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BAD PRESIDENT

Trump Promotes Far Right Student Organization Accused of Racial Bias and Supporting Extremism

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As he inches closer and closer to being impeached President Donald Trump is working hard to secure his base. One of the most powerful organizations at the president’s disposal is Turning Point USA, which is closely tied to the Trump campaign through Trump family members. TPUSA has been described as a “far-right group” which was originally funded by billionaire donor to Republican and Evangelical Christian causes, Foster Friess.

(Friess may be best-known to most Americans as the man who suggested the best birth control for women is “Bayer aspirin between their knees.”)

TPUSA was founded and is headed by Charlie Kirk, who a USA Today opinion writer says “seems to have a fraught relationship with facts when they get in the way of his worshipful approach to President Donald Trump.” The group claims to have “a presence on over 1,500 campuses,” and calls itself “the largest and fastest-growing youth organization in America.”

That’s Kirk in the photo above, interviewing President Trump.

Its website currently lists its “advisory council” as “coming soon,” but archived versions show far right wing extremists like former Tea Party Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and powerful lobbyist and Tea Party activist Ginni Thomas (spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) have served the organization.

Kirk calls Donald Trump, Jr. “a personal friend,” and the president’s eldest son has often toured with Kirk, speaking at TPUSA rallies. Lara Trump, who is married to the president’s other adult son Eric, is also tied to the group, according to New York Magazine’s Jane Mayer. In December of 2017 Mayer wrote an exposé titled, “A Conservative Nonprofit That Seeks to Transform College Campuses Faces Allegations of Racial Bias and Illegal Campaign Activity.”

Of course, TPUSA may forever be known best for its disastrous attempt to launch into the UK. During a seminar aimed at recruiting new members in London, its then-communications director Candace Owens launched a disturbing attempt to promote the failed concept of nationalism. She was subsequently accused of defending Hitler, after delivering these revolting comments:

“Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler,” Owens said, as Buzzfeed reported. “But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism.”

In a profile of TPUSA the ADL writes: “TPUSA’s leadership and activists have made multiple racist or bigoted comments and have been linked to a variety of extremists.”

There’s more, of course (see links at the end of the article.)

Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, President Trump Wednesday AM offered up these tweets promoting Turning Point USA and its founder, Charlie Kirk:

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Trump Chillingly Tells Students’ Group the Constitution Gives Him ‘The Right to Do Whatever I Want as President’

 

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BAD PRESIDENT

What Is a Trade Deficit? Trump’s Main Excuse for Tariffs Isn’t an Actual Problem

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Much of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about his on-again/off-again tariff plan is based around the idea that the U.S. is in a trade deficit with many countries around the world. But a deficit isn’t always a bad thing.

On Monday, the White House released a new statement that the U.S. and China had come to an agreement to lower tariffs. Earlier this year, Trump had proposed a 145% tariff against China, and the country retaliated with a proposed 125% tariff on U.S. goods. The new plan sees the tariffs drastically lowered to 30% on imported Chinese goods and 10% on American goods imported into China. The new deal is temporary, lasting 90 days.

“For too long, unfair trade practices and America’s massive trade deficit with China have fueled the offshoring of American jobs and the decline of our manufacturing sector,” the White House said in a statement.

READ MORE: Walz Mocks Trump Not Knowing ‘How a Tariff Works’ as Companies Ready ‘Massive’ Price Hikes

Earlier this year, Trump characterized the United States’ trade deficit with Canada as subsidizing our neighbors to the north. But a trade deficit is just a gap between the amount of goods and services exported and imported to and from a country. For example, the U.S. imports $412.7 billion of goods from Canada while exporting $349.4 billion. While that might look like a $63.3 trade deficit, that doesn’t take into account money coming in the services sector, so our trade deficit with Canada is actually $35.7 billion.

The U.S. has a trade surplus with some countries, too. Brazil buys a lot of energy resources from the U.S., according to the New York Times, but doesn’t sell nearly as many other goods and services back to the states.

The concept of trade deficits and surpluses is wholly neutral—and in fact, a trade deficit can be a good thing.

“America is getting more cheap goods, and in return it is giving foreigners financial assets: dollars issued by the Federal Reserve, bonds from the US government and American corporations, and stocks in newly created firms,” Tarek Alexander Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University, wrote. “That is, a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the US than Americans invest abroad.”

But, of course, sometimes trade deficits can be problematic for a country. If a country has a very large trade deficit for a long time, that can make it more susceptible to the winds of change, according to Jason Furman, who served on the White House Council of Economic Advisors during President Barack Obama’s second term. But, as Furman told NPR, that doesn’t apply to the United States.

Furman also pointed out that while tariffs can be a useful thing, Trump’s tariffs in particular are not.

