Everything you have said so far focuses on appearances, what you call the ugly, and not on anything substantial.
So, I ask you, what things has the administration done that are bad, irrespective how they look? The list of good things is lengthy--tax reform, improved border patrol, less intrusive foreign policy, energy independence, trade agreements, regulation reform, prison reform, restocking the federal bench, etc. These are all high profile accomplishments of the Trump administration. What are some of the bad things. Can you name any, any at all?
The fact that you actually believe that somebody would have a hard time coming up with bad things say's it all:
- Tax Reform: Over 90 of the Fortune 500 paid 0% taxes on their hundreds of billions in revenue in 2018, thanks to Trump's
Tax-Cut and Jobs Act of 2017. This coincided with the wealthy receiving permanent cuts, which involve wealthy investors, major stock holders, and CEOs. This accompanied a significant increase in government spending, which encouraged the Treasury to issue more bonds to nations like China, which increased deficit and debt. At least the government has your taxes though.
- Foreign Policy: Abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal opened the door for increasing Chinese influence in the Pacific, shelving the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) for a year allowed Putin time to strengthen his pipeline diplomacy throughout Europe, walking away from the Iran deal gave Iran license to create a nuke tomorrow, brutal economic sanctions have pushed Iran further into China's orbit, North Korea continues its missile program, the Syrian territory was handed over to Iranian and Russian influence, the reform of NAFTA increased the potential for further illegal immigration.
- Trade Agreements: Again, he walked away from TPP which was a billion dollar deal that would have kept China out, in order to make a deal with Japan for millions. The back-on TTIP talks have yet to include an energy package from the U.S., which would counter Putin's push into Western Europe and provide for us an energy market for our exports. Trump's reform of NAFTA, which was much needed, merely put Mexican car manufacturers at risk, which is exactly what NAFTA did to Mexican farms prior to seeing a new wave of out-of-work Mexican farmers crossing the border by the late 1990s. Thus his NAFTA reform is counterproductive to his anti-immigration agenda. Trump's trade war with China is resulting in exactly what everybody predicted, which is a return to what we already had before he had to issue bail-outs (socialism) to American farmers. China's promises to maybe take a hard line against technology theft is more of the same. Trump claims victories, but this is of course only an attempt to fool his cult.
- Regulation reform: The Great Depression and the Great Recession exists because Big Business and banks were unregulated. Glass-Steagall introduced the mechanisms that divided those banks that lend from those banks that played the stock market with rich people's money. Reagan and Clinton's agenda to repeal Glass-Steagall gave the banks license to merge the two again, which created the bubble, which had them begging government for a handout in 2008. Trump's agenda to deregulate everything under the sun is damaging on an economic, defense, and environmental level.
- Prison Reform: You must have seen the Super Bowl commercial where a black woman was pardoned and was portrayed as "Trump's reform of the prison system." The odd thing is that, after running on a "tough on crime" platform in 2016, he backed the 2018
First Step Act of 2019, which reduced sentences and freed criminals, which is why it was opposed by some Republicans in Washington. The
First Step Act was introduced by Republican Douglas Collins, and piggy-backed on the
Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which was sponsored by Democrat Bobby Scott. Most Republicans opposed the
Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 because....Obama....and only a few opposed the
First Step Act of 2019 because...Trump. It was a just a small step in a long process that began before Trump and will go on after.
- Restocking the Federal Bench: This appears to be code for politically stacking the federal bench. We now have judges who cater to the law through a political lens, less so the actual law. This is damaging to democracy and I can show you a list of failed democracies throughout the twentieth century where stacking courts was one of the ingredients that led them to autocracy.
These high profile "accomplishments" are only accomplishments to people who don't understand these things. Without right-wing media outlets perverting them into "accomplishments," they would be exactly what everybody else sees to be true.
