Trump’s Only Campaign Promise: Make Bigotry Safe Again

Recently Donald Trump gave a rambling comment about his agenda for a second term if, god help us all, he were reelected to a second term.  What was striking was that he had no agenda other than being reelected and continuing his vanity show from the White House.  Meanwhile, Sunbelt states that foolishly reopened at his bidding are reeling from huge rises in Covid-19 cases and we have learned that Trump's BFF, Vladimir Putin was paying bounties for the murder of American soldiers in Afghanistan. So what is Trump response?  Pandering to white racism - something he has harbored himself for years going all the way back to racial discrimination in housing the Norfolk, Virginia area almost 50 years ago and his demands for a judicial lynching of innocent young blacks falsely accused of crime in Central Park.  Along with his narcissism, racism appears to be the one constant with Trump.  A column in the Washington Post looks at his apparent decision to use racism and fear to gain reelection.  Here are highlights:

“White power!” shouted the elderly man, raising his fist as he drove his golf cart past a group of demonstrators advocating racial justice. On Sunday, President Trump offered an “amen.”

A white couple stood outside their St. Louis mansion aiming deadly firearms — the man wielding a semiautomatic rifle, the woman waving a handgun — at Black Lives Matter protesters who were peacefully marching past. On Monday, Trump joined that hallelujah chorus, too.

In both cases, Trump offered his encouragement to white tribal fear and anger in the form of retweets on his Twitter feed. There’s plenty of bad news the president might want to overshadow: the explosion in covid-19 cases in Sun Belt states he pushed to reopen prematurely, for example, or the reports that Russia offered bounties for killing U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan. But why choose “white power” as the bright, shiny object he wants everyone to focus on? Why not some other, less incendiary bit of nonsense?

The logical conclusion is that, in his desperate campaign to win reelection, Trump has decided to position himself even more explicitly as the defender of whiteness and all its privileges. Certainly, in his ideologically flexible career, maintaining the primacy of whiteness is a rare constant.

The “white power” incident took place earlier this month at The Villages, a sprawling retirement community near Orlando. . . . . Trump retweeted a video of the incident, appending the comment, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages.” The tweet was deleted a couple of hours later, with the White House claiming that Trump hadn’t heard the “white power” rallying cry. That is likely a lie, since the shouted slogan comes right at the beginning of the two-minute video clip. You can’t miss it — unless you’re just retweeting things you haven’t bothered to watch.

And if Trump didn’t mean to amplify the “white power” message, then why — one day later — would he retweet a video of the St. Louis incident? You don’t have to be a semiotician to understand the message of that video, which reinforces a message Trump has repeated over and over again: White people, when you see a diverse crowd of protesters coming down your street, be afraid. Go get your guns. Be ready to shoot.

With Trump’s hope of reelection fading, I fear this is the gambit he has chosen: using this moment to exacerbate racial animus — rather than lessen it, as any responsible leader would try to do — by heightening white fear and loathing of the nation’s growing diversity.

“Black lives matter” does not imply some sort of zero-sum game. The whole nation will benefit if we can curb the kind of police violence that led to the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Elijah McClain and so many others. The whole nation will benefit if we finally acknowledge and then address systemic racism. What makes this moment of upheaval and protest different is that so many white Americans see how racism is a ball and chain that holds all of us back — and see what a braver, fairer, stronger nation we can be if we confront our original sin with honesty and determination.

As a political strategy, this can work only if Trump motivates enough older, white, non-college-educated voters in the Sun Belt and rural Midwest to see the coming election as a matter of us vs. them — while the Republican Party simultaneously uses various techniques of voter suppression to limit Democratic turnout. Polls suggest that all of this is unlikely to work, and that Trump may be dragging the GOP’s Senate majority down with him.

As presidential leadership, Trump’s “white power” strategy is tragically irresponsible. His narcissism leads him unerringly to adopt any course of action he sees as beneficial to himself, no matter what the potential impact on the nation might be.

His focus is on a despicable effort to make white people angry and frightened enough to give him a second term. If he sincerely wants anything beyond his own glorification, it is to make America safe again for bigotry.

As for Republican "friends" who continue to support Trump, perhaps they need to be honest and join the KKK since they are supporting the Klan's de facto leader.

