Fact vs. Fiction and Let the Fat Man Sing

Now that the Super Bowl is over, time to get back to the real competition. No, I’m not talking about the Democratic Party primary season which officially gets under way Monday in Iowa. The competition to which I am referring is our ability to parse, fact check actually, Donald Trump’s many pronouncements without getting too discouraged or overwhelmed. 

As they attempt to project a most personally positive story, all politicians skate on the edge of reality whenever they speak or tweet. But more so than any prior year, truth is on the ballot this election. Regrettably, too many of our fellow citizens either do not have the intelligence to discern fiction from fact, or more regrettably, they don’t care. 

I don’t get paid to fact check Trump, but the reporters at AP do, so here’s their commentary on what the fabricator-in-chief had to say over the last week. While reviewing Trump’s words versus AP’s reality check, keep in mind that voters in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio will have significant say on who wins in November: 

Car Talk: “TRUMP: ‘We’re going to get a lot more car companies moving in. We have a lot more companies moving in. ... Jobs are coming back, and they’re coming back fast, and they’re coming right here to Michigan. They are coming rapidly. You see what’s going on.’ — remarks in Michigan on Thursday.

“THE FACTS: Automobile manufacturing jobs have not come back fast to Michigan under Trump. They have declined slightly since he took office, according to the Labor Department. 

“Between Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and the end of last year, auto manufacturing jobs in Michigan declined by 100, to 42,200. Auto-parts jobs grew by 1,300, or just under 1%, to 133,200. No boom has been experienced.

“As for his prediction that many more such jobs are coming, that’s difficult to tell. 

“The three big automakers have altogether announced plans to add over 10,000 jobs in Michigan in coming years. But they’ve also cut or plan to cut thousands of other jobs in the state. 

Dollars and Sense: “TRUMP: ‘The USMCA is the largest, fairest, most balanced and modern trade agreement ever achieved.’ — signing ceremony Wednesday for the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

“THE FACTS: It’s not the largest trade deal ever made. It covers the same three countries as before. In contrast, the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations concluded in 1994 created the World Trade Organization and was signed by 123 countries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston found the following year that the WTO’s initial membership accounted for more than 90 percent of global economic output.

“TRUMP: The USMCA ‘will make our blue-collar boom—which is beyond anybody’s expectation—even bigger, stronger, and more extraordinary.’ — signing ceremony Wednesday.

“THE FACTS: There isn’t a boom for blue-collar workers, and few economists expect the trade pact to add much.

“Such workers haven’t done substantially better than everyone else, and some of their gains under Trump have faded in the past year as his trade war hurt manufacturing. The mining and logging industry, for example, which includes oil and gas workers, lost 21,000 jobs last year. Manufacturers have added just 9,000 jobs in the past six months, while the economy as a whole gained more than 1.1 million jobs during that period.

“The U.S. economy is still heavily oriented toward services. While factory jobs have grown, other jobs have grown faster, so manufacturing has slightly shrunk as a proportion of the work force since Trump took office.

“The independent U.S. International Trade Commission estimated last year that the trade pact would create 49,700 jobs in manufacturing and mining over six years, a fraction of 1% of the existing 13.5 million U.S. jobs in factories and mines.”

“TRUMP: ‘More Americans are working today than have ever worked in the history of our country. We’re up to almost 160 million people working. We’ve never even come close to a number like that.’ — signing ceremony Wednesday.

“THE FACTS: Yes, but that’s driven by population growth. A more relevant measure is the proportion of Americans with jobs, and that is still below record highs.

“According to Labor Department data, 61% of people in the United States 16 years and older were working in December. That’s below the all-time high of 64.7% in April 2000.”

The Fat Man Hasn’t Sung Yet: While it is a foregone conclusion that the extorter-in-chief will get a formalized impeachment free pass from the Republican Senate on Wednesday, Democrats should at least try to have Trump censured. Such a vote probably would require just a simple majority to pass, not the two-thirds needed for a guilty finding under impeachment proceedings. 

A censure vote would serve two purposes. It would make each Republican go on record as to their acceptance or not of Trump’s actions in trying to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter. If passed censure would further bruise Trump’s fragile ego, no doubt prompting some very unpresidential responses that would further erode his standing in the eyes of independents and fence-sitting Republicans.  

