Trump: Good, Bad, Ugly

President Donald Trump “saved the United States,” says former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

He’s one of the “smartest, most clever, and successful” presidents, says Fox’s Jeanine Pirro.

No, he’s “dumb and racist,” says comedian Seth Meyers, and guilty of “rampant corruption,” say commentators on MSNBC.

The man divides opinion like no one else in America.

My latest video looks at the “good, bad and ugly” of Trump. The good is wonderful.

Unemployment is down, and the stock market is up.

Trump deserves credit for that. By criticizing “job-crushing regulations” and appointing some regulators who fear government overreach, Trump signaled people that government would not crush you merely because you make a profit or want to try something new. As a result, 6 million more Americans were hired.

Unemployment fell during Barack Obama’s presidency, too, but under Obama, fewer Americans chose to even look for work. People dropped out of the labor force.

Once Trump was elected, more people applied for jobs again.

Why? I say it’s because his administration sent a new message. Instead of telling people: “You’re victims of an unfair system! You need handouts,” Trump said: “You don’t need welfare. Most of you can get a job.”

Even disability claims, which had been steadily rising, have declined.

Trump did other good things, like appointing judges that tend to rule in favor of free speech and private property.

On the other hand, Trump’s done a lot of bad.

To undermine a political opponent and expose the sleaziness of the opponent’s son, Trump sleazily withheld aid to an ally. Then he lied about it.

Trump lies about all sorts of things — big and small.

He said his inauguration had “the biggest audience in… history.” He kept saying it, even after reports showed it wasn’t true.

He broke his promises about ending America’s wars.

Unlike his predecessors, he hasn’t started new wars — but he’s increased bombings. The USA is now dropping more bombs on Afghanistan than at any time in the last 10 years.

Trump broke promises about spending. He promised he’d “cut spending, big-league.”

But he did the opposite. Spending has increased by half a trillion dollars since Trump was elected.

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, is a Trump supporter, but he’s upset that Trump’s gone along with a big increase in the national debt. Davidson complained to his fellow Republicans, but suddenly, they didn’t seem to care much about the debt now that someone from their party was president.

This week, Trump proposed a budget that would slow the growth of most unsustainable welfare programs. But he knows that won’t get through Congress. Probably, he’ll sign the gusher of spending that Congress produces instead.

“We are on a path to bankrupting our country,” says Davidson.

Trump also says false things about trade. He claimed our $500 billion trade deficit means the U.S. is “losing on trade with China.” But that’s absurd.

“He’s telling people trade isn’t win-win; there’s a winner and a loser.” I complained to Davidson, adding, “I don’t think Trump understands trade.”

“He has a metaphor that the average American understands,” responded Davidson.

“But it’s a wrong metaphor, right?” I asked.

“It is technically inaccurate,” said Davidson.

Trump is also a bully. That’s his ugly part.

He calls people “stupid,” “pathetic,” “a low-IQ individual.” He makes fun of their looks and weight. It’s unpresidential.

“Some of his words certainly have been ugly,” Davidson agreed.

“He’s like a 3-year-old!” I said. “We’re supposed to outgrow that narcissism when we’re an adult.”

“This is all baked into Donald Trump,” replied Davidson. “He is true to who everyone knows Donald Trump as, and they love him anyway.”

“You love him anyway?” I asked.

“I do,” said Davidson. “His policies have been great, and the results are measurably great.”

Many are. And Trump is likely to be reelected, according to the odds on my site ElectionBettingOdds.com. So it looks like we’ll see much more of him.

I hope we get more of the good and less of the bad and ugly.

23 thoughts on “Trump: Good, Bad, Ugly

  1. Trump talks like the people on the internet American’s. We don’t by the Harvard and Yale speech , had enough of it. You guys are saying America can’t will get everyone mad piss off the world. Trump says we CAN and who cares. It dont do us any good kissing there ***.

