Donald Trump - the Megathread - read Mod warning in OP

Kivaro wrote: »

Yes, unfortunately we'll be hearing a lot about legacy issues.
Even when Trump is well gone and the BLM/Antifa group are running havoc around the US, Biden/Harris will still blame Trump.
It's goin' to be a shoitstorm until some stability is restored with a new Presidency in 2024.

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Bets between now and 2024
- a war with iran or other arab nation
- attempted tax increases in the name of ‘saving the planet’
- Attempted restrictions on firearms and the oil industry.

Luckily as the financial papers are all saying “the markets stabilised as a result of the republican majority in the senate”
Mitch mcconnell and co will keep the democrats crazy ideas in check.

Snake Plisken wrote: »

Hell of a lot more then Obama and Biden did in 8 years, I'll check back with you in 4 see what Bidens has to show for his term.

rossie1977 wrote: »

* America was losing 800,000 jobs a month when Obama took over. He turned that around and we saw 75 months of consecutive job growth during his presidency.

The truth behind Obama’s job numbers

In the Obama years, the unemployment rate kept falling after 2010. That’s great. But the untold story was that the number of people moving from the living room couch into jobs was exceeded by the number who dropped out of the workforce, or, as was the case with millions of 20-somethings, never got a job. From January 2009 to December 2016, almost 10 million jobs were added, but amazingly, 1.6 million working-age people dropped out of the workforce.

The percentage of people participating in the labor force fell from 65.7% to a low of 62.7% under Obama. Generally, in a recovery, job seekers rise as jobs re-emerge.

A chart from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the trend in labor force participation and the unemployment rate adjusted for labor force dropouts from 2009 to 2019. The strange thing about the Obama recovery was more jobs and less willing workers. When a person isn’t looking for a job, for whatever reason, they do not get labeled as unemployed. The joke a few years ago was that Obama would shrink the unemployment rate to zero through the magic formula of driving millions out of the workforce. In a world where everyone is living off of welfare or a trust fund, and no one is looking for a job — there are officially no unemployed people.

Under Trump, we are experiencing the best of all worlds. Unemployment is down, and the labor force participation rate is finally starting to grow again, albeit still slower than needed. Some 2.3 million more people have entered the workforce under Trump. Part of the rise in the workforce is undoubtedly due to the steady increase in wages, which attracts workers to come off the sidelines.
Is the healthy job market today due to a continuation of the Obama recovery? Hardly. My Heritage Foundation colleague John Merline ran the numbers. When Obama left office, the Congressional Budget Office predicted the “trend” in hiring. For example, the CBO forecast the unemployment rate would never get below 4.4% and would start rising again in 2019. The current unemployment rate is now a full percentage point below the CBO’s forecast, with 1.6 million more jobs than the Obama trend line would have predicted.

The CBO also predicted at the end of the Obama years that the labor force participation rate would continue to fall under Trump. Wrong: It rose.
One last point: When I was studying economics in college in the 1970s, the professors and the textbooks instructed us that an unemployment rate of about 4% was “full employment.” Can’t go any lower than that. How good is the job picture today? We now have an unemployment rate a half a percentage point below full employment. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how does this job market rate? It’s an 11!

rossie1977 wrote: »

* Dow Jones had dropped from 14,000 on the way to 6,000 when Obama took office. Once stabilised Dow grew by 148% during his term. Only 3 other presidents had higher return.

Stock Market Results (first four years after election)

S&P 500

Obama: +48%

Trump: +56%

Dow Jones Industrial Average

Obama: +43%

Trump: +52%

Nasdaq

Obama: +76%

Trump: +119%

Those are some strong results under both presidents. But stocks have been stronger since Trump was elected – particularly growth stocks, as reflected in the more than doubling of the Nasdaq.

As with everything in the stock market, however, context matters. President Obama was elected in the midst of the worst economic downturn America has seen since the Great Depression, and the market didn’t bottom until another four months after he was elected (less than two months after he was sworn in). Trump was elected amid almost universal U.S. growth: rising GDP, escalating home prices, and an unemployment rate (4.8%) that was less than half its late-2009 nadir (10%). So it’s far from an apples-to-apples comparison.

On the flip side, Obama didn’t have the worst global pandemic in a century to deal with.

Now, if you broke this down by each president’s first terms, the results change quite a bit; Obama actually beats Trump in all three indexes.