Democrats should not fold up their investigation powers, as well. Instead, they should borrow from the Republican playbook—just as the GOP House mounted investigation after investigation (six in all) into Hillary Clinton’s actions after the storming of the Benghazi compound, the Democratically controlled House of Representatives should open up new hearings with a star witness—Lev Parnas. Let him spill out all the dirt he has assembled on Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s sordid plan to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. 

Unlike John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, Parnas never was a federal employee and therefore cannot be muzzled by claims of executive privilege. 

The House might also deem it proper to hold hearings on the state of election security and what the Trump administration has done to ensure no meddling by foreign powers.   

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez, The Court Should Now Hear The U.S. House of Representatives v. Donald J. Trump

The time has come to find out if we live in a constitutional republic or in an autocratic state. It is time to go directly to the Supreme Court for a decision on the House of Representatives’ powers of impeachment and whether the executive branch can withhold documents and other evidence the House deems crucial to its investigations. 

By an 8-0 vote in 1974 the Supreme Court ruled Richard Nixon had to turn over secretly recorded White House tapes that ultimately revealed criminal behavior by the president in the Watergate scandal coverup. But that was back then, when respect for the rule of law was central to our political essence, regardless of party. We did not have a president who demeaned courts and judges who disagreed with him. And we did not have a president who openly flouted the law, often doubling down on the very crime he is accused of committing. 

Today’s Supreme Court must decide if the Constitution is still relevant. If a president can stonewall due process. If the Founders’ belief in equal branches of government is an 18th century anachronism or if it remains a document a democratic republic nation can live by. 

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi must give up any hope of White House cooperation for surely Donald Trump has provided no reason or action to maintain that illusion. She must immediately authorize an expedited challenge to the Supreme Court to verify the House’s absolute right to obtain material relevant to its inquiries. The court must reaffirm its 1974 ruling that the claim of executive privilege has limitations when it comes to a legitimate House investigation, that no one, not even the president, is above the law. 

It is counterproductive to waste the nation’s time and patience with thrust and parry politics. The Supreme Court must be asked to accept the challenge and must rule expeditiously. 

Nancy Pelosi, it is your move!

A Red White House: To those who bicker that Democrats are trying to take over a White House they couldn’t win in 2016, let me remind them that a Trump removal would not turn the Oval Office blue. A solidly conservative Republican vice president, Mike Pence, would succeed the dumped Trump. 

In many ways Pence could prove to be more anathema to Democrats as he is more deliberate, more focused, more of an ideologue, more conservative, more religious, more schooled in the ways of governing, and less of a lightning rod than Trump. 

One of the more vexing questions confronting Americans, New Yorkers in particular, is the transformation of Rudy Giuliani from “America’s Mayor” after 9/11 into Trump’s rabid attack dog. 

So, naturally, I was drawn to a New York Times Op-Ed Tuesday with the relevant headline, “What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?”. When I looked at the byline I was more intrigued. I thought the name looked familiar, the uncommon way it spelled Frydman. Hadn’t a Ken Frydman worked on Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade newspaper, shortly after I did some 40 years ago? Sure enough, it was him. 

I checked out his online background discovering Ken not only worked for Giuliani but was actually married by him in a city hall ceremony. For decades Ken carried a picture of the ceremony in his wallet. 

Here was an intimate witness to Rudy’s transformation. So, without further ado, here are two links, the first to the Op-Ed piece, the second to a bio of Ken who has quite an accomplished resume:

What Happened to Rudy Giuliani?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/opinion/giuliani-trump-ukraine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Ken’s bio

http://sourcecommunications.net/about/

Trump's Plan: Invoke Fear, Dehumanize Clinton

From genocide to genocide one constant has been the dehumanization of victims by aggressors. If a victim can be reduced in stature to a level where death can be condoned, killing can be implemented without remorse.

Dehumanization does not have to go to the extreme of a concerted campaign of murder. Slavery or state-sanctioned discrimination can be way-stops with little or no punishment should murder occur now and then.

With its treatment of Native Americans and Afro Americans, White America has engaged in genocide, slavery and discrimination. And now, with their rhetoric, Donald Trump and his Republican advisors and sycophants are pursuing a dehumanizing and demonization campaign against Hispanics, Muslims and Democrats. It is the next step in the Republican Party’s strategy to delegitimize the presidency of the first elected Afro American, from the birther movement to assertions that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim to claims that he clandestinely supports the killing of policemen by blacks.

