Please, Please, Please consider the implications of the
details presented below BEFORE you go to the polls on November 6! You are being
lied to and lead down a path that will ultimately turn the USA into a paradise for
the wealthy and purgatory for those who can’t seem to realize that lies are
lies. There are no “alternate facts” only lies propagated to further the agenda
of overt corruption and an egomaniac who wishes to destroy our way of life. Don’t
get take in by promises that have yet to be realized and those outright lies
now being forwarded at political rallies that are commanding the entire attention
span of the President. A man whose only concern is keeping control of Congress
by the lackies who do his bidding regardless of the harm showered upon the citizens.
We are the ones who pay the toll of an unbelievably authoritarian leader with a
cowardly Congress as his minions.
2018 MIDTERM ELECTION (From the LA Times October 25, 2018
Salesman Trump pitches fear, promises
and riches
Anything to make the sale to GOP voters — never mind if it’s true
By Eli Stokols and Noah Bierman
WASHINGTON — Literally everyone in Washington’s political
world knew President Trump was making a false and implausible promise when he
said he’d cut taxes for the middle class before next month’s midterm election —
reporters, fact checkers, Congress’ Republican leaders, even his own staff.
Yet there was Trump on the White House lawn Monday, promising
away as reporters confronted him. He mistakenly described the legislative
process and dismissed the time-consuming realities of passing a complicated tax
package in Congress, as well as the simple fact that lawmakers have left town
until after the election. Even as his claims fell flat, he stood his ground.
“No, no. We’re putting in a resolution sometime in the next
week, or week and a half, two weeks,” he said. He meant “bill,” not a
nonbinding resolution, but by any name the measure would be meaningless with no
one at the Capitol to vote on it.
Undaunted, that night at a rally in Texas, Trump told
supporters the tax cuts would happen next week.
This is Trump at his most Trumpy, two weeks before an
election. The salesman is out pitching promises, fear, riches — anything to
make the sale, never mind if it’s true, and to get Republicans out to vote.
The caravan of migrants heading north toward the border
includes terrorists organized by Democrats handing out money, Trump falsely
claims, despite denials by national security officials. Californians, he
insists, are rioting over local pro-immigration policies. And he describes
Democrats as a “mob” intent on stripping away Americans’ healthcare coverage,
tax cuts, 401(k)s, guns and their newfound national greatness.
Trump not only presents himself and his party as the
safeguard against the Democratic dystopia he conjures, he also promises to
lower drug prices, end opioid addiction and hand out additional tax cuts.
Aides say Trump is trying to shake satisfied Republican
voters out of any complacency — as the president himself, aware of the
historical pattern of midterm losses for a president’s party, put into his own
unique parlance Monday night.
“I don’t know why. I guess you get a little sedate,” Trump
told his Texas fans. “I guess you get a little something — who knows? You lose
something.”
Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative director, suggested
the president isn’t doing anything different, but rather the media are covering
him through the prism of an election campaign. As for Trump “throwing
everything at the wall,” Short said, “The president wants it that way. He wants
us to be doing multiple things at one time.”
The president is also leaning into the nationalism that
propelled his 2016 campaign, declaring for the first time in Texas that he’s
proud of a controversial label that’s often associated with white supremacists:
“You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”
Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign strategist and
White House advisor, approvingly called the president’s embrace of that label
“a seminal moment in American politics.”
Bannon lauded Trump for his preelection campaign arguments:
“He closes better than anybody. The reason we beat them in 2016 was that he
closed strong. He understands in sports and politics, it’s about momentum and
he’s clearly got the momentum.”
Trump associates note the sharp difference between 2016,
when many Republican candidates wanted nothing to do with him, and this year,
when many depend on him given his hold on party voters. That will give Trump,
despite his occasional protests, even more ownership of the election results,
for better or worse.
The president and his allies also see the threat in losing
majority control of the House or Senate, allowing newly empowered Democrats to
open investigations. The allies tend to dismiss the false statements he makes,
or argue that his supporters see in them the truths Trump intends.
“The caravan is a great example of that,” Short said.
“There’s a lot of questions about the accuracy of who’s embedded in the
caravan. What most Americans are seeing in the caravan is the question of who
is doing more to secure the border now.”
Matt Schlapp, a Trump loyalist who is chairman of the
American Conservative Union and whose wife is a top White House communications
aide, said, “I think he is a marketer and I think he is testing ideas all the
time. He’s testing phrases and he’s testing policies all the time.”
A former aide, who would not be identified to avoid
alienating the president, said Trump just repeats threads of information he
sees in conservative media, ignoring advisors who tell him they’re not true.
Even in public, Trump laughs off his battles with independent fact checkers.
Pressed by reporters to explain his claim about riots in
California, Trump on Monday insisted without specifics that there have been
riots “in some cases.” On Tuesday, during a long exchange with reporters in the
Oval Office, he again batted away a request for proof that the migrant caravan
includes “Middle Easterners,” saying, “There’s no proof of anything.”
In Bannon’s view, fact checkers parsing the president’s
words miss the point: “This is a base election. He’s not trying to make
arguments to convince anybody about his policies. These are motivational
speeches to get his base a sense of urgency.”
Trump’s indifference to facts, however, concerns many. “Most
of what Mr. Trump says these days is literally made up,” Peter Wehner, a
veteran of both Bush administrations, wrote in a tweet following Trump’s
Houston rally. “He’s trying to construct a world of make believe and fairy
tales, of myth and fiction, of illusion and hallucination. It’s a world
increasingly detached from reality. The rest of us must refuse to live within
the lie.”
While current and former Trump aides, like Bannon, egg the
president on, other advisors contribute to his political narratives in more
subtle ways, and with just enough truth to escape the fact checkers’ censure.
On Tuesday, Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers, presented a report critical of socialism, using the typically
academic White House office to amplify one of Trump’s favorite campaign talking
points — that, under Democrats, the U.S. would turn to socialism and go the way
of Venezuela.
Hours later, the White House held another conference call
for reporters to emphasize statistics related to apprehensions of people
crossing the border. One of the senior administration officials on the call,
who would not allow their names to be used despite reporters’ objections,
accused Democrats of wanting to abandon American sovereignty.
The officials dodged repeated questions asking for evidence
of Trump’s assertion that terrorists are embedded in the migrant caravans. “The
president has made his comments on it,” one said. “We’re not going to speak for
him.”
Trump, one former campaign advisor said, is intent on
motivating all Republican factions by his rhetoric: establishment
conservatives, moderates and the more populist “Trump wing” of the party.
“Right now, they’re unified in their passion to turn out on
election day, but for different reasons that Trump has given them. For some,
it’s jobs and tax cuts and the judges. For others, it’s more ‘America first’
and a lot of the immigration rhetoric,” the advisor said.
Even as critics denounce his falsehoods, Trump is
unflappable. As he left the White House for Texas, to campaign for Sen. Ted
Cruz, a Republican rival during the 2016 campaign, reporters asked whether he
regretted his false claim during their presidential primary contest that Cruz’s
father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.
“I don’t regret anything honestly,” Trump said. “It all
worked out very nicely.”
eli.stokols@latimes.com
noah.bierman
@latimes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment