How Donald Trump is Channeling Machiavelli
This past weekend, Donald Trump and JD Vance accused their Democratic opponents of plotting to kill Trump, implicitly threatening to prosecute them should they win. As shocking as it sounds, it was unremarkable since personal threats are a common and menacing feature of their campaign. Since Trump announced his bid for a second term, he has threatened to investigate and… Continue reading
Unraveling Trump’s taxes: He Makes Money By Losing Other People’s…
Millions of Americans believe that Donald Trump is a business failure who cheats on his taxes. But to borrow one of his favorite insults, the president may not be “the stone-cold loser,” many imagine. In some ways, he’s a success even considering his businesses generate vast losses and he personally liable for the hundreds of millions of dollars in bank…Continue reading
Donald Trump versus the Suckers Who Pay Their Fair Share…
We need a reality check. The news earlier this week that Donald Trump, who earned $434 million in 2018, paid little or no federal income taxes for years was staggering. Sand those revelations are even more shocking when we compare what Trump paid in federal income taxes to other Americans. Even when he paid a small income tax in 2016…Continue reading
Trump’s Failures and Lies about Manufacturing Jobs
To hear President Trump describe it, “the manufacturing sector is booming,” and “we’ve witnessed one manufacturing miracle after another.” These paeons to his own success with manufacturing are the economic equivalent to his claims that he has masterfully handled the pandemic. In fact, under his presidency, foreign outsourcing by U.S. manufacturers rose frighteningly f while the number of U.S. manufacturing…Continue reading
Donald Trump’s Political Problems with White Voters Threaten His Reelection
Donald Trump’s heated racial appeals betray his growing political problem with white voters. Trump is running far behind Joe Biden in national polls because, according to data from the Pew Research Center, his 20 percentage-point advantage with white voters in 2016 (57% to 37%) dwindled to nine points by mid-August of this year (54% to 45%). Trump’s deficit with Hispanic…Continue reading
Is Trump Playing a Long Game to Stay Out of…
Donald Trump has a serious dilemma. If Joe Biden loses in November, he can go home and settle in as a party elder statesman, as defeated nominees have often done. But if Trump loses, he faces years of intensive investigations by Congress and, assuming he pardons himself, years of investigations by state prosecutors, likely criminal indictments, and possible conviction and…Continue reading
Donald Trump’s Big Lies about What He Has Done for…
Donald Trump and his operatives haven’t figured out how to go after Kamala Harris. Now that Joe Biden has named her to be his running mate, they are discovering she’s hard to tear down. It would come as no surprise, then, if Trump starts to double down on his famous boast: “I’ve done more for Black Americans, in fact, than…Continue reading
Trump and Senate Republicans Pose a Grave Risk to the…
The headline from last Thursday’s report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on second quarter GDP was horrific: The economy contracted 9.5 percent from April through June. On an annual basis, GDP fell at an astounding rate of nearly 33 percent. Still, there’s another ominous aspect to the agency’s findings that has gone largely unnoted: The pandemic-driven collapse in…Continue reading
Trump is Wrong Again: U.S. Manufacturing is Not Recovering
The headline from the Commerce Department’s new report on the economy is that new shipments and new orders of durable goods by U.S .manufacturers increased at healthy rates in June – by 15 percent and 7 percent respectively. Larry Kudlow almost certainly will herald the numbers as proof that American manufacturing is back and good times are just around the…Continue reading