See below for Donald Trump’s economic speech earlier today in Detroit, with a few comments by me in red with my initials (LF). In short, it was a bunch of lies, idiocies, and nonsense…typical Donald Trump, basically. Enjoy!
Remarks as prepared for delivery.
Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today.It’s wonderful to be in Detroit. We now begin a great national conversation about economic renewal for America. (LF: Actually, America already has been undergoing a tremendous economic recovery/renewal from the depths of the Great Recession inherited by President Obama and the Democratic Congress in 2009. As far as having a serious “conversation” about America’s economy, I saw a lot of that in the Democratic primaries from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but basically none at all – at least nothing serious – from the Republicans, and certainly not from Donald Trump, who knows literally nothing about how the U.S. economy works.) Actually It’s a conversation about how to Make American Great Again for everyone, and especially those who have the very least. (LF: One thing’s for sure, Trump has chutzpah, but not in a good way. In this case, does he really think anyone is stupid enough to believe that his economic plan isn’t almost totally geared towards enriching the super-rich and NOT towards helping “everyone,” let alone those with the “very least?” If you want to see a brutal demolition of Trump-onomics, see Elizabeth Warren’s tweets today, for instance that “.@realDonaldTrump‘s economics plan is all about helping rich guys like Donald Trump get richer – & leaving everyone else behind.”)
The City of Detroit Is Where Our Story Begins.
Detroit was once the economic envy of the world. The people of Detroit helped power America to its position of global dominance in the 20th century.
When we were governed by an America First policy (LF: This is just total bulls***; America was never “governed by an America First policy.” Also, the slogan “America First” has VERY ugly echoes from American history...very telling that Trump keeps using this phrase.), Detroit was booming. Engineers, builders, laborers, shippers and countless others went to work each day, provided for their families, and lived out the American Dream.
But for many living in this city, that dream has long ago vanished. When we abandoned the policy of America First, we started rebuilding other countries instead of our own (Again, this is total bull****, wrong on every level, literally ZERO understanding of history, economics, or pretty much anything else. Sad!). The skyscrapers went up in Beijing, and in many other cities around the world, while the factories and neighborhoods crumbled in Detroit.
Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense. (LF: What on earth? The Washington Post demolishes this part of the speech very well, check it out: “The United States has welcomed 3 million refugeessince 1975. We spent $582 million on resettlement in 2014. The annual federal spending on transportation and water infrastructure that year was $416 billion, more than 700 times as much.”)
Today, Detroit has a per capita income of under $15,000 dollars, about half of the national average. 40 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty, over two and half times the national average. The unemployment rate is more than twice the national average. Half of all Detroit residents do not work.
Detroit tops the list of Most Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime – these are the silenced victims whose stories are never told by Hillary Clinton, but victims whose suffering is no less real or permanent. (LF: Bizarre and wrong and/or distorted on just about every level yet again. Let’s start with the fact that Hillary Clinton has been telling these stories for a long time, including in this speech in Detroit back in March. Also, as the Washington Post points out, “Black unemployment rates are regularly twice that of whites, with the gap consistently larger in the Midwest.” Does anyone think that Trump would do anything to make that situation any better? African Americans sure as heck don’t, which is why polls show that only 1% of them support Trump.)
In short, the city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. Every policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton. (LF: Any evidence for that ridiculous claim? Nope, because there isn’t any.)
She supports the high taxes and radical regulation (LF: Any examples or evidence for any of these absurd charges and claims? Of course not, because they are outright, bald-faced, demonstrable Big Lies.) that forced jobs out of your community…and the crime policies that have made you less safe…and the immigration policies that have strained local budgets…and the trade deals like NAFTA, signed by her husband, that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries (The guy’s simply demented.)… and she supports the education policies that deny your students choice, freedom and opportunity.
She is the candidate of the past. Ours is the campaign of the future. (LF: Hahahahahahahaha. That doesn’t even deserve a response, it’s too stupid.)
This is a city controlled by Democratic politicians at every level, and unless we change policies, we will not change results.
Today, I will outline my economic vision. In the coming weeks, we will be offering more detail on all of these policies, and the ones we have already rolled out can be viewed on my campaign website. (LF: As the Washington Post notes: “There aren’t that many more weeks until Election Day. It’s not clear why Trump didn’t unveil the details today, during his well-publicized speech.”)
Our opposition, on the other hand, has long ago run out of ideas. All Hillary Clinton has to offer is more of the same: more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on American energy and American production. (LF: Blah blah blah…the usual, nonsensical Tea Party rhetoric.)
If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America, you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda. (LF: My god, did I mention this guy’s completely bonkers?)
Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence. The one common feature of every Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you for working and doing business in the United States. Every policy she has tilts the playing field towards other countries at our expense. (Same comment as the previous paragraph.)
That’s why she tries to distract us with tired political rhetoric that seeks to label us, divide us, and pull us apart. (LF: That would be…wait for it…yep, look in the friggin’ mirror, Donald Trump!)
My campaign is about reaching out to everyone as Americans, and returning to a government that puts the American people first. (LF: Breathtaking lies; Trump’s campaign is about the exact opposite of that.)
Here is what an America First economic plan looks like.
First, let’s talk tax reform.
Taxes are one of the biggest differences in this race. Hillary Clinton – who has spent her career voting for tax increases – plans another massive job-killing $1.3 trillion-dollar tax increase. Her plan would tax many small businesses by almost fifty percent. (LF: WTF???? Where does he come up with this dreck?)
Recently, at a campaign event, Hillary Clinton short-circuited (LF: Not at all what she said – just amzing that Trump thinks voters are so stupid he can just completely make stuff up.) again – to use a now famous term (It’s not “famous,” except to the extent that Trump keeps making up a bizarre interpretation of a totally normal, innocuous expression.) – when she accidentally told the truth and said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class. (LF: As the Washington Post writes, “This is simply untrue.”)
I am proposing an across-the- board income tax reduction, especially for middle-income Americans. (G Guarantee that Trump’s tax cuts will overwhelmingly help the wealthiest of the wealthy and hurt everyone else.) This will lead to millions of new good-paying jobs. (LF: Definitely won’t happen.) The rich will pay their fair share (LF: Not under Trump’s plan.), but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs, or undermines our ability to compete. (LF: More right-wing mythology-spewing.) As part of this reform, we will eliminate the Carried Interest Deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and people like me, but unfair to American workers.
Tax simplification will be a major feature of the plan. Our current tax code is so burdensome and complex that we waste 9 billion hours a year in tax code compliance. My plan will reduce the current number of brackets from 7 to 3, and dramatically streamline the process. We will work with House Republicans on this plan (LF: Oh great. Paul Ryan economics is basically Ayn Rand, the “Laffer curve,” and other crazy stuff that’s been completely debunked, discredited, etc.), using the same brackets they have proposed: 12, 25 and 33 percent.
For many American workers, their tax rate will be zero.
While we will develop our own set of assumptions and policies, agreeing in some areas but not in others, we will be focused on the same shared goals and guided by the same shared principles: jobs, growth and opportunity. (LF: Trump can say these words, but his plans would lead to the exact opposite.) These reforms will offer the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan Tax Reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation.
We will Make America Grow Again. (LF: Actually, America’s economy HAS been growing, no thanks to Republicans who declared they wanted President Obama to “fail,” who came close to destroying America’s good faith and credit by nearly defaulting on our national debt, etc. No thanks!)
In the days ahead, we will provide more details on this plan and how it will help you and your family. It will present a night-and- day contrast to the job-killing, tax-raising, poverty-inducing Obama-Clinton agenda. (LF: Using Frank Luntz’s Big Lie talking points again…)
The State of New York has already lived through Hillary Clinton’s failed leadership. The Washington Post just published (LF: Ha! The same paper Trump has said is completely untrustworthy is now major source material for him, based on an abysmal, brain-dead article it published yesterday.) a devastating article on Hillary Clinton’s broken promises. She pledged 200,000 jobs for upstate New York as Senator. But what happened? The Washington Post writes, and I quote: “upstate job growth stagnated overall during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent…the former first lady was unable to pass big ticket legislation… Many promised jobs never materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first presidential run…data shows that upstate actually lost jobs during Clinton’s first term.”
Compare that to my record. In a recent New York Post article by Steve Cuozzo, (LF: That was an op-ed by Cuozzo, “who writes as a restaurant critic, real estate columnist, and op-ed contributor at the New York Post” – a far right tabloid/rag.) is “How Donald Trump Helped Save New York City,” the paper writes that I – and this is a direct quote – “waded into a landscape of empty Fifth Avenue storefronts, the dust-bowl mugging ground that was Central Park and a Wall Street area seemingly on its last legs as companies moved out…almost by force of will — [he] rode to the rescue. Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kickstarting the regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.”
This is what I want to do for our country – I want to jump start America. Now let’s look at what the Obama-Clinton policies have done nationally. Their policies produced 1.2% growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression, and a doubling of the national debt. (LF: Under President Obama, the unemployment rate has plummeted, the stock market has soared, we avoided a Great Depression, the auto industry was saved, our country’s economy is the envy of the world, etc, etc.)
There are now 94.3 million Americans outside the labor force. (LF: A lot of that is the retirement wave of the Baby Boomers.) It was 80.5 million when President Obama took office, an increase of nearly 14 million people. The Obama-Clinton agenda of tax, spend and regulate has created a silent nation of jobless Americans. (LF: Totally false; taxes are very low by historic standards and the budget deficit has been slashed under President Obama.)
Home ownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years. (LF: That should make Trump very happy, given what he’s said previously.)
Nearly 12 million have been added to the food stamp rolls since President Obama took office. (LF: To the extent this is true, it was due to the Great Recession inherited from Bush/Cheney by President Obama when he took office.) Another nearly 7 million Americans were added to the ranks of those in poverty.
We have the lowest labor force participation rates in four decades. (Again, the wave of Baby Boomer retirements is a big part of this.) Fifty-eight percent of African-American youth are either outside the labor force or not employed. One in five American households do not have a single member in the labor force. These are the real unemployment numbers – the five percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics. (Trump enters Alex Jones-level conspiracy theorizing. Truly demented stuff here.)…
..This money will be re-invested in states like Michigan. Finally, no family will have to pay the death tax. (Yep, he’d get rid of one of the most progressive taxes we’ve got, one that benefits 99% of Americans while impacting a tiny percentage of the richest Americans.) American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death – it’s just plain wrong. We will repeal it. (No, it’s not wrong. In fact, America has had an estate tax for around 100 years now, and for good reasons – we don’t believe in a hereditary aristocracy in this country; we believe in a meritocracy.)
Next comes regulatory reform.
As with taxes, I will have one overriding goal when it comes to regulation: I want to keep jobs and wealth in America. Motor vehicle manufacturing is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. The U.S. economy today is twenty-five percent smaller than it would have been without the surge of regulations since 1980. (Huh? First off, that’s based on a study from the Koch-funded Mercatus Institute. Second, didn’t the great Reagan take over after 1980, followed by a Republican Congress beginning in 1994? So where did this “surge of regulations” come from? Republicans? Or did it not happen at all?)
It is estimated (By…who? source?) that current overregulation is costing our economy as much as $2 trillion dollars a year – that’s money taken straight out of cities like yours.
The federal register is now over 80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more. In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy. (Let me just quote Elizabeth Warren here. “A “moratorium” on agency regulations means stopping new rules on shady payday lenders & too-big-to-fail banks.” “Cut regulations massively,” @realDonaldTrump? No rules & no accountability means people get ripped off & markets blow up. Remember 2008?”)
It is time to remove the anchor dragging us down. Upon taking office, I will issue a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations. My running mate, Mike Pence, signed a similar order when he became governor of Indiana. This will give our American companies the certainty they need to reinvest in our community, get cash off of the sidelines, start hiring for new jobs, and expanding businesses. (See Elizabeth Warren’s comments, above.)
I will also immediately cancel all illegal and overreaching executive orders. Next, I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.
We are in a competition with the world, and I want America to win. When I am president, we will. One of the most important reforms of all is trade reform. As Bernie Sanders has said (Gotta love Trump quoting a democratic Socialist who he disagrees with on basically everything.), Hillary Clinton has bad judgment. We’ve seen this bad judgment overseas, in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. We’ve seen it in Iran (The Iran nuclear deal is actually working very well.). We’ve seen it from President Obama, when he gives $150 billion to Iran, the number one terror state, and even gives them $400 million in money-laundered cash as a ransom payment. (This is completely false; can anyone find any evidence for this garbage? Or is this just another one that Alex Jones whispered in Trump’s ear?)
