Donald Trump and the Republican MAGA cult immersed in a cesspool of political lies

Echo opinion letter published in the Jacksonville My Journal-Courier in Illinois.

Now we bear witness to the consequences- a legacy of lies

Donald Trump Nazi salute!

Vice President Kamala Harris did not whine and lie to the American people that she really won the 2025 presidential election.

And because it was a free democratic election, the American people will get the government they deserve.

For those citizens who feel disappointed that a majority of voters chose as their leader a demagogue who believes the rule of law does not apply to him, your duty now is to bear witness to the consequences.

And remember. For history’s sake.

And stop thinking about King Trump. Entertainment is his game. He’s the best at keeping everyone distracted while he performs his con. He knows what he’s doing.

Also, don’t waste your time trying to convince your friends and relatives who have slid down the rabbit hole of self-delusion. This election proved Mark Twain was right when he observed, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Stay awake as the herd nods off and avoids evidence of an insurrection that happened before their very eyes. Observe the idiot wind that blows constantly from the mouths of all those Trump-pets pretending that traitors are patriots. Don’t fall for the false equivalencies, like convincing you that their retribution is the same as real justice.

From James Tweed in Ocean City, New Jersey

No excuse for Donald Trump's bad judgement - echo

https://prospect.org/article/emoluments-clause-could-be-tipping-point-trumps-downfall

Echo opinion: Donald Trump is an expert on bad management

By Catherine Rampell published in the Las Vegas Sun

"...all of Trump's bankruptcies were high-profile embarrassments for his name-brand American empire." ~ The Washington Post

Excuses, excuses!

That’s what Donald Trump says companies offer when they complain about the economic pain caused by his trade wars.

“Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small Tariffs instead of themselves for bad management … and who can really blame them for doing that? Excuses!” Trump tweeted last week.   (Maine Writer  - This nonsense Trumpzi Tweet is bizarre!)

Reality check - https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/21/hillary-clinton/yep-donald-trumps-companies-have-declared-bankrupt/

He elaborated on this critique during a subsequent interview with reporters.

“A lot of badly run companies are trying to blame tariffs,” he said. “In other words, if they’re running badly and they’re having a bad quarter, or if they’re just unlucky in some way, they’re trying to blame the tariffs. It’s not the tariffs. It’s called ‘bad management.’ ”

On the one hand, Trump is a pretty credible source here: He does know a lot about bad management and excuses. So maybe we should believe him when he scapegoats corporations for not being able to manage the costs of his trade wars. In Donald Trump's thinking, if a company can’t hack it when faced with a sudden, unexpected, government-imposed cost or other erratic policy changes, it simply doesn’t deserve to stay in business.

On the other hand, this is an extremely odd interpretation of recent business complaints, given the rest of Trump’s economic agenda.

After all, besides tax cuts, the main way Trump has supposedly unlocked the economy’s great potential and put us on the path to 3% (or 4%, or even 6%!) growth is by reducing the government-imposed cost of doing business and providing more regulatory certainty.

That’s the standard talking point, anyway. According to the president, his pro-business, regulation-slashing rampage has enriched the average American family by $3,000 — an eye-popping number of dubious provenance, awarded three Pinocchios by The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler.

Trump and his various allies and surrogates likewise often repeat the boilerplate claim that the president’s “tax cuts and deregulation” agenda has supposedly unleashed higher gross-domestic-product growth. That’s despite the fact that major independent forecasters believe 2019 GDP growth is on track for about 2.2%, which is … exactly what it averaged during President Barack Obama’s second term.

Trump surrogates often outright lie about what his tax cuts did and whom they targeted. On the deregulation point, though, they typically avoid any specifics altogether. And they’re rarely asked follow-up questions about which onerous, job-killing government regulations they’re thinking of when they brag about how Trump has so wisely rolled them back.

Which is lucky for them. Because, if you actually look over Trump’s regulatory rollbacks, it’s difficult to pinpoint which, if any, of them is supposedly unleashing all that (imaginary) growth.

Perhaps the economy-growing deregulations that Team Trump is thinking of are his dozens of environmental rule changes. These do indeed help a handful of companies save money — by, for instance, allowing them to dump more mercury and arsenic into the water supply, pump more methane and fine particulate matter into the air, and use a pesticide linked to neurological damage in children.

Presumably taking those options off the table could raise the cost of doing business, at least a little.

Or maybe Trumpkins are thinking of the rescission of a requirement for for-profit schools to disclose (and maintain minimum) employment outcomes as a condition of receiving federal aid.

Or maybe they mean Trump’s repeal of a rule that said companies could only get lucrative government contracts upon certifying that they follow federal labor laws.

Or maybe it’s the relaxation of yet another rule dictating how many hours long-haul truck drivers can go without sleeping.

In each of these cases (and others), rolling back regulations might reduce costs and thereby boost profits for companies. But that doesn’t actually eliminate said costs. It just shifts them onto someone else — such as whoever lives downwind from the coal plant or happens to share the road with a sleep-deprived trucker.

In other words, those government-imposed, “job-killing” costs were there to address what economists call externalities: costs imposed upon third parties. Unlike, say, Trump’s pointless but still costly trade wars, they were designed to correct a market failure, not to make a functional market fail.

So maybe Trump’s comment about the interaction between burdensome government policies and “bad management” — that if you can’t handle a little extra government-imposed cost, you probably aren’t running a great business — was right, after all. He was just applying it to the wrong government policies. 

Listen to Trump’s insight, ye whiny, excuse-making businesses: If your company can stay afloat if and only if it dumps arsenic in the water, defrauds customers, cheats workers or gives kids brain damage, maybe you don’t deserve to be in business after all.

Catherine Rampell is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Republicans waste time and money but won't pass progressive policies

It's impossible to explain. America's Republicans (aka "the stupid party) preach a pro-life policy but they are anti-gun violence regulations. This kind of illogical policy making is beyond explanation, like saying 2 plus 2 equals somthing other than four.

In other words, guns + amunition somehow do not equal death. Bizarre Republican logic.  Neverthless, Republicans waste political time and money trying to defund Planned Parenthood, when the agency provides health care for women, and relish vote after wasted time vote to repeal Obamacare, when millions of people receive healthcare as a result of having this coverage. This illogical logic isn't pro-life. Rather, it's wrong minded, wasteful and regressive for the human condition.

Meanwhile, Republicans also support waging a world war against the evil ISIS, or Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq, but they won't suggest a way to pay for how to win.  

Republican regressives are obviously stupid, because they've lost their basic arithmetic skills. 

Americans need to understand how destructively regressive the policies are of the stupid Republican pary. In other words, the Republican politics are antiquated. Even if Americans stupidly adopted any of the Republcian policies like elimianting health care for ordinary people, they'd have to invent something else, with which to replace it!

Unfortunately, Republicans find their political fuel from like minded, albeit stupid people.  This stupidity epedemic must be defeated in the voting booth.  Americans must vote for Democrats to lead our nation. Otherwise, the entire world is going to brand Americans as members of the "stupid party".

Americans must vote smart!  Vote for Democrats.  

Vote for smart  Hillary Clinton for President in 2016.