From Washington D.C., welcome to the 2020 Republican National Convention.
Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty
and the American dream:
The best is yet to come!
Oh please.
Look, it's...it's hard to respond to all of the bloviations
and lies spewed at the Republican convention,
but I'm going to respond to the most blatant whoppers.
"We will protect Medicare and Social Security
we will always and very strongly protect patients with pre-existing conditions
and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party."
Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish!
Even before COVID, Trump's latest budget included millions in cuts to Medicare
and Social Security.
Now, his proposed payroll tax cut would
completely defund Social Security by 2023,
according to a report by the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration.
Look – meanwhile, a group of Republican
states backed by the Department of Justice
and the Trump administration, is trying to completely strike down the
Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration has no plan to
replace it with anyone – anything – meaning that nearly
30 million people would lose their health insurance
in the middle of a global pandemic, and protections for pre-existing conditions
would be gone.
"Over the past three months we have gained over nine million jobs
and that's a record in the history of our country."
Baloney!
Now it's true that the United States
gained more than nine million jobs between May and July.
But hello!
It actually lost more than 22 million
jobs in March and April.
So it's a net loss. Hello?!
The economy is still down nearly 13 million jobs
because of a pandemic that Donald Trump
did nothing to control.
Not to mention many of the jobs added were simply people returning to work
after temporary layoffs.
"In economic terms folks,
this is no time for a 4 trillion dollar tax hike.
Coming out of the deep pandemic,
who in their right mind would pick the
pockets of taxpayers and drain money from their wallets and purses?"
You know, I spent years debating Larry Kudlow on CNBC,
and, it was hard,
it was tough, because almost everything that came out of his mouth
turned out to be either untruthful or a prediction that was full of baloney.
Larry Kudlow has made an entire career out of being dead wrong all the time
and the statements he made at the Republican National Convention
were no different.
According to him, we had all the money in the world to give
corporations a $500 billion dollar bailout at the start of the pandemic,
but now that 180,000 Americans
– more than 180,000 Americans are dead –
and millions are on the brink of eviction and poverty,
he says it's time to tighten the belt?
Well, that's Larry Kudlow for you.
The best way to revive the economy is to get money
back into people's pockets.
Which means passing another stimulus bill.
We'll be trapped in an even deeper
longer economic recession if Congress
does not pass another one.
"President Trump built the most inclusive economy ever.
Seven million jobs created, pre-COVID-19...
We put hard-earned tax dollars
back in people's pockets by cutting their taxes."
Oh my lord!
I mean, first off, Trump didn't "build" anything.
He inherited a strong economy from Barack Obama.
Average quarterly economic growth under Trump, through 2019,
was two and a half percent.
Nowhere near the four percent he promised.
Average quarterly growth in Obama's second term
was almost exactly the same, 2.4 percent.
In fact, if you look at the job numbers, what you find
is that unemployment dropped faster during Obama's second term
than it did in Trump's first three years.
In terms of tax cuts, Trump's signature tax cut was
was hardly a boon to everyday Americans.
By 2027, the richest 1 percent will have received 83 percent of the Trump tax cut
and the richest one-tenth of one percent, 60 percent.
But more than half of all Americans will pay more
in taxes and, as usual, nothing is trickling down to workers.
Corporations spent more of their tax savings buying back
their shares of their own stock than increasing workers' wages.
But all of this is moot, because it refers to the economy before COVID.
The fact of the matter is, Trump's abject failure to contain the
coronavirus has led to a deep economic crisis that's
putting millions of Americans at risk of debt, hunger, poverty, eviction.
He and his lackeys are trying to gaslight the country into thinking that
we're not living through this ongoing crisis.
They're trying to make us believe that Trump has acted to prevent it,
when in fact he has refused to act to prevent this crisis.
"The violence and bloodshed we are seeing in these and other cities
isn't happening by chance. It's the direct result
of refusing to allow law enforcement to protect our communities."
Oh please! McHale is right about one thing
–the unrest we're seeing in cities across the country is not happening by chance.
But his reasoning is wholly incorrect.
And the reasoning of the Trump administration and Donald Trump
wholly incorrect.
Americans are rising up because police continue to shoot down
and murder unarmed black people with impunity.
And when a white, right-wing teen with an AR-15 kills people,
what happens?
They turn a blind eye.
Now this is important folks,
centuries of systemic racism and our continued investment in social control
has perpetuated ongoing violence against Black people politically,
physically, and economically.
And what's the result?
People are rising up to demand a world in which the full
humanity and dignity of Black people is finally realized and recognized.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has actively ignored
and downplayed the rising threat of white supremacist violence,
choosing to stoke fears about imaginary left-wing violence
when the real threat is far-right extremist domestic terrorism.
Let's be clear about that.
We saw it just this week with Kyle Rittenhouse.
"And after years of scandal that robbed our veterans of the care
that you earned in the uniform of the United States,
President Trump kept his word again.
We reformed the VA
and Veterans Choice is now available for every veteran in America."
Well that's nice, but what Mike Pence leaves out is that the
Veterans Choice Act was co-written and co-sponsored
by Senators Bernie Sanders and John McCain,
and President Obama signed it into law in 2014.
All Trump did was continue the program and expand eligibility,
but his own Veterans Administration Secretary has said that
it will take years to fully implement the expanded program.
"As the only leader in Washington not from either New York or California,
I consider it my responsibility to look out for Middle America."
Oh, Mitch McConnell, oh lord!
Nothing says looking out for Middle America
like blocking expanded unemployment benefits, Mitch McConnell.
And then leaving for vacation without delivering desperately
needed relief to the American people, Mitch McConnell!
Look, as a reminder, McConnell recently urged lawmakers to be "cautious"
about helping struggling Americans
because, he said, "debt is a matter of genuine concern".
Funny enough, he could care less about debt when he handed corporations
a $500 billion-dollar blank check in the CARES Act,
or engineered a $1.9 trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations
and the super-rich in 2017.
Hello, Mitch McConnell?!
It's clear who you work for
– it is not Middle America.
Look, the Republican National Convention lies are just a preview of
what's to come in the next two months.
Vote the liar-in-chief and his enablers out in November,
and share this video with anyone you think watched this dangerous
propaganda misinformation parade.
Stay vigilant.
The worst, sadly, is yet to come