Trump’s total campaign has been waged not on policy and programs but rather on smear tactics to dehumanize his adversaries. By repeating a verbal description of Hillary Clinton as a criminal and a liar they are undermining her legitimacy as president should she win the election. Trump doesn’t offer a critique of her platform or details about his alternatives other than to say under him life would be great.

Perhaps we should have expected this result. Too many of our entertainment diversions, especially reality shows, pit good against evil. Cooperation is encouraged only as far as it advances one’s own self interest.

Republicans want to paint themselves as the law and order party, Democrats as the party of lawlessness and chaos.

Trump began the assault on normative behavior when he launched his America First campaign with an attack on Mexicans and Muslims. The net effect of his remarks was the unleashing of forces of evil in our society—anti-Semites and racial bigots. By not quickly and forcefully repudiating comments by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan and neo Nazi extremists, and by knowingly or inadvertently retweeting their screeds, Trump emboldened them. 

Perhaps not coincidentally, Duke announced his intention to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Louisiana Friday. “I’m overjoyed to see Donald Trump and most Americans embrace most of the issues that I’ve championed for years. My slogan remains ‘America First,’” Duke said.

Evil cannot be given fertile soil on which to grow. Yet Trump has been its constant gardener.

The produce of his tolerance of intolerance emerged for all to see during the just concluded Republican National Convention. Trump confidante Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire delegate and state representative, said Clinton should be tried for treason and hung. Or killed by firing squad.

Potential vice presidential candidate and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich proposed that all Muslims in the United States be required to take a loyalty test as a condition of their continued residence in the country, even if they are U.S. citizens. One wonders how a former university history professor does not know his suggestion is patently unconstitutional.

Another passed over vp hopeful, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, led the assembled delegates in a modern day version of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution when he called upon them to shout “guilty” after he enunciated Clinton’s alleged transgressions as secretary of state. 

New Yorkers remember Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s assault on art he didn’t like, similar to Hitler’s attack on Modern Art, what he called Degenerate Art. Giuliani is another Trump insider. 

Images of a police state come to mind. 

In his acceptance speech Thursday night, Trump said he would suspend immigration from any nation that has been “compromised by terrorism.” Does that mean no one can come here from Belgium or France, for surely those countries at present are nests of opportunity for Islamic terrorists?

There were some winning rhetorical flourishes in his near 75-minute speech. Saying, “I am your voice,” he forcefully drove home the point that he would be the champion of the people, not special interests. But as The New York Times noted in a front page article Friday under a picture of Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, just a few blocks away from the convention hall lobbyists already were feasting on the potential business and influence they would have in a Trump presidency. “Lobbyists cheerfully passed out stickers reading ‘Make Lobbying Great Again,’” The Times reported. http://nyti.ms/29XIbha

Trump also deftly turned Clinton’s campaign motto, “I’m with her,” into a more personal “I’m with you,” again defining himself as the people’s champion.

But his brag that “l alone” could effect change in Washington revealed a major hurdle he would face. He would need Congress to pass legislation that Republicans have not previously embraced. Though his daughter Ivanka, when introducing him, talked about his compassion and generosity for working women, he did not include in his speech any support for measures many women crave: a higher minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, affordable child care. He said he would scrap Obamacare and replace it with something better without providing specifics. Getting any of these programs through a Republican Congress would be a challenge worthy of Hercules.

To almost everything he said he would do he exhorted, “Believe me, believe me.” And that his fixes would happen “quickly.”

Trump promised to deliver a safer America, that he will be the law and order president. Putting aside for now the reality that crime is down in the country, most criminal laws are enforced on the local level, not by the federal government, unless Trump has in mind a national police force that would supersede state and municipal police departments.

Interestingly, Trump did not mention who would pay for the wall he says he will build along the Mexican border. He also did not repeat his vow to deport 11 million illegal aliens. 

The transcendent theme of Trump’s speech was the antithesis of the words on the Statue of Liberty. Instead of “give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Trump wants your angered, your fearful, your resentful, your bigoted, and, since he wants to regenerate the coal industry, your masses struggling to breathe clean air.

After the speech, as Trump and Pence with their respective families stood awkwardly on the podium, music blared in the background. It was the Rolling Stones singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Some viewers and commentators couldn’t help but wonder at the juxtaposition of the words against his laundry list of will-dos. 

But maybe Trump intended a deeper message. Since the last line of the chorus is, “But if you try sometime you find you get what you need,” perhaps this a veiled message that Trump’s platform is what the country needs at this time.