  2. To undermine a political opponent and expose the sleaziness of the opponent’s son, Trump sleazily withheld aid to an ally. Then he lied about it.

    No John, he didn’t do that.

    Trump lies about all sorts of things — big and small.

    He said his inauguration had “the biggest audience in… history.” He kept saying it, even after reports showed it wasn’t true.

    This is petty, John. He was BRAGGING. Get it? This is what he does. He’s a salesman.

    Nota bene: I did not vote for him in 2016, but will in 2020.

  3. I agree with K. Bentley above. You haven’t given Trump credit for ALL he has done in three years considering the obstacles. All you mention are his lies and how he’s increased the deficit. You say nothing about his work for veterans, criminal justice reform, bringing back manufacturing, securing our borders, on and on and on. Sometimes you have to spend money, to get the ball rolling. I don’t like his bad-mouthing people. It just makes him look bad. But, for you to concentrate on the inaugural crowd fiasco, or Trump calling people names…is just as STUPID in this editorial.

  4. I’m still not convinced the #1 reason Trump asked for Ukrainian corruption to be “looked into” was because he was trying to undermine an opponent, but I won’t deny that probably was #2. It was a convenient plus, not a primary motive IMHO.

    1. Indeed, the context of his commentary seems to indicate he was concerned about Ukrainian corruption when handing out aid to them since that money would just get embezzled or spent inappropriately. This is a responsible concern, for why would any responsible person give money to someone when someone is just going to line their pockets with it? The fact that the Bidens happened to be the ones doing the embezzling is entirely on the Bidens. Besides at that time Joe had not declared his candidacy so saying Joe was a political opponent at that time is factually inaccurate.

  5. I guess it comes down to this: Who do we want for our President, a bragigng loudmouth who does many good things and some bad and doesn’t sound “Presidential”, or do we want a President in cahoots with the Clintons and Soros and the Open Borders Gang, who will happily keep “giving us free stuff” unil we can’t afford it any longer and we are all (except them) totally dependent on BIGGER Government (and all our _chickens_ have come home to roost!)?? They don’t have an altruistic bone in their collective bodies. Inevitably, hard as we try not to succomb, power corrupts most of us somehow. We haven’t reached Christ’s level of humility/humanity yet, and probably never will, but we must kee!p trying.

  6. Trump has been good for America. And as far as the so called lies ever president I have seen has done the same damn thing and I am 73 years old. I voted for him in 2016 and will again this year.

  7. The bottom line of it all is this! Would you rather have Clinton as President right now & some unknown socialist sleeve ball after 2020, or would you rather have Trump? Yes he’s rough around the edges but he puts the average American first & he has accomplished a lot especially considering the ugly attacks he has constantly been under by the Democrats!

    I have never replied to this post before!

  8. Trump didn’t undermine a political foe. He asked that potential corruption be looked into.
    He didn’t lie about anything. He said he made a perfect phone call which he did.
    There was some deception there but so was there a massive overreach in calling out Trump’s actions to as usual be digging up corruption in our government.

  9. Ya he had done some good things. I’m a small business owner in the construction industry. Business is definitely better than it was through the last administration no doubt about it, but I wish we could see some tax breaks, or some kind of help. It is very tough when the IRS takes most of your money if you want to run a straight outfit. Also my health insurance went from about $300 a month during Obama administration to $1000 a month, and the insurance companies have not paid one bill. They have become tyrants who hire people for the sole purpose to screw their customers. I don’t know what’s going on if this has something to do with the Trump administration but something has got to change my daughter’s been waiting for eye surgery for 3 years now and every time we get about 2 days away from getting the surgery the insurance company calls and says that that doctor is not covered their total crooks. And this is blue Cross blue shield of Arizona