Trump's Trade War Deepens Farmers' Financial Plight

In 2016 many American farmers succumbed to Donald Trump's racist messaging and voted for a bombastic con-man who had bankrupted numerous companies, lost millions of dollars for others, and left a trail of unpaid contractors.  Now, Trump's trade war with China is pushing many of these same farmers towards their own bankruptcy filings.  Divine justice?  Perhaps, yet some surveys continue to show strong majorities of farmers putting their support for Trump's racist and xenophobic policies ahead of their own financial well being.  It's a case of the GOP's long ability to use race and other forms of bigotry to induce individuals to vote against their own interests on steroids.   Do I wish these folks well?  Not really and perhaps if the trade war with China continues they will reap the economic catastrophe they deserve.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the deepening financial plight in the heartland.  Here are excerpts:

American farmers have become collateral damage in a trade war that Mr. Trump began to help manufacturers and other companies that he believes have been hurt by China’s “unfair” trade practices.

More than a year into the trade dispute, sales of American soybeans, pork, wheat and other agricultural products to China have dried up as Beijing retaliates against Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. Lucrative contracts that farmers long relied on for a significant source of income have evaporated, with Chinese buyers looking to other nations like Brazil and Canada to get the commodities they need. Farm bankruptcy filings in the year through June were up 13 percent from 2018 and loan delinquency rates are on the rise, according to the American Farm Bureau.

The predicament of farmers is becoming a political problem for Mr. Trump as he heads into an election year. For months, farmers have remained resolute, continuing to pledge support to [Trump] a president who says his trade policies will help the agricultural industry win in the end. While there are few signs of an imminent blue wave in farm country, a growing number of farmers say they are losing patience with [Trump's] the president’s approach and are suggesting it will not take much to lose their vote as well.

Mr. Trump, who regularly brags about an economic boom despite signs of a slowdown, has in some cases made matters worse.

We’re not starting to do great again,” Brian Thalmann, the president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, told Mr. Perdue at the event. “Things are going downhill and downhill quickly.”

On Monday, after a 72-hour period during which Mr. Trump twice escalated his trade war with China, Mr. Thalmann said he could no longer support [Trump] the president as he did in 2016.

Losing the world’s most populous country as an export market has been a major blow to the agriculture industry. Total American agricultural exports to China were $24 billion in 2014 and fell to $9.1 billion last year, according to the American Farm Bureau. Exports of farm products to China fell by $1.3 billion in the first half of the year, the agriculture group said this month.

A report from the Agriculture Department this month found that Canadian wheat exports to China have “rocketed” this year, while exports from the United States have plunged.

The administration has tried to mollify farmers by rolling out two financial aid packages totaling $28 billion. . . . But as the trade fight gets uglier, farmers are beginning to panic. Last week, Mr. Trump said he would increase tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to 30 percent and impose a 15 percent tax on another $300 billion worth later this year. China has already said it will no longer buy American agricultural products and announced on Friday that it would raise tariffs on $75 billion of exports from America.

The trade conflict’s toll on farmers is spreading to the manufacturers that serve them. Deere & Company, the maker of agricultural equipment, said this month that it was cutting its profit forecast for the second time this year. The company’s chief executive said farmers were delaying purchases because of concerns about access to export markets.

Mr. Trump is also trying to appease corn farmers who complain that an Environmental Protection Agency decision this month will hamper ethanol production. Farmers say the agency’s decision to exempt small oil refineries from a requirement to blend corn-based ethanol into gasoline has led to a drop in demand for the fuel.

At Minnesota’s Farmfest, it was clear that Mr. Perdue’s Southern charm could go only so far. His answers to questions about how the trade war with China would end were curt, and his quip about whining farmers left some with a sour taste.

But many farmers continue support Mr. Trump and express hope that [Trump] the president knows what he is doing in his dealings with China. A July survey from Farm Journal found that 79 percent of 1,100 farmers still back Mr. Trump despite the lack of progress in negotiations with China. And Mr. Perdue largely remains an effective emissary, with the industry still hoping Mr. Trump can pull off the kind of trade deal he has been promising.

Putting one's hope in a liar and con man doesn't strike me as a smart thing to do, yet Trump's continued calls to white nationalism seem to drown out all common sense in some circles. 

Trump's Trade Wars Continue to Decimate Farmers

Many farmers, especially in the Mid-West voted for Donald Trump whose appeals to racism and xenophobia won them over despite the false narrative than it was financial insecurity rather than bigotry that won their votes.  Now, many are paying - in my view - a much deserved price as Trump's trade wars continue to wipe out markets for American agricultural products and leave many farmers dependent on government bailouts (something they condemn when benefiting others) to stave off bankruptcy. A piece in Yahoo News looks at this self-inflicted harm and notes how farmers want a return to "more normal times" - something that will only be achieved by voting Trump and Mike Pence out of office.  While my heart goes out to children and youths in struggling farm families, I find it hard to dredge up any sympathy for their parents who voted for Trump. Here are article excerpts:

The White House recently announced that it would be providing an additional $16 billion in aid to American farmers affected by the trade war between the U.S. and China.