Regardless, the strong stock market performance since Trump’s election proves that the daily noise projecting Trump’s poisonous effect on stocks was not only overstated; it was simply incorrect.

rossie1977 wrote: »

* Introduced the Affordable Care Act, one of the biggest undertakings in the US health industry in a century.

ObamaCare: 10 years of distress and disappointment

According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “premiums have doubled for individual health insurance plans since 2013, the year before many of Obamacare’s regulations and mandates took effect.”

Even more shocking, HHS reports, “Average individual market premiums more than doubled from $2,784 per year in 2013 to $5,712 on Healthcare.gov in 2017—an increase of $2,928 or 105%.” Needless to say, ObamaCare has fallen woefully short in its grand ambition to slice health insurance premiums by $2,500 per year.

Second, ObamaCare supporters claimed it would drastically reduce the uninsured population. Unfortunately, this also has not happened. As of this writing, there are roughly 28 million Americans without health insurance. And the number of those without health insurance has increased in recent years. And now that the individual mandate (a dubious provision forcing Americans to purchase health insurance) has been repealed, this number is expected to rise even more.

Why is this happening? According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), “Simply put, there are too many people without subsidies who cannot afford coverage under Obamacare.”

Third, President Obama repeatedly assured voters, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.” After ObamaCare was enacted, millions of Americans were unable to keep their pre-ObamaCare health insurance plan.

ObamaCare has been an abysmal failure when it comes to the integral promise of, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.” Such is why President Obama’s pledge was named the Lie of the Year for 2013 by PolitiFact.

Fourth, President Obama also repeatedly guaranteed voters, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period.” As it turns out, this promise also fell by the wayside.

Sadly, since ObamaCare’s inception one decade ago, the vast majority of Americans are not better off in terms of their health insurance costs and health care access. ObamaCare has failed miserably because it lacks free-market principles and is a one-size-fits all, centrally planned boondoggle.

rossie1977 wrote: »

* Ended US combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan including bringing 90% of troops home.

America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama's reign

Most Americans would probably be astounded to realize that the president who has been painted by Washington pundits as a reluctant warrior has actually been a hawk. The Iran nuclear deal, a herculean achievement, and the opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba unfortunately stand alone as President Obama’s successful uses of diplomacy over hostility.

While candidate Obama came to office pledging to end George W Bush’s wars, he leaves office having been at war longer than any president in US history. He is also the only president to serve two complete terms with the nation at war.

President Obama did reduce the number of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he dramatically expanded the air wars and the use of special operations forces around the globe. In 2016, US special operators could be found in 70% of the world’s nations, 138 countries – a staggering jump of 130% since the days of the Bush administration.

Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.

rossie1977 wrote: »

* Eliminated the most wanted man in US history.

rossie1977 wrote: »

* Iran nuclear deal which eased decades of tension between the two nations

Obama Passed the Buck. Trump Refused to Play.

JCPOA advocates claim Trump left the U.S. and the entire world vulnerable by leaving the Iran deal. The JCPOA, they say, was working. This is not true and hasn’t been true since the very beginning of the deal, at least not on the terms sold to Congress and the U.S. public. From the start, Iran was given secret loopholes that made it appear they were meeting the publicly stated terms of deal. Among other recent violations: The Iranians have exceeded the amount of uranium they’re allowed to enrich; they’ve exceeded the levels of purity of enriched uranium; they’ve violated the types of centrifuges they were allowed to spin; and injected uranium into centrifuges they were not allowed to use for enrichment.

Perhaps most tellingly, Iran’s nuclear archives, which Israel seized from a Tehran warehouse in January 2018 and made public months later, show that the regime never gave up its intentions to build a military nuclear program, despite promises in the JCPOA to never pursue nuclear weapons.

There is, however, a case to be made that the deal was serving its purpose. But that interpretation requires a markedly different understanding of the JCPOA than what the Obama administration sold to Congress and the American public. The point of the deal was not to stop Iran from ever building a bomb but to prevent the Iranians from doing so until Obama left office.

rossie1977 wrote: »

He gave huge tax cuts to the top 0.01% and corporations.

The truth about Trump's tax cuts by the numbers

Let’s look at taxpayers making between $50,000 and $100,000:

In 2018, there were about 35 million taxpayers in this bracket, an increase of roughly one million over 2017 (a growing middle class). In total, they owed $31 billion less in 2018 than in 2017. In other words, the middle class got nearly half of the $64 billion decline in taxes owed under the TCJA.

