The Audacity of Hype

By Calvin Hill

We have all heard the adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The American economy was not broken. The Barack Obama administration began one of the most prolonged periods of job and growth recoveries coming out of a recession. Without evidence, Donald Trump claimed it was a disaster, and that was good enough for Republicans. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) put 40 million more people on the healthcare rolls, covered pre-existing conditions, and lowered the growth of healthcare costs for the first time in decades. Without evidence, Donald Trump claimed it was a disaster, and that was good enough for Republicans. The Obama administration’s patient steadiness lowered the recession’s unemployment rate from 9.9% to 4.9%. Donald Trump, without evidence, claimed those numbers were “false, fake, rigged.” Having moved the unemployment rate down a mere 1.2%, before the pandemic, Trump is claiming he created the greatest economy in the history of the world – evidence to the contrary.

In campaigning that only he could fix what was not really broken, Donald Trump’s tariffs destroyed and bankrupted farms that had national and international markets for their products. Those capable of still hanging on after destroying much of their unsold crops, were gifted with government largesse of pennies on the dollar. Corporate farms fared much better from the handouts. The middle class tax cut he promised, while saying the rich needed to pay more, never materialized. Instead, the richest 1% forced Trump and the Republicans to show them the money.

The “3am phone call” has been a major campaign issue over the last few decades. More than 3 years into the Donald Trump presidency, the only certainty that the unfocused, incompetent Trump will take an emergency 3am phone call from is Vladimir Putin – his election interfering comrade. Was Mitch McConnell’s racism so ingrained when the successful stewardship of our nation, by its first black President, that he would keep silent about the threat to our republic from a nuclear enemy? Why would the Senate Majority Leader favor a KGB officer and a mendacious sexual assaulter whose history of crisis management revealed an ineptness that employed a consistent parade of bill collectors marching into Trump Tower? That ineptness is now raging on full display – to our detriment.

As the death and infection toll rises from the Covid-19 coronavirus, the President’s compulsive lying has reached a fever pitch of abject ignorance. The Donald grew up in New York City when it featured one of the best school systems, public and private, in the country. How did he manage to age to his mid 70s and have the audacity to figuratively announce, before the entire world, that he has no understanding of the term, NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY on the label of disinfectants? And he continues to insist that the reason people are getting this virus is because we are testing lots of people. If this were an explosion of breast cancer cases he would be blaming the massive number of mammograms.

If the troubling responses given to Chris Wallace, on the Fox News Sunday interview, were an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, Trump may well have been given a sedative while the doctors called for a psyche consult. The blithering idiocy, with which he tried to appear intelligent by pulling random numbers out of thin air, or much darker places, was a pathetic display of someone believing he has an intellectual relevance. However, his sinking poll numbers while stoking racial tensions and defending the Confederacy has Republicans terrified.

During Covid-19, Trump’s pathological lying has revealed, more than at any other point in his term, a deadly and pathological stupidity. He was left a plan book on what to do at the first sign of a viral pandemic. Because of his overt racist attitude toward President Obama, he simply discarded the book and foolishly threw away his best opportunity to be a hero in overcoming the coronavirus. Instead of using the book and being able to take credit for defeating the virus, just as he has taken credit for the positive Obama economy, his torrent of lies, withholding of federal support and denial of responsibility has the United States on a road to a long range depression, elevated unemployment and a shattered economy along Main Street, USA.

Main Streets all over America are waiting on food lines, test lines and results lines. Meanwhile, every day is Christmas Day on Wall Street. If you live in a state that did not expand Medicaid under the ACA, and your family has fallen victim to Covid-19, and that better cheaper healthcare that Trump promised never appeared, financial calamity might be in your future. After claiming he would be the best President for the LGBTQ community, Trump immediately upended the lives of those in the military. After claiming, “I am the least racist person you know,” Donald Trump has not stopped dog whistling and outright screaming racist tropes while continuing to evoke all manner of white supremacy in voice and Tweet. And after alleging he is the best President for the military, he has tried to take money from their families for a border wall, he has used them to make money for his hotels, tried to end National Guard deployments one day before they vested for veteran’s benefits, and has yet to confront Russia for placing rewards for the death(s) of our troops.

Now, he thumbs his nose at his own party as he fires Inspector Generals, removes the cost of justice from his friends, openly enriches his family business, hawks private products in the White House and places armed, unnamed, unmarked, unknown “troops” on American streets to abduct American citizens.

In the recent Wallace interview, Trump claimed that he doesn’t like to lose and it is why he rarely does. But there have been a string of lawsuits and defunct Trump brands that would acknowledge loser as his personal companion. So, when Trump alleges that he knows more than the experts, or can fix something he knows nothing about, or that he “really gets” material he has never studied or researched, there is another adage we would all do well to remember. “Don’t believe the hype!”