“…The Trump
team is not using half-measures; they are meeting head-on the criticisms of
Trump and exacerbating them. They are campaigning by audacity. That is, after
all, one of the characteristics Trump’s base likes most about him.
“[Yesterday] that
audacity dovetailed with what appears to be the Trump family’s growing
authoritarianism to make them broadcast that they are above the law. Tonight’s
proceedings smashed all U.S. laws and traditions against using public property
for partisan purposes. The power of the presidency, the physical space of the
White House—the people’s house-- and the nation’s international standing are
all enlisted to get this president, this one man, reelected.
“Trump used the power of his office to pardon as a campaign stunt.
He used a naturalization ceremony—the fundamentally non-partisan act of
becoming an American citizen—to sell the idea he is not anti-immigrant. Melania
Trump spoke from the White House Rose Garden, behind a podium that bore the
presidential seal, to campaign for her husband. And Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo spoke virtually from an official trip to the Middle East.
“There is a law—the Hatch Act—which prohibits all employees of the
Executive Branch except the president and the vice president from engaging in
partisan political activity. It also prohibits the president and the vice
president from commanding any employee to work on behalf of any candidate. The
act is designed to make sure that officials cannot leverage the power of their
office to enhance their own power. Since the law’s passage in 1939, presidents
of both parties have scrupulously adhered to it. Members of the Trump
administration have violated that act repeatedly, but tonight’s
performance celebrated and extended those violations.
“Pompeo’s speech made it clear the violations were no accident.
One of the State Department’s own legal memos says in bold letters: ‘Senate-confirmed
Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention.’ But
Pompeo not only spoke at the convention, he did it on an official overseas trip
paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Former Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who
spent 35 years in the foreign service, told NBC News: ‘People are
extraordinarily upset about it. This is really a bridge too far…. Pompeo is
clearly ensuring the State Department is politicized by using his position to
carry out what is basically a partisan mission.’
“Pompeo’s appearance with some of the religious sites of Jerusalem
showing behind him was intended to highlight Trump’s outreach to evangelical
voters like Pompeo himself. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of
Israel, and the other day said: ‘We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.
That’s for the evangelicals.’
“The State Department said Pompeo addressed the convention in his ‘personal
capacity,’ but even this is out of bounds. In February, Deputy Secretary of
State Stephen Biegun wrote an email to department employees saying he would not
talk politics even when responding ‘to emails from friends.’
“The State Department says that the RNC will pay for ‘everything’
associated with the talk, but four current and former high-ranking diplomats
noted that the logistics of overseas travel make that unlikely: the planes,
motorcades, security, and so on required for a Secretary of State’s travels is
all paid for with taxpayer money.
“A State Department official told NBC News, ‘It is
outrageously un-American for a sitting secretary of state to participate in a
political convention.’ At least the State Department indicated a little
nervousness about using taxpayer money for partisan purposes. The White House
has shown no such concern.
“The first two nights of the convention have ranged far from the
truth, keeping weary fact-checkers working overtime. But the gaslighting is not
an accident, either; it is the point. Trump is selling the classic alternative
reality of authoritarians who have little actual good news to report: he claims
the country is in chaos, caused by lawless ‘others,’ and he alone can solve the
problem. He will return his supporters to the positions of authority they feel
they have lost, ushering back in the good old days when the country was great.
“Far from objecting to Trump’s lies or his violation of the law to
use of the government to win reelection, Trump’s true believers will likely
applaud both. The lies are a comforting story, made better by how much they
upset non-believers—those ‘others’—and in their minds, the power of the
government actually should be used to put down Trump’s unAmerican opposition.
“Trump’s plan for a second term, though, will not necessarily
benefit his supporters. He appears to intend to continue to act as he has done
for the past three and a half years, slashing regulations and taxes, destroying
the social safety net, and privatizing infrastructure, all in the service of
freeing up capital to boost the economy.
“That plan was in the news today as,
in response to an inquiry from leading Democrats, the Chief Actuary for Social
Security crunched the numbers behind Trump’s plan to end the payroll tax. Chief
Actuary Stephen C. Goss said that the plan would end Disability Insurance in
mid-2021 and Social Security by mid-2023.
“Payroll taxes are just that: taxes that come out of your
paycheck. In this case, the tax in question is the Federal Insurance
Contributions Act (FICA) payroll taxes and the Self-Employment Contributions
Act (SECA) taxes. These taxes provide the money that funds Social Security and
Disability Insurance. Trump has talked about eliminating the taxes, arguing
that getting rid of them would put more money in people’s pockets. It would, in
the short term but, as Goss explains, it would almost immediately destroy
Social Security and Disability Insurance.
“A disregard for social welfare laws is not limited to Trump. In
the New
York Times, former chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen and
Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Priorities, note
that the Senate is on vacation while thirty million American households did not
have enough food last week. ‘The economics of this moment are not complicated,’
they write. The economy can’t recover and sustain itself until the coronavirus
is under control. Until then, it is imperative for Congress to fund a relief
bill to put money back into people’s pockets, both for moral reasons, and to
keep the economy from grinding to a halt.
“The House passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill in May,
but the Senate refused to take it up. The Senate turned to writing a bill in
late July, just as the federal boost of $600 a week to unemployment benefits
was due to expire, along with the moratorium on evictions. Quickly, though, it
became clear the Republican caucus could not agree on a bill, and Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell turned the problem of negotiating a new bill
over to White House leaders and congressional Democrats.
“With Republicans on the sidelines, Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows refused to budge from their
$1 trillion starting point even after the Democrats offered to meet them halfway.
Trump declared the negotiations over and dramatically claimed to be handling
the most crucial problems with executive actions. His use of the nation’s
disaster relief fund to pay for a $300 weekly bonus in unemployment benefits to
people in 30 states (so far) will not last more than five weeks, even as it
drains our capacity to respond to the California and Colorado wildfires, the
Iowa derecho, and the two tropical storms bearing down on Louisiana.
“Reality looks a lot less triumphant than [yesterday’s]
tawdry performance in the house that has sheltered Thomas Jefferson and Abraham
Lincoln, and which belongs not to the Trumps, but to the American people.”
"Allies of Donald Trump shattered political norms, stirred controversy and issued misleading claims against Democrats during the second night of the Republican party’s national convention on Tuesday.
ReplyDelete"In speech after speech, a collection of Trump’s family members, allies, right-wing campaigners and swing-state farmers portrayed the president as the best hope for America’s future.
"A spokesperson for Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden said Tuesday’s event presented an 'alternate reality' that failed to acknowledge the severity of the coronavirus pandemic or its economic fallout.
"In his speech on Tuesday, Larry Kudlow, who leads the White House’s council of economic advisers, described the coronavirus pandemic in the past tense, apparently ignoring that hundreds continue to die each day.
"More than 175,000 people have died and more than 5.7 million have been infected in the US, far more than any other country in the world.
"'President Trump’s RNC is an alternate reality. In this delusion, thousands of Americans didn’t die in the last week from Covid-19, nor have millions of Americans been infected or put out of work. Our economy hasn’t ground to a halt and our kids aren’t being kept home from school,' Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement. 'Donald Trump’s continual refusal to take this virus seriously has given the United States the worst outbreak in the world, and his convention’s refusal to come to grips with reality or acknowledge the magnitude of the loss is a stark reminder to Americans of his complete failure to lead.'..." (The Guardian).