  10. Here is the thing ! All the Hatred from the left, the insane desire to undue the election results, and the fixation on only all things negative, has brought a response from trump that would have come from any right thinking individual ! It Is Called Righteous Indignation ! SO Yeah you get what you asked for Media and Democrats ! BUT if you where to really Honestly look at all that has been done, All That Has Happened, And what his real Desire for the County is ? Well then You Detractors should be burying your heads in Manure, Because He is for the Betterment of the Country and all you are for Is it’s Destruction ( well the End result of everything you do and say is anyway ! ) SO YES Donald J Trump save America from an Awful Lot of Bad ! Namely You Guys ( media and the Democrats / Liberal Minded ! )

  11. Trump is mostly bad and ugly.
    Just like his inauguration which he claimed had “the biggest audience in… history”, his economy is mostly hype. He claims that the economy is the “greatest economy in U.S. history.” The average GDP growth since World War II is 2.9%. The best year under Trump had growth of 2.9% (in 2018), and the growth rate is currently 2.1%. This is only mediocre, don’t be fooled by the hype. The last time we had 2.9% growth was 2015, so it is more accurate to say that Trump’s economy is the greatest since Obama. Tax cuts have never created growth. Economic growth in terms of real GDP per capita was the same in the late 19th century when there was no income tax as is was in the ‘50s when the top tax rate was over 90%, and the same after Reagan’s tax cuts. There is simply no correlation between tax rates and economic growth.
    John Stossel pointed out that “over 6 million Americans were hired”. This is true, during Trump’s first 36 months 6.7 million jobs were created. But John forgot to mention that during Obama’s last 36 months, 8.1 million jobs were created. I’m pretty sure 6.7 is a smaller number than 8.1. Trump’s job creation is worse than Obama’s, not better.
    The unemployment plot John showed in his video shows that the unemployment rate has been going down since 2010 at a fairly consistent rate. There was no change in the curve when Trump became president. The unemployment rate continued going down just as it had been. Similar trends happened in other countries like Great Britain and Germany, where Trump is not president. There is no evidence that Trump has anything to do with the continued decline in the unemployment rate. But he will take credit for it because he is a con man.
    As far as the “Labor Force Participation Rate” goes, John’s own chart shows that the labor participation rate started going back up months before Trump got elected. Again, there is no indication that Trump made any difference.
    The S&P 500 has gone up 48.67% since Trump was inaugurated. That’s pretty good. I wondered how much better that was compared to the rest of the world, where Trump is not president. For comparison I looked at the Vanguard International Growth Investor fund which contains only foreign stocks. It is up 50.87%. How come the rest of the world’s stocks, that did not benefit from Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation, are doing even better than U.S. stocks? Could it be that this is a global phenomenon that has nothing to do with Trump? That’s what it looks like.
    As I already explained, there is no evidence that Trumps’ deregulations have improved the economy. But his environment deregulations will allow more pollution. Two Harvard scientists wrote a report titled, ”A Breath of Bad Air: Cost of the Trump Environmental Agenda May Lead to 80 000 Extra Deaths per Decade” which obviously predicts 80,000 premature deaths over the next 10 years due to Trump’s environmental deregulation. Why would anyone want that? Pollution kills people. Air pollution can cause lung cancer even in people who don’t smoke. Some people will need to have parts of their lungs removed because of that. I would think that people who have had part of their lungs removed might be opposed to air pollution but I guess I’m wrong about that.
    This economic ballyhoo has happened before, when Reagan was president. The “Booming 80’s” (1980-1989) had an average GDP growth rate of 3.12%. The “stagflation 70’s” (1970-1979) had an average GDP growth rate of 3.21%. That’s right, the 80’s growth rate was actually less than the 70’S. Notice also that Trump’s peak growth year is less than the average of the “stagflation 70’s”. 16.1 million jobs were created during Reagan’s 8 years in office. During the prior 8 years, known as the “stagflation 70’s”, 15.4 million jobs were created and 16.0 million jobs were created during the 8 years before that. So there was nothing unusual about the job growth under Reagan (he also had the benefit of growing population). There were 23.6 million jobs created during the Clinton administration after Newt Gingrich predicted that his tax increase would wreck the economy.
    There is a reason that Republicans want to con people into thinking that tax cuts create growth. It is because tax cuts are a huge giveaway to the rich donors that fund the GOP. Since 1981 tax cuts and deregulations have transferred at least $12 trillion dollars from the bottom 90% to the top 0.1%. Wages for the bottom 90% have stagnated while top incomes have skyrocketed. Why would anyone who is not in the top 0.1% want that to happen?
    Tax cuts are part of a strategy called “Starve the Beast”. First, taxes are cut with the promise of high growth that will result in the tax cuts “paying for themselves”. That high growth will not actually occur, and the deficit will go up due to the reduced revenue. The deficit will then be blamed on Medicare and Social Security (even though Social Security is paid for entirely with a payroll tax and has never added to the deficit). Ultimately Social Security and Medicare will be cut to pay for the tax cuts for the rich. This is happening right now. Trump cut taxes and increased military spending, increasing the deficit from $600 billion to $1 trillion. Now he wants to cut food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security to balance the budget that he unbalanced. This is how money is transferred from the poor to the rich.
    It should be no surprise that the deficit has gone up under Trump. The same thing happened under Reagan and Bush junior. All three promised to pay down the debt, and instead cut taxes, increased military spending, and greatly increased the debt. This con has been going on for a long time.