But we’ve also seen the terrible Obama-Clinton judgment right here in Detroit.
Hillary Clinton has supported (Note that the Republican Party has been a huge supporter of trade deals like NAFTA for decades now; Trump apparently is repudiating one of the pillars of Republican economic policy) the trade deals stripping this city, and this country, of its jobs and wealth. She supported Bill Clinton’s NAFTA (Actually, NAFTA was negotiated by George HW Bush’s administration and supported strongly by most Republicans), she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization (The vote in the Senate was 83-15 on that one), she supported the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Nope, she opposes it; most Republicans support it.).
Let’s talk about South Korea for a moment, because it so perfectly illustrates the broken promises that have hurt so many American workers.
President Obama, and the usual so-called experts who’ve been wrong about every trade deal for decades, predicted that the trade deal with South Korea would increase our exports to South Korea by more than $10 billion – resulting in some 70,000 jobs.
Like Hillary Clinton’s broken promises to New York, these pledges all turned out to be false. Instead of creating 70,000 jobs, it has killed nearly 100,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Our exports to South Korea haven’t increased at all, but their imports to us have surged more than $15 billion – more than doubling our trade deficit with that country. (Trump may have gone to Wharton business school, but he learned nothing.)
The next betrayal will be the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton’s closest friend, Terry McAuliffe, confirmed what I have said on this from the beginning: if sent to the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton will enact the TPP. (T-Mac walked that one back very fast.) Guaranteed. Her donors will make sure of it.
…Because my only interest is the American people (Anyone who believes that…I’ve got some nice swampland to sell you near a bridge to nowhere.), I have previously laid out a detailed 7-point plan for trade reform, available on my website. It includes strong protections against currency manipulation, tariffs against any countries that cheat by unfairly subsidizing their goods, and it includes a renegotiation of NAFTA. If we don’t get a better deal, we will walk away….
Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. (After he completely trashes it.) But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.
Also critical to our economic renewal will be energy reform (This may be the stupidest, most wildly wrong part of an incredibly stupid, wrong-headed speech. Basically, every word that follows is either an outright lie, a wild mischaracterization, a total lack of understanding of energy issues, or all of the above.)
The Obama-Clinton Administration has blocked and destroyed millions of jobs through their anti-energy regulations (FALSE), while raising the price of electricity for both families and businesses (FALSE). As a result of recent Obama EPA actions (FALSE) coal-fired power plants across Michigan have either shut down entirely or undergone expensive conversions. The Obama-Clinton war on coal (FALSE; there’s no “war on coal,” other than fracked natural gas and cheap solar and wind, plus environmental imperatives, driving coal into a much-deserved retirement). has cost Michigan over 50,000 jobs. Hillary Clinton says her plan will “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.” (That’s almost the complete opposite of what Clinton was saying; Trump is taking her comments totally out of context and twisting them.)
We will put our coal miners and steelworkers back to work. (No, he won’t. If anything, he’ll make the situation much worse.) Clinton not only embraces President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions but wants to expand them, including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10 million Americans. (We’ve had an energy boom under President Obama, also massive job growth and a decline in the unemployment rate. Yet again, Trump has things completely wrong, backwards, etc.)
According to the Heritage Foundation (As the Washington Post points out, “A conservative think tank tied to tea party leader and former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint.” ‘Nuff said.), by 2030, the Obama-Clinton energy restrictions will eliminate another half a million manufacturing jobs, reduce economic output by $2.5 trillion dollars, and reduce incomes by $7,000 dollars (Grammatical note: if you use the $ sign, you don’t have to spell out “dollars” as well.) per person.
A Trump Administration will end this war on the American worker, and unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country. (There’s no “war on the American worker,” and an “energy revolution” has already been “unleashed” under President Obama.)
According to the Institute for Energy Research (According to SourceWatch, this is a Koch-and-ALEC-connected, extremist, frankly crazy organization that “advocates positions on environmental issues including deregulation of utilities, climate change denial, and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless.”) lifting the restrictions on all sources of American energy will: Increase GDP by more than $100 billion dollars annually, add over 500,000 new jobs annually, and increase annual wages by more than $30 billion dollars over the next 7 years;Increase federal, state, and local tax revenues by almost $6 trillion dollars over 4 decades; increase total economic activity by more than $20 trillion dollars over the next 40 years. (Again, this is all from the fossil-funded, climate-science-denying Institute for Energy Research. And, of course, it’s all completely false.)
