Bryan Zepp Jamieson
June 28th 2024
www.zeppscommentaries.com
It’s one thing to say that Biden performed extremely poorly during the debate, and he did, looking and sounding like an 82 year old man pushed beyond his limits. Democrats are asking hard questions about the viability of the Biden campaign, and there are suggestions he stand down, either as a candidate (leading to an open convention) or even as President, in which case Kamala Harris would be president, and in all likelihood, the candidate for office this year. I’m not going to even try to guess how this is going to unfold.
But the most important element of the debate was that Trump, as always, is a sociopathic, remorseless, malign, criminal liar. The Biden campaign listed 50 lies Trump told in just the 40 minutes in which he could speak. Yes, more than a lie a minute, and at that, he repeated many of them. But the campaign didn’t say what made them lies. So let me give it a go:
- “We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We have never done so well, and everybody was amazed by it.”
Mark that a partial lie. Trump had the greatest economy TO 2019, in terms of sheer size. But if you draw a straight line from the start of Trump’s term to today, leveling out the pandemic, then the economy has actually outperformed Trump’s, more than making up for the pandemic dislocations.
- “The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce-back jobs, they’re bounced back from the COVID.”
Eight million jobs were lost in the early stages of the pandemic. But since taking office, Biden has seen a job increase of over 16 million jobs, which is eight million jobs net in just over three years. That’s the biggest increase in American history. The “illegal immigrants” crack is just more Trump hate mongering.
- “[10% universal tariff proposal is] not going to drive [prices] higher.”
Of course it will. The exporters in other countries aren’t running charities; they cover their increased costs by raising prices. A typical kindergartener could figure that one out.
- “[Tariff proposal is] just going to just force [other countries] to pay us a lot of money.”
See number 3. There is no “just” about it. Also, the best estimate for tariff revenues is about $400 billion, and that’s assuming countries don’t redirect trade to less protectionist countries.
- “I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”
He gave the top 1% the largest tax cut in history. It did nothing for working people, let alone the poor, and added 40% to the national debt.
- “I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we’re getting out with dignity, with strength, with power.”
Initially, he wanted to get out of Afghanistan two weeks after he made the snap decision. A horrified Pentagon persuaded him to make the pull out date March of 2021. He then released 15,000 Taliban prisoners, and ordered the Pentagon to slow-walk the pullout process, deliberately leaving Biden with an unsolvable mess in his first six weeks in office. Trump is probably just sorry that more American “losers and suckers” weren’t killed by the mess he deliberately made.
- “The tax cuts spurred the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen.”
In a word, no. “Trickle down” has never spurred the economy, and it didn’t this time.
- “Now, when we cut the taxes…we took in more revenue with much less tax.”
In 2017, revenues were $3.32T. In 2020, they were $3.42T. That’s far less than inflation, or national economic growth—in other words, a loss.
- “We had largely fixed [COVID].”
…He said, while trying to blame Biden for all the deaths after he left office. He did fast-track the vaccine program, the one thing he got right. But he bollixed everything else pertaining to the pandemic.
- “Throughout the entire world, we’re no longer respected as a country. They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore. We’re like a third world nation.”
Biden’s leadership ratings world wide, according to Pew, are slightly underwater, 41-46. But Trump’s were a catastrophic 28-69 underwater. Nearly everyone hated and mistrusted Trump, and with good reason.
- “He allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”
Another hate-mongering lie. There is no evidence to support this. But Hitler would be proud.
- “He’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.”
Medicare is doing just fine despite Republican efforts to destroy it. And while undocumented immigrants can get emergency medical care in some circumstances, for the most part they aren’t covered. Even though they contribute nearly $2T/year to the national economy.
- “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill.”
No, they just deferred action on it. It’s a catastrophe politically for the Republicans, since the vast majority of American aren’t women-hating religious freaks.
- “Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted [abortion] brought back to the states.”
Quite aside from being patently false, you would have to wonder why these foreign scholars would even give a fuck in the first place. It’s not like they have to live here.
- “They’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth. After birth, if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we’ll put the baby aside, I will determine what we do with the baby, meaning will kill the baby.”