  12. The deficit has gone up under every President so that’s no surprise and every President has promised to balance the budget and decrease the deficit again, lol.. it’s yet to happen. but, there is no denying how great the economy and job markets are right now. I’m happy to know that other countries are being held accountable for the American People’s services as well as being held accountable for their own responsibilities to their nations as well to The USofA and other nations around the world. With tariffs on all the goods coming in from across seas I’d hope that we’d start seeing the deficit go down but.. realistically, every American knew it was not going to happen. Americans biggest concern was getting all the corruption out of DC and pushing us away from the brink of Socialism. Is POTUS Trump perfect, No.. but nor am I or anyone else commenting on this piece. I like the Good and I like the transparency tremendously but I don’t like the mockery and name calling but again… They’re all doing it and have been since the day this man announced his candidacy so, enough is enough I say. Get back to conducting the Peoples business and drop all of this childish foolishness ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ISLE!

    1. Lisa Myers,
      I don’t know where you get the idea that “The deficit has gone up under every President”. It went down under Clinton and Obama. Debt as a percent of GDP went down under every president between World War II and 1981, before exploding upwards under Reagan thanks to his tax cuts and military spending. You say that a balanced budget “has yet to happen”, but Clinton did balance the budget. Bush junior inherited a budget surplus from Clinton and immediately turned it into a huge deficit with his tax cuts and military spending. When Bush junior became president we were at peace and economists were predicting that the national debt would be paid off in a few years. There was nothing but blue skies ahead! By the end of Bush’s 8 years we were involved in two wars, the national debt had doubled, and we were in the worst recession in 70 years. I do not understand how that didn’t destroy the Republican Party. People want more of that?
      Most of the annual deficit we still have is due to Bush’s tax cuts, wars, and recession. The costs due to those things are ongoing.
      I will point out again that those tax cuts, wars, and recession had a purpose. The purpose was to funnel more money upwards to the rich GOP donors. The rich ended up richer and the poor became poorer.

      1. Jeff, by every measure Obama added to both the deficit and debt. The only debate is how much he added. And honestly I get tired of hearing about Bush’s wars. You do know that Obama was President for 8 years and didn’t stop fighting those same wars. He could have ended them anytime he wanted but he kept fighting. While Trump is both good and bad, put down the Obama punch man. History isn’t on your side there.

