What struck me about Donald Trump’s “acceptance” speech at the RNC wasn’t how it was the “New Leaf” Trump after his brush with death, but how he rehashed the same diatribes from 2016 campaign and rallies. He replayed his gratuitous attacks (“China Virus,” “Crazy Nancy Pelosi”) as well as his vision of a dystopian, pre/post-apocalyptic America, carnage and a failed nation. Even his pre-election charge of election rigging echoes 2016.
“The election result, we’re never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat,” he said in a claim that Politifact ruled “Pants on Fire!.” But it also served as an inadvertent reminder that Trump’s disastrous handling of COVID led to 400,000 needless deaths and that Republicans would do anything to suppress voting instead of facilitating voting during a deadly pandemic.
Trump lied that U.S. inflation was “worst we’ve ever had” under Biden. Not only is America’s inflation lower than every other industrial nation’s, even after the post-Covid/supply chain crisis, but the brief 9% rate (now down to 3%, the lowest in three years) at its height was a fraction of what it was at 23% in 1917 and the double-digits in the 1970s and 1980s. And Biden is actually doing something about drug costs, housing affordability, student and medical debt, and going after price gouging, responsible for half of the inflation rate.
Trump actually declared, “I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates and lower the cost of energy. We will drill, baby, drill.” His big idea (which he got just days before from a waitress) was to “end the tax on tips,” while his party is actually trying to rescind drug price reductions, veterans health care, and student debt relief. Trump seems to be unaware that a president doesn’t set interest rates or prices.
In fact, Trump’s big Day 1 idea to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imported goods (groceries, clothes, appliances) would ignite inflation, send costs skyrocketing and cost an average family $2,500 more in what amounts to a tax.
Trump lied when he declared that Biden ”wants to raise your taxes four times” Biden’s tax policy is to get the wealthiest individuals and corporations to pay their fair share (billionaires are paying a tax rate of 8.2%).“No billionaire should pay a lower federal tax rate than a teacher, nurse or sanitation worker,” Biden said.” In essence, Trump was promising a return on the investment of the billionaires funding his campaign, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who are eager to dictate policy on AI and deregulation.
Instead of fair tax, Trump is promising to make permanent his tax cuts that went almost entirely to the 0.1%, while the middle class (thanks to the SALT cap) paid more, and adding $2 trillion to the national debt. Trump’s newest giveaway to the rich is calculated to add $6 trillion to the national debt over 10 years.
Trump and the MAGA Republicans continue to call climate change “a hoax” and climate action investments a “Green New Scam” while lying that incentives to buy electric vehicles and appliances are “a mandate.” Ignoring the worsening climate disasters and record heat that are costing the economy $165 billion a year and thousands of lives, Trump is promising to reverse Biden’s climate actions on Day 1 (much as he did when he took office in 2017).
Trump absurdly declared that encouraging EVs (by offering a $7,500 incentive) means the auto industry is facing “complete obliteration” even after it has added 127,800 jobs. With climate action, historic infrastructure investment and Made in America policies, the Biden-Harris administration has created over 15 million jobs – more than any other president in a single term.
Trump and Republicans constantly lie about crime to attack Democrats. They continue to charge that crime rates are going up when FBI rates show violent crime is down by 15%, that the murder rate – which hit records under Trump – is falling by the largest annual decline ever. It’s not by accident but largely because of Biden’s investments in local law enforcement and violence prevention programs.
But the area which Trump and Republicans focused on the most at the Republican National Convention was immigration, reverting back to the same lies and insults (“rapists, criminals, they’re sending their worst”) about the desperate migrants fleeing climate disaster, starvation, gang violence and political upheaval as he did when he came down the golden escalator to announce his 2016 campaign,
“It’s a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease, and destruction to communities all across our land. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.” In fact, illegal border crossings were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year in office compared with Obama’s last year (FactCheck.org) despite using COVID as an excuse to close the border and his cruel family separation policy. Politifact judged Trump’s claim that Biden “is letting millions of people from jails, from prisons, from insane asylums, from mental institutions, drug dealers pour in” as “Pants on Fire!” (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jun/06/donald-trump/fact-check-trumps-ridiculous-claim-that-millions-o/)
What Trump (and the RNC) left out of his harangue was that he ordered the Congressional Republicans to reject the Bipartisan Border Security bill so that he could keep the “border crisis” issue hot for his election and deny Biden a major accomplishment. Rebuffed, Biden has issued executive orders that have effectively reduced illegal border crossings by 40%, and has sped up expelling individuals deemed unqualified for asylum.
Besides going back to “build the wall,” Trump proudly promised the largest deportation crusade in history – erecting massive detention camps and immediately deporting 10 million undocumented migrants who have lived in the country for decades, have businesses, homes, pay taxes and may well have children who are citizens (Trump wants to overturn the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship). “107 percent of [Black jobs, Hispanic jobs] are taken by illegal aliens,” he absurdly charged.
And while he offered a list of actions he would take on Day 1 – “drill, baby, drill,” “close our borders” and reversing every Biden-Harris policy – he omitted mentioning his promise to be a dictator on his first day in office and to weaponize the Department of Justice to seek retribution against his enemies.
What else did Trump, J.D. Vance and the RNC leave out? Any mention about their plans to implement the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 operations manual for a White Nationalist Christo Fascist autocracy: ban abortion nationwide; shut down NOAA and Education Department; restrict the EPA and FDA; privatize and/or cut Social Security and Medicare, deregulate.
Read The New York Times review of Trump’s term in office to be reminded what a horror it was to have someone with such contempt for the Constitution, rule of law, human rights, democracy (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/18/opinion/trump-presidency-record.html). But Trump will only be so much worse if he returns to power, because this time around he has learned he can do anything he wants without being held to account by Congress or the Supreme Court, and has his henchmen around him who are prepared to immediately implement their Project 2025.