But the problem for American farmers has becomes bigger than something a bailout can fix.

“This trade thing is what’s brought on by [Trump] the president and it’s really frustrating because he took away all of our markets,” Bob Nuylen, a farmer from North Dakota who grows spring wheat and sunflowers, told Yahoo Finance. “We live in an area where we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. It costs us a lot of money — over $1 a bushel to get our grain to markets.”

Since trade tensions began in 2018, farmers have faced major financial challenges, since China was once a major U.S. agriculture buyer.

And losing customers has become a major issue. Soybean farmers have been dealing with this, as China has turned to other countries like Brazil for soybeans. Nuylen said this is also happening for wheat farmers, as China has begun importing wheat from Russian regions.

“All these countries went to different countries to get their grain,” Nuylen said. “How are we going to get the relations back with them to buy our grain again and be our customers?”

“Our prices are probably as low as I’ve seen them in a long time,” he told Yahoo Finance. “We were losing just about $70 an acre just by putting our crop in [the ground] this spring.” The Trump administration pledged two installments of a farmer bailout program. The first round of payments totaling $4.7 billion was paid in September 2018, while the second round was distributed in December. By February 2019, the total aid payments reached $7.7 billion.

“Payments are a welcome help for the bottom line of Missouri farmers,” Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told Yahoo Finance in an email statement. “Although the trade payments vary widely from county to county, they’ll keep more than a few farmers in business for another year. ...

“Having said all that,” the statement added, “farmers are profoundly wary of the trade war, embarrassed that ad hoc government subsidies are all that stands between many of us and financial ruin, and ready for the return of more normal times.”

If these farmers continue to support Trump, they deserve any and every misfortune that befalls them. Hate, racism and bigotry need to carry a very heavy price.

Working Americans Are Worse off Under Trump

Apologists for white working class Trump voters have continued to cling to the false meme that "economic anxiety" drove them to vote for rump rather than admit that it was Trump's calls for open racism against non-whites and Hispanics that proved to be the true motivation.  Yet, if one believes the myth put out by apologists, then economic anxiety should now be driving these voters away from Trump.  Why, because real earnings have fallen during the first 18 months of Trump/Pence's tenure whereas they rose during the last 18 months of the Obama administration.  Thus, what we have witnessed is what the Republican Party has used as its mode of operation for years: getting white voters to vote against their own best economic interests by playing to bigotry and racism.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the fall of earnings adjusted for inflation and how the Trump/Pence regime has been deceptively reporting wage earnings.  Here are highlights:

Despite robust economic numbers during the Trump presidency, the American public has seemed curiously unmoved by such good news as the lowest U.S. unemployment level in nearly half a century. Its enthusiasm might have been dampened by this underappreciated economic reality: The typical working American's earnings, when properly measured, have declined during the Trump administration.

As any White House would, the president's economic team touts positive earnings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that suggest rising wages and salaries. But the figures are misleading. They focus not on how much an average working person earns but on the "average earnings" of all employed people. In times of rising inequality, employees at the top pull up "average" earnings. . . . Another catch: The data used by the White House doesn't account for inflation. Adjust the median earnings data for inflation, and the illusion of progress evaporates.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a different database for that view, and its quarter-by-quarter numbers show a very different picture. Median weekly earnings of all workers rose from $865 in the first quarter of 2017 to $876 in the quarter ending June 30, 2018. The typical working American's earnings increased $11 weekly over 18 months, barely more than one-quarter of the economic progress touted by the White House.

Even that modest gain is not very meaningful. The significance of what people earn lies in what they can do with their earnings, and inflation eats away at what any of us can purchase or save. As a result, serious earnings analysis is always framed in inflation-adjusted, or "real," terms. From January 2017 to June 2018, inflation totaled 3.77 percent, while the $11 increase in unadjusted weekly earnings over those 18 months represented gains of 1.27 percent.

The result: $876 in June 2018 had the same value as $848.20 in January 2017. In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical working American fell $16.80, or 1.9 percent, during Donald Trump's first 18 months as president. . . . Using the same measure, real median weekly earnings increased substantially during Barack Obama's final 18 months as president.

In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical employed American increased $35.82, or 4.5 percent, over Obama's last 18 months in office, growing from $803 in the third quarter of 2015 to $838.82 in the fourth quarter of 2016.

In Ronald Reagan's succinct terms, average working Americans are worse off under the Trump presidency than they were under Obama's. Yes, low unemployment is something to applaud, but there might be a good reason that so many who have jobs aren't clapping.