    2. President YEAR GDP Deficit % GDP
      Reagan 1981 3207 78.97 2.46%
      Reagan 1982 3343.8 127.98 3.83%
      Reagan 1983 3634 207.8 5.72%
      Reagan 1984 4037.6 185.37 4.59%
      Reagan 1985 4339 212.31 4.89%
      Reagan 1986 4579.6 221.23 4.83%
      Reagan 1987 4855.2 149.73 3.08%
      Reagan 1988 5236.4 155.18 2.96%
      HW Bush 1989 5641.6 152.64 2.71%
      HW Bush 1990 5963.1 221.03 3.71%
      HW Bush 1991 6158.1 269.24 4.37%
      HW Bush 1992 6520.3 290.32 4.45%
      Clinton 1993 6858.6 255.06 3.72%
      Clinton 1994 7287.2 203.18 2.79%
      Clinton 1995 7639.7 163.95 2.15%
      Clinton 1996 8073.1 107.43 1.33%
      Clinton 1997 8577.6 21.89 0.26%
      Clinton 1998 9062.8 -69.27 -0.76%
      Clinton 1999 9630.7 -125.61 -1.30%
      Clinton 2000 10252.3 -236.24 -2.30%
      Bush 2001 10581.8 -128.23 -1.21%
      Bush 2002 10936.4 157.75 1.44%
      Bush 2003 11458.2 377.59 3.30%
      Bush 2004 12213.7 412.73 3.38%
      Bush 2005 13036.6 318.35 2.44%
      Bush 2006 13814.6 248.18 1.80%
      Bush 2007 14451.9 160.71 1.11%
      Bush 2008 14712.8 458.55 3.12%
      Obama 2009 14448.9 1412.69 9.78%
      Obama 2010 14992.1 1294.37 8.63%
      Obama 2011 15542.6 1299.59 8.36%
      Obama 2012 16197 1076.57 6.65%
      Obama 2013 16784.9 679.77 4.05%
      Obama 2014 17521.7 484.79 2.77%
      Obama 2015 18219.3 441.96 2.43%
      Obama 2016 18707.2 584.66 3.13%
      Trump 2017 19485.4 665.45 3.42%
      Trump 2018 20494.1 779.13 3.80%
      Trump 2019 21215.7 984.16 4.64%

      1. It looks like you are using calendar year deficits. The “Debt by President” section of thebalance.com says this about that:
        “Warning: The president doesn’t have much control over the debt added during his first year in office. Its budget was already set by the previous president.
        For example, President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. He submitted his first budget in May. It covered Fiscal Year 2018, which didn’t begin until October 1. For the first nine months of his new term, Trump operated under President Barack Obama’s last budget. That was for FY 2017, which continued until September 30, 2017.
        This timing difference explains why no new president is accountable for the budget deficit in his first year in office.
        While the time lag makes it seem confusing, Congress intentionally set it up this way. The federal fiscal year gives the new president time to put together his budget during his first month in office.”

        For instance you give Bush credit for a 1.21% surplus in 2001. That was during Clinton’s final budget year. Bush never had a balanced budget.
        Likewise, most of the 9.78% deficit in 2009 was during Bush’s final budget year, before Obama’s first budget went into effect.

  13. John I have trusted you in the past.

    This is like saying that tanks rolling over a village actually create a fertile environment and neat lines for new soybean growth.

    Don’t pretend that anything incidentally or accidentally positive from any of this can be placed in equal balance to the destruction he is wreaking on our democracy.

    It’s irresponsible journalism, and you are now off the trusted list.

  14. The only reason Clinton ran a surplus is cutting the defense budget and closing a bunch of military bases. The economy took off due to the new Internet and the downturn of the rest of the world’s economies. Remember? No one ever does.

    1. If you separate out the pre-existing debt (and interest on that debt) that Clinton inherited, he had a budget surplus every year of his presidency. Reagan and the Bushes did not have a single year like that. Aren’t they supposed to be the “conservative” and “fiscally responsible” ones who care about the national debt?
      I do agree with you that the internet boosted the economy and had nothing to do with Clinton’s policies. I would not say there is any evidence that tax increases are good for economic growth, but there is also no evidence that Clinton’s tax increase did any damage to growth like Newt Gingrich said it would.

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