-trump-admit-paying-no-federal-income-taxes/