In a highly-charged partisan atmosphere, Trump started off the State of the Union by ignoring Nancy Pelosi's handshake and then launched into a game-show style speech that was laced with gimmicks and giveaways and loaded with liberal doses of outright bullshit.
Trump spent the greater portion of the first quarter of the speech bragging about the economy and the jobs generated for various sectors of the population. What he (conveniently) forgot to mention is that (according to the Brookings institute) about half of the jobs are low-wage positions.
Trump lied about job gains, saying "Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs, 5 million more than during the previous administration." Here are U.S. job gains for the last 9 years. You do the math.
2011 total: 2.075 million
2012 total: 2.174 million
2013 total: 2.302 million
2014 total: 3.006 million
2015 total: 2.729 million
2016 total: 2.318 million
2017 total: 2.153 million
2018 total: 2.303 million
2019 total: 2.108 million
Trump said the unemployment rate for vets has reached an all-time low-- but he doesn’t mention that the suicide rate for veterans has reached a record high.
Trump also lied when he characterized Obama's economic policies as a failure. Obama's policies kicked off the longest peace-time economic recovery since WWII, and in reality, 2019 GDP growth under Trump was lower than the 2.2% average during the 10-year recover that start under Obama.
Incredibly, the Republicans in the audience applauded when Trump boasted about taking food stamps away from 7 million low-income people.
Trump claimed that consumer confidence "has just reached amazing new highs." Another lie-- the U.S. consumer confidence index (oecd.org) has been on a declining trend since early 2018, and was actually higher for most of the period between 1995 and 2006 (when the Bush recession hit).
Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere the world, by far." Not so fast, orangeman! The U.S. did not become the world's top energy producer under Trump-- we took the top spot in 2012, when Obama was president.
"America is now energy independent"-- another lie. The U.S. still imports about 12% of the oil it consumes.
"We have purchased the finest planes, missiles, rockets, ships, and every other form of military equipment, and it's all made right here in the USA"-- No, not all military equipment is made in the U.S.
"I've also made an ironclad pledge to American families. We will always protect patients with pre-existing conditions."-- another lie. The Trump administration has worked to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ADA) since he took office, and his Justice Department is fighting in court to invalidate the ADA and its protections for pre-existing conditions.
"I'm calling for bipartisan legislation that achieves the goal of dramatically lowering prescription drug prices. Get a bill on my desk, and I will sign it into law immediately." -- news flash, orangeman! Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives already passed that bill-- it's gathering dust on Moscow Mitch's desk (reportedly, because he desperately needs Big Pharma campaign money to get re-elected this fall).
And yes-- this was a game-show SOTU. Shamelessly using black people as props, giving Rush Limbaugh (an infamous racist, I might add) the Medal of Freedom live during speech, awarding a black girl a scholarship during the speech, surprising a mother and her kids by bringing a soldier home from Afghanistan during the speech. I was half expecting him to cut to a live shot of Ben Carson throwing lottery tickets off the roof of a public housing project.
Near the end, Trump veered (unsurprisingly) to his horrifically racist crap-- reveling yet again in gore and violence-- while demonizing illegal immigration and sanctuary cities. in reality, sanctuary policies don’t give undocumented immigrants special protections-- they ensure that immigrants have basic constitutional rights that can’t be trampled on, while allowing law enforcement to focus resources on protecting local communities instead of on jailing families and separating children.
It bears repeating for the umpteenth time-- immigrants (with or without papers) commit less crime than people born in the United States. What an absolute disgrace for Trump to peddle this hateful, divisive bullshit. And by the way-- not a word about all the people killed or hurt by the massive rise in white supremacist violence.
Near the end, Trump gives a shout-out to Moscow Mitch while bragging about restoring the rule of law-- without a hint of irony, being that we're in the middle of a Senate Impeachment trial.
And finally . . ."We are working to finally end America's longest war and bring our troops back home."-- another whopper. Trump has actually increased the number of troops in the mid-east region.
As a whole, the whole evening was a complete shit-show (at one point, Trump pivoted from God to guns to Mars in the space of three sentences-- I'm not kidding!). I don't blame Nancy Pelosi one bit for tearing up her copy of the speech at the end. It was completely divisive, dishonest, misleading, overly theatrical and downright shameful.
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