An absolute and utter lie, told by and believed by women-hating psychotics. The alleged quote is an utter fabrication.
- “Under Roe v. Wade, you have late term abortion. You can do whatever you want depending on the state. You can do whatever you want.”
The text of Roe v. Wade is online and easily available. It divides pregnancy into three “trimesters” and has increasing amounts of restrictions for each trimester. Abortion was never available after the sixth month “on demand.” It’s a zealot lie, and of course, it’s a Trump lie.
- “He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists.”
AKA “the Republican base.” Another Trump hate mongering lie. You have to be a pretty vile human being to believe it.
- “He didn’t need legislation because I didn’t have legislation. I said close the border.”
A lie on the face of it. Immigration dropped, but that was the pandemic, and not Trump’s non-existent policy.
- “[Migrants are] living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places.”
Some were put briefly in hotels when the human-trafficking scum in Florida and Georgia foisted immigrants, some legal, on them.
- “He doesn’t care about our veterans. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t like the military at all, and he doesn’t care about our veterans.”
The VA budget in 2017 was $177.54 billion. This year, it’s $369.3 billion. Any questions?
- “I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the VA. He has the worst. He’s gotten rid of all the things that I approved.”
According to Business Insider, “Younger veterans prefer Biden, with 51% of veterans ages 35-54 backing Biden over Trump. Among veterans under the age of 35, 46% said they preferred Biden while 42% supported Trump.”
- “First of all, that was a made-up quote, ‘suckers and losers.’ They made it up.”
No, they didn’t. His own JCOS reported he said it.
- “Our veterans and our soldiers can’t stand this guy. They can’t stand him. They think he’s the worst Commander in Chief, if that’s what you call him, that we’ve ever had.”
I think it’s very unlikely Trump has spoken to any soldiers since leaving office. He didn’t have any respect for them while he was in office, after all.
- “He did nothing to stop [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine]. In fact, I think he encouraged Russia from going in.”What was he supposed to do? Nuke Moscow? More Trump drivel, wholly invented.
- “Iran was broke with me. I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them. They ran out of money. They were broke.”
He also destroyed the nuclear agreement we had with Iran and stood by meekly while Iran bombed American facilities in Iraq, injuring dozens of American troops. He even held up issuing purple heart medals because he didn’t want the public to know the damage his policies caused to US troops.
- “You had no terror at all during my administration.”
You mean besides January 6th? Well, see answer 25, immediately above. It’s still terror if your own little Nazi shitbags commit it.
- “Nancy Pelosi, if you just watched the news from two days ago, on tape to her daughter, who’s a documentary filmmaker they say, but she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this’ because I offered them 10,000 soldiers or National Guard. And she turned them down.”
Demonstrably false from the documentary itself, which shows Pelosi frantically asking the White House and other available authorities for National Guard protection while Trump watched TV and chortled.
- “The unselect committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now, out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats, they destroyed and deleted all the information they found because they found out we were right. We were right. And they deleted and destroyed all of the information.”Republicans deleted and destroyed the information they could get their hands on. But the public records were all preserved, and it’s believed that some Democrats stashed the rest for historical purposes.
- “Telling the Ukrainian people that we’re going to want a billion dollars or you change the prosecutor, otherwise you’re not getting a billion dollars. If I ever said that, that’s quid pro quo.” He did say that, during that ‘perfect phone call’ and was impeached for it, by the highest margin in history. Only the 2/3rds majority law in the Senate saved his ass.
- “I didn’t have sex with a porn star.” Granted, she didn’t consider it much in the way of sex, but yeah, you banged Stormy Daniels and then falsified business records to cover it up. That’s why you’re a felon.
- “He basically went after his political opponent because he thought it was going to damage me.” No need. Trump does plenty of damage to himself. That’s why he’s lost so many court cases in so many ways, including 34 felonies.
- “He made up the Charlottesville story.” The Charlottesville event we all saw on our televisions?
- “He caused the inflation and it’s killing Black families and Hispanic families.” Inflation was a bounce-back from the pandemic, fueled by corporate greed. At that, it was lower than in any other developed nation on Earth. Biden didn’t cause it.
