April 18, 2017

Under Trump, Trade Deficits Are Up, Interest Rates Have Doubled, and Car Sales are Plummeting

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One of the remarkable things about Donald Trump’s presidency is that every time he does something, you can find a tweet from a few years ago saying how terrible that thing is. Not just for a few things, either. It happens over and over and over. Aaron Blake finally brings this observation to the mainstream press:

Over the last two weeks, President Trump has attacked Syria without congressional approval, ratcheted up the use of force in Afghanistan with a huge bomb, and moved to reverse the Obama administration’s policy of releasing White House visitor logs.

Each of these actions runs completely counter to the views and values once espoused by Trump on Twitter. And they join an amazingly long — and growing — list of old Trump tweets that have become eerily applicable to Trump’s own presidency in ways that scream “hypocrisy.”

Blake follows this with a list of Trump’s tweets, which reads like a time travel story about a younger version of Trump sending desperate tweets to his older self to try to warn him away from acts of folly. Sort of like that Sandra Bullock movie except with Twitter.

If anyone ever gets the chance to ask our suddenly press-shy president about this, I don’t know what he’ll say. What he believes, I suspect, is that we’re all losers and morons. He said all that old stuff because he was attacking Obama. Duh. It’s ridiculous to think it represents what Trump actually believes. When you’re in a fight, you say what it takes to win. Truth is irrelevant. It’s all performance art.

This is sort of like uber-conspiracy theorist lunatic Alex Jones, who is currently fighting a child custody battle by claiming that his radio show is just performance art, and no one could possibly take it seriously. This probably explains why Trump is such a big fan.

As for the rest of us, I guess we’d better get on the bandwagon. We need to start saying stuff about Trump without bothering to check if it’s remotely true. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • American war casualties have gone up 100 percent under Trump. (This is actually true if you pick the right dates. Not that it matters.)
  • The February trade deficit with Mexico under Trump doubled compared to Obama’s first February. The trade deficit with China was two-thirds higher. (True!)
  • Automobile sales have plummeted at an annual rate of 40 percent under Trump. (Also true!)
  • Interest rates have more than doubled since Trump was elected. (This is true too!)
  • Trump has the lowest recorded IQ of any American president ever. (That’s what people have told me, anyway.)

You get the idea. Stop worrying about whether stuff is fair or accurate or any of that stuff. It’s all performance art!

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