As for their share of the tax burden, it also declined. While they accounted for 22 percent of total income (roughly the same as in 2017), their share of income taxes was 13 percent (over a percentage point less than in 2017).

Let’s look at taxpayers making under $25,000. The number of taxpayers in this bracket was 52 million in 2018, a drop of 2.3 million taxpayers from 2017. In total, their tax liability declined 16 percent or $4 billion, from $25 billion in 2017 to $21 billion in 2018.

Their share of the tax burden also declined. Those taxpayers accounted for 4 percent of total income (roughly the same as in 2017) but their share of taxes was one percent (slightly less than in 2017).

So here are the results of the Trump tax cuts:

--The income tax burden for high earners increased $16 billion to 40 percent of the total owed.

--The income tax burden for middle class earners decreased by $31 billion to 13 percent of the total owed.

--The income tax burden for low wage workers decreased by $4 billion to 1 percent of the total owed.

Doesn’t sound much like a tax cut for the wealthy.

So why does Biden keep saying what he says? To quote Ronald Reagan: “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

In reality, thanks to the TCJA, working and middle-class Americans were earning more and keeping more of what they earned following the Trump tax cuts. That meant bigger paychecks and an easier time meeting household expenses.

rossie1977 wrote: »

So please outline what Trump has done on a par never mind better.

• USMCA
• Unemployment Rate Fell to Lowest Level Since 1969 (3.6%).
• African-American, Latino and Female Unemployment lowest on record.
• Dow, S&P Record Highs.
• Record Low Veteran Unemployment.
• Middle East Peace Plan.
• Obamacare Mandate Penalty Removal.
• Took Major Steps to Reduce the Cost of Prescription Drugs.
• $1.8 Billion to help Combat Opioid Epidemic.
• Finally Armed Ukraine (so much for Putin's puppet).
• HBCU Record Funding.
• Opportunity Zones Drew $75 Billion in Investment First Two Years.
• First Step Act / Prison Reform (even the WaPo acknowledged that one)
• Dozen Hostages Freed.
• Killed Soleimani & Al Baghdadi.

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Not so fast, Jan 2020, pre-COVID:






Trying to suggest there were major issues with Trump's economy is absurd:



Also, another good article worth read is: Obama Wins The Gold For Worst Economic Recovery Ever.




Article from May, 2020:

Obamacare, really?? You want to go there??






Mostly they were troops he put there. For example, in Afghanistan there were 30,000 troops there when he was elected in 2008 but that number peaked at 100,000 just two years later. Also, warfare changed. Bush launched 51 drone strikes, Obama has unleashed 372. Bush launched one strike in Yemen, Obama 112.






Fine but then why not see the "elimination" of Soleimani and Al Baghdadi in the same way then so? Crikey, there was almost a day of mourning declared for those two killers.



Citing the Iran Deal is almost as a plus is almost as bad, if not worse, than citing Obamacare as such:






So what? There were many tax cuts and you're implying that the middle or lower classes were given none.



Guess we'll see how Biden does when it comes to taxing the rich, as he certainly knows some of the loopholes they exploit.



Well, pre-Covid

• USMCA
• Unemployment Rate Fell to Lowest Level Since 1969 (3.6%).
• African-American, Latino and Female Unemployment lowest on record.
• Dow, S&P Record Highs.
• Record Low Veteran Unemployment.
• Middle East Peace Plan.
• Obamacare Mandate Penalty Removal.
• Took Major Steps to Reduce the Cost of Prescription Drugs.
• $1.8 Billion to help Combat Opioid Epidemic.
• Finally Armed Ukraine (so much for Putin's puppet).
• HBCU Record Funding.
• Opportunity Zones Drew $75 Billion in Investment First Two Years.
• First Step Act / Prison Reform (even the WaPo acknowledged that one)
• Dozen Hostages Freed.
• Killed Soleimani & Al Baghdadi.

Promised Made, Promises Kept:
Building the Wall where shoddy fencing was not doing the job it was intended to do.
Withdrew from the Iran Deal.
Moved US Embassy to Jerusalem etc etc.


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1217985357553315841

Guess we'll see just how well President Harris, sorry, President Biden, does in comparison.

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I think donny should become a pro golfer, I think he d be the greatest

Wanderer78 wrote: »

I think donny should become a pro golfer, I think he d be the greatest

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Wheres the wall he was going to get built? He went fairly quiet on it the last while. Especially for something he never shut up about last time.