We are a nation drowning in lies. One would think that, eventually, the lies would catch up to the liar and reveal the bullshit. Yet, Trump continues to lie and lie and lie, and MAGA just swallows all of it, because...why? Because he is "their" guy and they identify with his lies and bullshit. This is yet another indication that our educational system is failing badly. Below, Allen Clifton, the co-founder of Forward Progressives, dissects some of the lies that Trump continues to tell. He also writes for Alternet.
The one thing I'll give Donald Trump a lot of credit for is that he's proven basically everything progressives have been saying about the Republican Party for the past 40+ years has been absolutely factual — and that nothing conservative voters have claimed they support and believe in was remotely true.
Their entire ethos is nothing more than simply opposing what Democrats support.
For decades, Republicans claimed to be the party for Christian values, small government, states' rights, the free market, keeping government and regulations out of private business, family values, the Constitution, limited government, fiscal responsibility, and opposing dictators/authoritarians — among a few other bullshit talking points.
Yet here we are with Trump, a president and human being who's literally the antithesis of every single thing I just listed.
He doesn't go to church, he's cheated on every single one of his wives, and he doesn't display a single trait of any value Jesus Christ is quoted as speaking about in the Bible. In fact, there are several parts of the Bible where Jesus specifically warns against and condemns people like Trump and those who might follow them.
Forget small government. Trump believes all of Congress, the judiciary, and each state should answer to him. He's on record trying to pressure sports teams into changing their names, trying to get people fired for saying things he doesn't like, and threatening states that pass any legislation he opposes.
Which brings us to states' rights — which I pretty much covered in the examples above. Then again, "states' rights" has always been the conservative go-to piece of propaganda when it comes to defending rights they want to keep (such as owning people as human beings and guns). However, when they have power, they couldn't give a damn about the rights of any states that do anything they oppose. At that point, they're advocates for massive federal control and trampling all over the rights of any state or local government.
Fiscal responsibility, what a joke. We all knew that's been a load of horseshit for decades. Even as a kid in my early days of following politics, it never made sense to me how Ronald Reagan was considered the "conservative icon" of the political party that claimed to be all about "fiscal responsibility" — when he added trillions to the national debt and never once balanced the budget during his 8 years as president. How are you "fiscally responsible" by adding massive amounts of debt?
Now we have Trump, who's going to add more to our debt than any president in United States history — even though, during his 2016 campaign, he claimed he would “eliminate the national debt very easily,” and currently claims that tariffs are bringing in “trillions in revenue.”
Obviously, he didn't “very easily” eliminate the nation's debt during his first four years in office. Additionally, despite his absurd claims that the tariffs are “bringing in trillions of dollars,” the debt continues to skyrocket.
This isn't complicated math: At $38 trillion (and rising), if we're actually bringing in “trillions of dollars from the tariffs” in only a handful of months, our nation's debt should be paid off within about 1–2 years, shouldn't it?
But there I go again, using facts, common sense, some fairly basic math, and Trump's own lies/propaganda to easily prove how completely full of crap he is — and how gullible someone has to be to believe anything he says.
Limited government, that's another complete joke. As I've already pointed out, Trump believes every aspect of this country, even when it comes to a state redrawing its congressional maps, should be approved by him. Trump is a president who's desperately trying to be a dictator, having every area of this country — from our media to the arts to education — completely controlled by him.
The free market and staying out of the affairs of private businesses? Yeah, you can't claim that when the backbone of his entire economic policy is massive, trade-killing tariffs. And he’s made it very clear that if any major corporation doesn't play ball with him, he'll do whatever he can to meddle, block, or interfere in their business. Just look at Netflix, which is trying to buy Warner Bros., but is very likely going to fail because Trump wants Paramount — a company that has kissed his ass — to be the one to buy them out.
Oh, yeah — "low taxes." Another complete con job. Donald Trump's tariffs have been one of the largest tax hikes on American consumers in modern history. You can't claim to be against raising taxes when you back a president who’s slapping a 10–20% or more tax on American consumers. This is just the GOP’s effort to pass a regressive national sales tax to eliminate income taxes so that the rich really don't have to pay much of anything — and the burden for funding this country is shifted even more toward the poor and middle class.
It was never a matter of if the GOP would eventually be taken over by a fanatical, wannabe dictator who demanded blind loyalty, was largely backed by racists and conspiracy theorists, and trampled all over the Constitution — just when.
It's not a surprise that it happened. It's not even a surprise that someone as blatantly incompetent and idiotic as Donald Trump rose to the top of the GOP. After all, if you tell conservatives what they want to hear, they will believe you, no matter how delusional, devoid of facts, or completely batshit crazy it is.
We've all seen this happening for decades.
So, while I won't credit Donald Trump with much, I will give him this: he's finally put on full display that practically everything progressives have accused conservatives of being over the past 40+ years was spot-on — and everything the GOP has claimed to be over that same period of time was complete and total bullshit.
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