Watching the Vice President Harris-trump debate on September 9th was an invigorating experience for anyone who might have been worried that Harris would not be able to stand up to the bully’s bullying. But stand up she did. I think Elizabeth Warren summed it up about as well as possible in describing Harris’ performance: “She did everything short of strapping a leash on him and walking that old dog off the stage.”
By now if you’re all engaged in this process, you have read the many fact checking pieces put out by various reliable media. We all expected trump to lie and he didn’t disappoint. Harris, for her part, made a couple of exaggerated claims, but the analysts were hard-pressed to find anything that amounted to a lie.
Three of trump’s claims stood out to me during the debate. One was just typical dictator love. One was a mind blowing expression of his lack of knowledge about basic economics. The last one was the dangerous one, and one that I have not seen discussed by any of the national pundits.
Dictator Love
We’re all aware of trump’s love and respect for Vladimir Putin and Kim Jung Un. During the debate, trump refused to say that he wants Ukraine to win its war with Russia. trump has long admired Putin and for his part, Putin is quite content to have the stooge on his side. As for Kim, trump himself described the correspondence between these two autocrats as “love letters.”
But when trump invoked the name Viktor Orban and called him “one of the most respected men”, it was a leap too far.
I don’t expect most Americans to know anything about Viktor Orban. Americans seem to have a very limited in interest in anything happening outside our borders, so it’s possible this dictator has slipped most folks’ notice. But Orban is a menace, and if he’s “one of the most respected men”, the pool of people being asked must be two people…trump and Orban himself…well, maybe Orban’s wife…but I doubt it.
Orban is Europe’s second most atrocious dictator after Putin. He has a miserably inhumane record on immigration (in violation of EU rules), a miserably inhumane record on LGBTQ rights (in violation of EU rules), and a miserably inhumane record on speech, press, and assembly rights (in violation of EU rules.) It’s no surprise then that the American right has embraced him as a great leader. Steve Bannon called Orban “trump before trump.”
Tariffs are What?
More seriously for the future of our country, trump showed a remarkable lack of knowledge of one of economics’ most basic concepts. In recent weeks trump has been talking nonstop about how he’s going to save the country through tariffs. He’s going to make China and others pay billions for goods sold here. Let’s set aside for a minute the pretty universal disdain for tariffs by economists.
We have known for nearly 100 years that tariffs lead to recession/depression. When you ask the typical American what caused the Great Depression, they’ll automatically say “The stock market crash”. I don’t know why people have been taught that, because it’s not true, but say it we must. I’d be far more impressed if someone said Smoot-Hawley. In 1930, under Hoover’s leadership, the United States imposed tariffs as high as 40% on imports in an ill-fated attempt to protect American businesses. (Over 1000 economists signed a petition begging Congress to kill the tariff before it got off the ground.)
The tariff killed economic activity, and soon Americans were breathing dust and sipping soup.
But trump thinks foreign countries pay tariffs. This guy was president? American businesses pay the tariffs. The idea is that those businesses will be incentivized to buy American products rather than pay the tariffs that will increase consumer prices and cut sales. All tariffs do is slow down the economy…sometimes tragically so.
If you’re going to preach a policy that advocates tariffs, you should at least know what they are..
Here’s Where I Bury the Lede
Of all the lies, nonsense, and hyperbole that was trump on that Tuesday night in Philadelphia, the most dangerous tirade came with this take on the assassination attempt. He had interrupted the moderator who was trying to ask Vice President Harris a question on fracking. A discussion on weaponizing the Justice Department had just been on the floor.
“This is the one that weaponized. Not me. She weaponized. I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy – With the fake Russia Russia Russia investigation that went nowhere.”
I seriously doubt that trump is sophisticated enough to understand what he just said, and I guess I hope his cultists aren’t either. Ignoring the obvious falsehood that he “took a bullet to the head”, trump is claiming that because Harris allegedly weaponized the Justice Department (she didn’t) that someone believed that trump was a threat to democracy and shot at him.
This is of course plausible that someone in a clearly demented fashion, who truly believed someone was a threat to democracy, would sacrifice their own life to save the country. Of course this is not what happened in western Pennsylvania back on July 13. It has already been firmly established that the shooter had stalked both trump and President Biden in the weeks leading to the shooting. This had nothing to do with trump’s anti-democratic ideals.
Ok, so trump was wrong. This certainly would not earn a headline anywhere.
Let’s look deeper, though. By his statement, trump believes that characterizing someone as “anti-democracy” could get them shot. So what does he do? He immediately labels Harris and Biden as threats to democracy. We know what his dog whistles did leading up to January 6, 2021. Will some trumpistanian with an automatic weapon hear it this time?
The Grumblings 
agkree. Thanks