“Let’s say you wanted to use trade policy to bring manufacturing jobs back. You wouldn’t do what the president just did, which is to put tariffs on all the bananas, mangoes, avocados and coffee coming into the United States. Those just aren’t things that we’re really ever going to make at enormous scale,” he said. “Moreover, the types of things that they do in Vietnam – you know, making clothing, making shoes – that’s not the jobs that we should be aspiring to have in the United States. We don’t want to give up jobs making airplanes in order to have more jobs making shoes.”

Featured image via Reuters

 

 

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BAD PRESIDENT

Trump Claims US ‘Doesn’t Need Anything From Canada’, Yet Still Wants It as a State

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President Donald Trump said that the U.S. “doesn’t need anything from Canada” during a press conference on Friday—and yet, he still wants the sovereign country to become the 51st state.

Canada was mentioned during the question and answer period of his Friday morning Oval Office press conference. Answering one question, Trump claimed that the U.S. did not import anything from Canada.

“Remember with Canada, we don’t need their cars, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada. And yet it costs us $200 billion a year in subsidies to keep Canada afloat,” Trump said. “So when I say they should be a state, I mean that. I really mean that, because we can’t be expected to carry a country that is right next to us on our border. It would be a great state. It would be a cherished state.”

This is inaccurate. Last year, the U.S. imported $412.7 billion of goods from Canada, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. While Canada is the largest purchaser of U.S. goods, U.S. exports were over $63 billion less than the worth of imports from the country: $349.4 billion.  Canada provides the third-largest amount of exports to the U.S., only after China and Mexico.

When it comes to the particular goods, Trump is also wrong. Fuel is the item that Canada exports the most of to the U.S., and lumber is the country’s 7th largest export to America, according to PIIE.

READ MORE: Shark Tank Star Proposes EU-Like Relationship Between U.S. and Canada, Despite Trump Backing Brexit

Likewise, Trump’s claim of subsidies is false. He’s reportedly referring to the trade deficit, which, according to CBS News, is only $35.7 billion. And a lot of that is due to the U.S.’ purchase of unrefined oil, with a Canadian economist telling CBS that minus energy, the deficit shrinks dramatically.

Trump also claimed that Canada doesn’t spend money on its military, instead depending on the U.S. for protection. In fact, though America spends more on its military than any other country, Canada is the 16th-highest spender on military expenses, spending $27.2 billion, or 1.3% of its GDP. Comparatively, the U.S. spends $916 billion, or 3.4% of the GDP.

During the press conference, Fox reporter Peter Doocy asked Trump if he was concerned that should Canada become a state, that it would be “very, very big and very very blue.” Trump dismissed these claims, calling the border “an artificial line that was drawn in the sand—or in the ice.”

“You add that to this country, what a beautiful landmass, the most beautiful landmass anywhere in the world, and it was just cut off for whatever reason,” he continued.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1903116806589649228

The border—the 49th Parallel—was set in 1846 as part of the Oregon Treaty between the U.S. and Britain. The U.S. initially wanted to set the border at 54°40′, the southernmost border of Alaska. Prior to the Oregon Treaty, some Democratic expansionists at the time wanted to declare war on the British Empire if it did not give what is now British Columbia to the United States. One of the primary reasons the expansionists wanted the land is to counteract the recent acquisition of Texas, which would become a Southern, slave-owning state.

Image via Reuters

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BAD PRESIDENT

Donald Trump Says He’ll ‘Vigorously Pursue the Death Penalty’ Following Biden’s Commutations

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The day after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 inmates on death row, incoming President Donald Trump doubled down on his commitment to the death penalty.

Trump took to his Truth Social account to condemn Biden and promote the death penalty on Tuesday morning.

“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country. When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!” Trump wrote.

READ MORE: Biden Ignores Military Death Row In Commutation Spree

Not quite three hours later, he had more to say:

“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!” Trump added, alongside a screenshot of a tweet by the New York Post promoting their article about the commutations, with the headline “Biden commutes death sentences of child killers and mass murderers 2 days before Christmas.”

Though Biden initially promised to pass a law banning federal executions, once elected, he backtracked on that promise, according to NBC News. His administration did, however, halt all federal executions during his term. Monday, he gave all but three inmates on death row life sentences without parole instead. The three exceptions were Dylann Roof, the man who killed nine at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. In his statement announcing the move to commute the sentences, he said the only exception were those convicted of “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Biden’s move comes after Trump campaigned on increasing the number of crimes punishable by the death penalty. The ACLU warned that Trump would “kill everyone on death row,” if given the chance. During his first term, Trump executed 13 federal inmates, with the last execution happening five days before Biden’s inauguration, according to the Associated Press.

Though Grover Cleveland is best known as the first president to serve two non-consecutive terms as president, he has another thing in common with Trump. Trump’s 13 federal executions is the highest number in the modern era, while Cleveland is the president who executed the most federal prisoners. In Cleveland’s first term, 23 prisoners were executed, and another 24 were killed in his second, for a total of 47.  Only Ulysses S. Grant and James Monroe have more executions than Trump, at 23 and 20 respectively.

Image via Reuters

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