Does the President believe tariffs are equivalent to a tax paid by consumers?
Answer: No. He is unable to admit that the consumer absorbs the full amount of the tariff paid to the US Government. In effect, the tariff has the same effect as a tax paid by every citizen consumer. By contrast, the citizen who chooses not to pay this consumption tax must forgo purchases of the product. In either case the American citizen suffers from Trump’s ignorance or intentional lie.
Does he believe a worldwide infection like the Spanish Flu and the recent Covid pandemic can be avoided by an early international response, as was once the role of USAID?
Answer: No. Instead, he terminated USAID and fired all its employees. Many children will die for lack of sustenance provided daily by USAID. And a new outbreak of deadly disease is already emerging in Africa.
Does he believe nuclear war can be avoided by international agreements that limit the research and application of nuclear power to peaceful uses?
Answer: No. He has not pursued any such agreement with South Korea or attempted to renew former nuclear agreements with Russia. But he did nullify the nuclear enrichment agreements made by the Obama Administration with Iran. Then he threatened Iran with “all hell” if it does not curtail development of the enriched uranium required for an atomic bomb. His approach shuns diplomacy in pursuit of bombastic rhetoric and threats.
Does he believe in and support the Paris Agreement of 2015 that represents an international effort to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius?
Answer: No. At the beginning of both Presidential terms, he removed America from the Paris international Agreement which had been initiated by former President Obama and renewed by President Biden.
Does he believe in and support research into natural-occurring world-shattering events such as an asteroid impact, or a super volcanic eruption, and funding for Americans suffering from the growing intensity of hurricanes, fires, and major earthquakes?
Answer: No. In fact, he has limited funding for such research, for training fire fighters, and for disaster relief provided by FEMA.
Does he believe in and support a fair income tax that limits tax deductions for the wealthy and provides more deductions for low- and middle-income families?
Answer: No. Instead, he reduced taxes for the top income earners from 35% to 21% during his first term in office. Now he is proposing another cut of this tax from 21% to 15%. Moreover, his personal dealing with the IRS is problematic at best. He has consistently filled personal tax returns that show massive losses, while claiming to be a multimillionaire. Trump reported millions in negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, nevertheless he did pay $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. In 2019, Trump and his wife, Melania, reported significant losses of more than $16.4 million and a total income of $5.4 million. Moreover, Trump had numerous foreign bank accounts between 2015 and 2016, in China, the U.K., St. Martin and Ireland, which are all well-known tax havens. How is such personal financial information known? The House Ways and Means Committee and the New York Times are the sources of this information. For example, in 2019, the New York Times obtained partial information from transcripts of Trump’s IRS Form 1040s (the main personal federal tax form) from 1985 to 1994, revealing that during that time Trump claimed he lost $1.17 billion, the most of almost any individual U.S. taxpayer. But, now in his second term as President, he has suddenly become a multibillionaire. He sells bibles, shoes, coins, and guitars while advancing the interest of his Truth Social Company and is crypto coin investments.
Does he acknowledge and support lawful and fair elections?
Answer: No. His support for and instigation of the January 6, 2023, insurrection at the Capital sufficiently confirms this answer. Although he has never ceased claiming the election was rigged. It was only his cohorts that attempted to reduce mail balloting by trashing mail boxes and mail sorting machines, by illegally tampering with a voting machine, by losing 61 court cases after false claims of rigged elections without any evidence, by organizing the submission of fake electors, and by instigating an attack on the capitol to forestall the electoral vote count in favor of an illegal House vote by a Republican majority to elect Donald Trump to the Presidency. Today, by virtue of Project 2025 and his very narrow victory in the vote count,1 he is already laying the groundwork for a Presidential third term in violation of the 22nd Amendment. He speaks of “running” for his third term, but it is doubtful that he would or could count on a majority of the vote. His plan might be more nefarious.
These questions reveal what the President does not believe and, therefore, does not support. But what does he believe that motivates him and forms the policy agenda of his Presidency?
Well, he believes gender is determined in the womb. Therefore, transgender children should use school restrooms consistent with their birth gender. He does not consider that these children may face shame and social exclusion.
He believes abortions should be prohibited except when the mother’s life is at risk. Therefore, he appointed three Supreme Court Judges who shared that belief and overturned Roe v. Wade. (These appointees also deftly tried to shun public disdain by delegating abortion rights to the States.2)
He believes, absent any supportive facts, that many who emigrate to America are murderers, rapists, thieves, or violent gang members. Therefore, they should be denied entry at our borders, and, assuming these projections of their character, they will be denied a court hearing and summarily deported to an El Salvador gulag, where they will remain until their deaths. It does not concern him that these migrants are being denied due process in an American court in defiance of our Constitution’s promise “to establish justice, (and) insure domestic Tranquility.” Trump alone is judge, jury, and executioner.
He admires and mimics strong men like Vladimer Putin, Kim Jung Un, or Viktor Orban. In their mold, he intimidates rivals, attacks the press, threatens his Republican legislators, and defies any judicial restraints. Considering the myriad court cases both before, during and between his two Presidencies, his subsequent rise to a second term defies the Constitutional foundations of our government and the legal mandates thence derived. He considers himself above the law and is—in both word and act—a wannabe dictator.
He forms his Administration around sycophants instead of subject experts. Besides supporting his sudden restructuring of world trade policy, his appointees are dismantling the institutional bureaucracy that defines and administers the public services mandated by America’s elected legislature. The former not only upsets the international economic network America once led but diminishes its role for the foreseeable future. And the latter destroys the very promise of Jefferson’s unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” While bureaucracies, like our institutions of government, provide necessary services, their complexity can defy understanding and thereby appreciation for their public service. But what has been derogatively termed the “deep state” is necessary for the efficient provision of those services. It is the very bureaucratic labyrinth that sustains—and sometimes curbs—the dynasty ‘s power.3
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1 Donald Trump won 49.6% of the votes counted in his recent election, just barely beating his opponent by 1.5% of the vote. (Only 2.3% of voters supported other candidates.)
2 A non-legal/common sense analysis of the Court’s decision is made in “The Supreme Court: A Bulwark of Liberty.”
3 Yuval Noah Harari, “Nexus,” p. 63.