Today, Donald Trump gives a major economic speech in Detroit
and he mainly stuck to his script which was a major accomplishment for him.
And he claimed that this was for the middle class,
in fact, he said
Really?! Well we'll be the judge of that.
First, let me show you a quick portion of his speech.
(TRUMP) You cannot ever start a small business under the
tremendous regulatory burden that you have today,
in our country
Gonna end it.
I am going to cut regulations massively.
Massively.
(CENK) Massively - I got it, I got it, I got it.
OK - so you get a sense of it, right?
Wait a minute. How is cutting regulations that
oftentimes protects middle class workers
and certainly protects consumers
going to help them?
See, of course it's not gonna do that.
He's gonna cut taxes on the rich
and regulations to help the ri-
OF COURSE! Of course that's his economic plan!
I'll tell you why at the end, but first
just let me run through all of his policy proposals.
Uh, he says, this is a good one so I'm starting
out with the best, that he would have
Well that would be lovely. That would actually
help the middle class
because it's not easy to work if you've got kids
and it's not easy to have them taken care of
if it's not tax deductible.
A lot of parents deal with that.
Okay, look, lovely. Credit where credit is due.
And then he would withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
That's at least what he claims
That would be positive, but I'm not sure I believe him
He says he would renogotiate NAFTA
Again, I'm putting this in the positive category
Although you should look at that with a healthy skepticism
Okay, now, let's move onto negative territory
which is abundent
He would restart the Keystone XL Pipeline
Of course he would
More dirty fuel in the air - he loves it
And then he would withdraw the US from
Paris climate agreement
Fantastic - we're gonna go way backwards on the issue
of climate change
On that alone, you should never consider voting for him
To put us back at least 4 years on these climate change proposals
Not just the USA, but if we withdraw then other countries
like China and India might withdraw
Sets the whole world back 4 years
on fighting climate change
He says he would end environmental regulations
by Barack Obama
So, watch out man
If you care about, not just climate change,
but clean air, clean water, non-poisoned water
Well, sad day for you
We're gonna end all the environmental regulations
under Obama because
Hey, his business buddies gotta make more money
Wait, remind me again how this helps the middle class
How does your kids getting poisoned in Flint, Michigan
help those kids?
No, it doesn't help them; it helps the rich and the powerful
That's what this is about
Alright, so he also wants to do a temporary moratorium
on all regulations
That's so preposterous
But Donald,
you can say, "Hey, something is regulated too much
or something is regulated too little."
For example, if you don't regulate our food
or our drugs at all
you might be regulating them too little
because it might poison us.
If you say, "Hey, you know what
you've inspected the elevators in my building 6 times
Could we do it 4 times instead?"
You might say, ok that's over-regulation
But, just to say we'll have no regulations going forward
a moratorium on any regulation
is insanity.
Because it depends on what's being regulated!
Now, one of the main things he's gonna remove
is regulations on Wall Street.
What happened?
I thought your whole thing was Hillary Clinton's
too much in the pocket of Wall Street
Here, you're saying, "I'm gonna be even MORE
in the pocket of Wall Street."
He says that regulations on things like Wall Street
have "put a lead weight on the economy,
an anchor dragging us down."
So, I'll give you a quick chart her of
what happened after Dodd-Frank
and I've told you this before
Dodd-Frank was not end-all be-all
I think it was very, very light regulation
and partly on purpose
But he claims Dodd-Frank killed the economy
That's weird. The economy seems to have gone up
after Dodd-Frank, and fairly consistently
It's almost as if Donald Trump isn't telling the truth
Hmm
Okay
Now
In the past, he had proposed tax rates
that were so low
that it would create about a 10 trillion dollar hole in our budget
It was so outrageous that even other Republicans were
like, "Ehhh, Donald, that's a bit much"
So his earlier proposal was
4 tax brackets: 0%, 10%, 20%, and the highest rate would be 25%
So
Now, none of the math adds up on that
And even the most outrageous republicans
who have all this voodoo math about how it's gonna
grow the economy etc.
They couldn't get it to add up either
So they're like, "All right Donald, let's roll that
back in a little bit."
So today, his new policy proposal is
12%, 25% and 33%
That would still be a GIGANTIC tax cut
and mostly
of course
for the rich.
They would get billions and billions of dollars
which, by the way, would also help
Donald Trump
Of coouurrsee!
And then he is going to also lower the corporate tax rate
to 15%
Who would that help?
To some degree
Donald Trump
And finally,
he would eliminate what they call the "death tax"
which is actually of course, the estate tax
And, who would that help?
Donald Trump's family
Well, presumably
If he has any money left over
after several more bankruptcies that he'll likely go through
So
It turns out, this whole thing about
"Ahh, I'm gonna help the middle class and the
people who have the least."
is, of course, as usual
a giant crock
In reality, almost all of his proposals
are to help the richest, most powerful people in the country,
multi-national corporations
Wait a minute, I thought you were gonna keep the
multi-national corporations in check?!
So now, this is not a very populist speech
so why did he do it now?
Now, in the past, what's worked for him is more populist stuff
"I'm gonna go and get the bankers"
I mean, it's a joke - he was never going to do that
but he said it to get votes
He said, "Oh, Hillary Clinton's in the pocket of Wall Street and
the bankers
So why go in this direction?
Because he's not getting and money, Lebowski
He's doing the same thing every other politician does now
especially the Republicans
because this speech was not designed to get your votes
This speech was designed to get him money from the donors
And some of those donors have already bailed
They've already put out another Republican candidate
This is him basically trying to stop the bleeding
Going, "No, no, no, no, no, donors, donors don't worry!
You know what, I'll be better than any other Republican kiss-ass
I'll get rid of ALL regulations
I'll take corporate tax rates all the way down to 15%
What else do you need, Daddy? What else do you need?"
So this is Trump sucking up to the Republican donors
That's what the speech was about
Now, let's see if the money pours in and accomplishes his mission
But I'll tell you what
This is not the way you run a populist campaign
So, he's never gonna out-raise Hillary Clinton anyway
She's got more money, and she will have more money than him
So, I think this was actually a huge error for Donald Trump
He would've been better off giving a fiery speech effort
talking about how he was going to go after the rich and the powerful
and
pretending to be progressive
pretending to be populist
That's a much better political strategy at this point
But, a lot of the Republican strategists and consultants
and establishment figures have
won him over
and they convinced him
Donald, you need the money
and part of the reason they convinced him of that
is he's tired of spending his own money
He's thinking
"Wait a minute, I was supposed to make money out of this thing
not lose money!
All right, fine, donors, whaddya need?
Whaddya need? I'll give it to you
Just like any standard politician
So, that's what the speech was about today.