The reforms I have outlined today are only the beginning.
When we reform our tax, trade, energy and regulatory policies, we will open a new chapter in American Prosperity.
We can use this new wealth to rebuild our military and our infrastructure.
As part of this new future, we will also be rolling out Proposals (Just curious; why is “Proposals” capitalized?) to increase choice and reduce cost in childcare, offering much needed relief to American families. I will unveil my plan on this in the coming weeks (Yeah, we’ve heard that before, just like we’ve heard that Trump would release his tax returns and do a lot of other things…still waiting!) that I have been working on with my daughter Ivanka (Uhhhh.) and an incredible team of experts (He means “six guys named Steve,” all of whom are far-right wingnuts and none of whom are economists) . Likewise, our education reforms will help parents send their kids to a school of their choice We will also give our police and law enforcement the funds and support they need to restore law and order to this country. Without security, there can be no prosperity. We must have law and order. (Ah, yes, the “law and order” candidate, just like other dictator wannabes, Richard Nixon, George Wallace, etc.) In the coming days, we will be rolling out plans on all of these items. One of my first acts as President will be to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare, saving another 2 million American jobs. (Any evidence at all that replacing Obamacare, which is working quite well, would save any jobs at all? Of course not, because it’s – yet again, say it with me – utter BULLSH*T!!!)
We will also rebuild our military (Actually, our military is by far the strongest in the world, doesn’t need to be “rebuilt” – or constantly belittled and insulted by draft dodging cowards like Trump.), and get our allies to pay their fair share for the protection we provide saving us countless more billions to invest in our own country (Why does Trump hate our allies so much and love Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and other enemies/dictators/etc. so much? Inquiring minds wanna know.). We also have a plan, on our website, for a complete reform of the Veterans Health Administration (No, he doesn’t have a serious plan for this.). This is something so desperately needed to make sure our vets are fully supported and get the care they deserve.
Detroit – the Motor City -will come roaring back. We will offer a new future, not the same old failed Policies (Again, why is this capitalized?) of the past. Our party has chosen to make new history (What on earth is “new history?” Other than a weird oxymoron, of course.) by selecting a nominee from outside the rigged and corrupt system (Trump himself is actually the epitome of corruption and a “rigged system,” while screwing over working people.). The other party has reached backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday – who offers only the rhetoric of yesterday, and the policies of yesterday. There will be no change under Hillary Clinton– only four more years of Obama. (Four more years of Obama? The latest polls show Obama with the strongest approval ratings of his presidency, and for good reason – America is far, far better off than it was when Obama and the Democrats took over from the disastrous Bush/Cheney administration.)
But we are going to look boldly into the future. We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports and airports that our country deserves. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas. American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation. It will be American hands that rebuild this country, and it will be American energy -mined from American sources – that powers this country. It will be American workers who are hired to do the job. Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo. Our country will reach amazing new heights. All we have to do is stop relying on the tired voices of the past. We can’t fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place. (This entire paragraph is a combination of lies, bluster, completely wrong economic thinking and general idiocy. Not worth responding to beyond that.)
We can’t solve our problems by relying on the politicians who created them. Only by changing to new leadership (Donald Trump offers “leadership” only if you want to go lurching backwards and downwards.), and new solutions (Trump has no solutions, let alone “new” ones, other than the failed right-wing policies of “trickle down economics” – gack!), will we get new results. We need to stop believing in politicians, and start believing in America (That would be the same America that Trump’s been trashing since he started his absurd campaign for president). Before everything great that has ever happened, the doubters have always said it couldn’t be done. America is ready to prove the doubters wrong. (LF: Yeah, after Trump has trashed America, said we don’t “win anymore,” claimed that other countries are “eating our lunch,” blah blah blah.)
They want you to think small. I am asking you to think big. We are ready to dream great things for our country once again. We are ready to show the world that America is Back — Bigger, and Better and Stronger Than Ever Before. (LF:: America is already big, great and strong; Trump would change all of that for the much, much worse.)
Thank you, and God Bless You.
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