- “They can’t buy groceries anymore, they can’t, you look at the cost of food where it’s doubled and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live, they’re not living anymore.” Groceries across the board went up 25-30%. Painful, yes, but again, not Biden’s fault.
- “[European countries] don’t want anything that we have.” Trump clearly thinks America produces nothing but worthless shit. Looking at Trump, I could see where some people might see it that way. But they don’t. America is still the world’s top exporter.
- “Almost every police group in the nation from every state is supporting Donald J. Trump. Almost every police group.” So far, most haven’t. Nor are they likely to support a felon who fostered a violent rebellion that got cops disabled and even killed.
- “And what he’s done to the black population is horrible, including the fact that for ten years he called them super-predators.” Biden did that, and supported Slappy for the Supreme Court, and other bad mistakes. But tell me, Donald: did he ever buy ads in the New York Times demanding that five kids be executed, even after they were exonerated of the crime they had been accused of?
- “And yet during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever.”Trump deliberately slow walked enforcement of nearly all environmental regulations. Granted, his numbers were the best from the viewpoint of major corporate polluters.
- “The Paris accord was going to cost us $1 trillion and China nothing and Russia, nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip off of the United States and I ended it because I didn’t want to waste that money because they treated us horribly…. Nobody else was paying into it and it was, it was a disaster.” The one trillion is made up, and China got a grace period to implement required changes. Russia wasn’t involved.
- “I’m the one that got the insulin down for the seniors. I took care of the seniors.” He reduced it, one time, to $200. Virtually no help at all to anyone. Biden got an ongoing monthly cap of $35, saving thousands of lives.
- On migrants: “They’re taking over our schools our hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over our schools or hospitals, and they’re going to be taking over Social Security.” More hate mongering from fascist filth. He is vicious trash, appealing to vicious trash.
- “But Social Security – he’s destroying it because millions of people are pouring into our country and they are putting them onto Social Security. They’re putting them onto Medicare, Medicaid. They’re putting them in our hospitals.”
Republicans have been predicting doom for Social Security “any time now” since 1935. But undocumented aliens aren’t eligible for Social Security. But then, you knew that, didn’t you.
- “He wants open borders. He wants our country to either be destroyed, or he wants to pick up those people as voters.”
Hatemongering. Insert the word “Jews” for “immigrants” and you’ll see where he gets it from.
- “He wants the Trump tax cuts to expire.”
OK, that one is actually true. He does. America isn’t here to serve the superrich.
- “He wants to raise your taxes by four times. He wants to raise everybody’s taxes by four times.”
If he means quadrupling taxes, that’s sort of true for the billionaire class. He wants to raise their tax rate from 6% to 25%. By comparison, the average middle-class family pays about 16%.
- “We now have the largest [trade] deficit in the history of our country under this guy. We have the largest deficit with China.”
In terms of unadjusted dollars, yes, but in terms of percentage of GDP, not even close. Not even in the top 15 years.
- “He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China. So I think he’s afraid to deal with them.”Trump needs a psych eval, I’m afraid. BTW, which candidate has hundreds of millions in business dealings with China again?
- “We had two cases, we paid $6 billion for five people.”Does anybody know what the hell he’s talking about?
- “They talk about a relatively small number of people that went to the Capitol, and in many cases were ushered in by the police.” There are a couple of instances of capital cops just letting the insurgents in, and I believe they are now gone. But we’ve all seen the images. Trump is lying, again.
- “I would have much rather accepted these [election results in 2020], but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”And yet in 61 cases alleging fraud, courts tossed 60 of them, one third being decided by Trump appointed judges. And Faux news lost $757 billion in damages from repeated and promoting Trump’s lies.
So there are actually 47 demonstrable lies there, two that were somewhat true, and one too incoherent to tell.
No, Biden didn’t do well. And Democrats are going to have to waste no time sorting that out. But Trump was, and is, a malicious, vicious, remorseless and relentless liar, and if he gets back in, he will destroy America and take most of us with it.
If the Dems have to replace Biden, they will do so. But Trump is far worse, and the Republicans lack any character or courage. We’re stuck with him as a candidate, and there’s no circumstance where he’s better than Biden.
