Yesterday, without even looking for it, I stumbled across this headline from an interview in the spring of 2016:
That’s quite a promise! Well, in case you haven’t heard yet, Trump got elected by the Electoral College later that same year, and he’s in his third year of his Presidency right now. Let’s check on his progress so far:
Hmmm. Doesn’t look like much “elimination” to me, unless you’re referring to the kind of stuff that comes out of a person’s ass. We’re on our way to $23 trillion. But maybe this isn’t fair. Let’s take a look at how the debt is doing against the GDP since, who knows, maybe the economy is outpacing debt growth.
Urk. No help there either. In the chart above, we’ve gone from a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 30% (back in 1980 when people were actually still loudly complaining about the size of the debt!) to well over 100%. Our debt has overtaken our entire economy. Pretty sad.
So what was that promise all about? Here are some specifics from the aforementioned interview:
Well, at least we got a heads-up on the trade war. So none of us have the right to be surprised.
At this point, if confronted with this pre-election promise, Trump could respond in the following manner: “Yeah, I said that. But the American public is too naive or clueless to challenge it, so I lied. I’m President now, so blow me.” And, unlikely as such a retort is, at that point I’d actually develop a little respect for the guy. At least he’s being straight about it, in the this-would-never-happen quote I just made up.
But he would never say such a thing. Instead, he would resort to three specific, time-proven techniques in such a situation. They are as follows: (1) blame (2) someone (3) else. So he could blame the Congress. Or the Chinese. Or the Deep State. Or anything else he dreams up. There are almost 8 billion people on the planet besides himself he could blame, so why not pick one of them?
I was curious to see what the comments of the April 2016 article were, since there were well in excess of 1,000 of them. I sorted by list of comments by Highest Rated, and was presented with the following at the top of the list;
Errr………so I guess the really best comments and responses didn’t survive the editor’s Delete button. That’s too bad.
Let’s face it: anyone blinkered enough to have actually believed his pledge deserved what they got. Particularly since this declaration came out only about a month afterward:
The debt is going to keep growing at a mind-numbing rate until The Great Reset, whatever form that might take. In the meanwhile, you are welcome to join a smattering of Americans who each year, for reasons I cannot fathom, who actually write a personal check and send it in to the government to help pay down the debt:
These efforts are much like urinating on the flaming wreckage of the WTC on 9/11. Your heart is in the right place, you mean well, and you’ll actually do a tiny bit of good…………but it’s not going to make one bit of real difference.
Anyway, he’s still got five years left. Be sure to check back in then.