Political Irony

After the Orlando massacre, Donald Trump repeatedly asserted that the people going to the nightclub should have been allowed to carry guns to defend themselves against the shooter. That’s right, Trump actually thought it was a good idea to let people carry weapons while drinking in a dimly lit, noisy nightclub.

You know that’s insane when even the National Rifle Association thinks it is a really bad idea. The NRA’s chief lobbyist retorted “No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms. That defies common sense. It also defies the law.” And the NRA VP said “I don’t think you should have firearms where people are drinking.”

So Trump backed down from his statement, but he did it in typical disingenuous Trump fashion. He tweeted on Monday that he was “obviously talking about additional guards or employees” at the nightclub. Yeah right. Here’s what he said on a radio show the day after the attack:

It’s too bad that some of the young people that were killed over the weekend didn’t have guns, you know, attached to their hips, frankly, and you know where bullets could have flown in the opposite direction, Howie. It would have been a much different deal. I mean, it sounded like there were no guns.

Not only that, but his excuse doesn’t even hold water. According to FactCheck.org, the nightclub did have armed security the night of the shooting. It was widely reported that an Orlando police officer traded gunshots with the shooter near the entrance to the club, before the shooter moved inside. A CNN news anchor even reminded Trump of this fact during an interview about the attack, but Trump ignored it. And two of the early responding officers who were nearby also shot at the attacker before he retreated into a club bathroom with hostages. There were plenty of guns, and they were used against the attacker, but they didn’t help.

UPDATE: Trump’s flip-flop on allowing nightclubbers to carry is just one of multiple occasions when Trump has changed his position on gun control:

In 2012, Trump tweeted that Obama had “spoken for me and every American” after the Newtown school massacre, talking about the need for gun control. But once he started running for president he routinely accused Obama and Clinton of wanting to destroy the Second Amendment. Just last month he said “The Second Amendment is on the ballot in November. The only way to save our Second Amendment is to vote for a person that you all know named Donald Trump.”

In 2000, Trump wrote in his book that he supported the ban on assault weapons (which expired in 2004). But he did a full flip-flop when he started running for president, claiming that bans on assault weapons were a “total failure”.

Last Wednesday, Trump said he would talk to the NRA about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list to buy guns. But by Sunday, he had modified his position and expressed concern about taking away Second Amendment rights, even for people who are on the list. He has also waffled on whether guns should be allowed in the classroom. I guess if you don’t like Trump’s position on something, you just have to wait a few days until he changes it.

When are religious voters going to get tired of being jerked around by Republicans?

Last week at a supposedly religious event in Washington titled the “Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority” conference, social conservatives were told that Donald Trump is the only choice for evangelicals. Conference leader Ralph Reed cited Trump’s positions on abortion, gay marriage, and the list of socially conservative judges that Trump says he will appoint to the Supreme Court.

Which is complete bullshit. Trump “has been pro-choice most of his life, was and is pro-gay, and has no problem with transgender people using whatever bathroom they like.” Not to mention that Trump frequently swears in public, has bragged about his adultery, says derogatory things about women, and is no model of Christian charity or forgiveness. In fact, it seems like the only time Trump turns the other cheek is so he can lie out of both sides of his mouth. And why would anyone believe Trump’s list of Supreme Court appointees, when it seems more likely that he would appoint one of his children.

The most ironic part is how Reed explained away Trump’s complete lack of religious (and moral) values. He told the audience that they shouldn’t be searching for perfection in their political leaders, saying that there’s only one example of perfection in human history, “and that’s Jesus Christ. Unlike a lot of our friends on the other side, we’re not looking for a political Messiah. Because we already have a Messiah.”

And Reed added that God “uses imperfect people to achieve his perfect will.” Or He will, but only if you vote for Trump (even though Hillary Clinton is far more religious than Trump).

The conference also endorsed Trump’s proposed wall, and invoked the wall around Jerusalem as the reason why Trump’s wall to keep Mexicans out would work. Completely ignoring the fact that the current wall around Jerusalem was built by Sultan Suleiman when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the wall before that was built to keep out the Crusaders (and the wall before that was built by the Romans, etc.). The Christians never built any wall around Jerusalem; several of the walls were specifically built to keep the Christians out.

But why let facts get in the way?

I’ve talked to many different financial advisors in my time, and I have to say that most of them were more interested in selling me investments that would make them rich, than investments that would make me any money. The problem is commissions.

If a financial advisor talks to you for free, then you are the product. They have to make money somehow, and so selling you things that pay them high commissions is required. And an investment that pays advisors big commissions, by definition, is going to make less money for you. Often, no money at all. In fact, estimates say that bad advice from financial advisors costs retirement savers $17 billion every year.

That’s why John Oliver’s show on financial planning should be required viewing:

Most Americans are being screwed by financial advisors.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with Donald Trump? Well, in April, the Obama administration passed a fiduciary rule, which simply states that financial advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to their customers. In plain English, they can’t purposely cheat people. Seems very reasonable to me. After all, snake oil sales were made illegal a long time ago, why should financial advisors be allowed to lie to you about what their “products” will do?

So of course, Republicans in Congress voted to overturn the rule, claiming that their bill will “protect access to affordable retirement advice”. Well, yeah, it does protect access to cheap, worthless advice that will cost you lots of money.

Then Obama vetoed their bill. For anyone out there wanting to curb the excesses of Wall Street, this should be big news. So the fiduciary rule stands. The Fiscal Times says this rule will “mark an important breakthrough in regulating financial advisers who may prey on older Americans trying to make sense of their holdings and strategies for maximizing their life savings.”

Now, does anyone doubt that Donald Trump would not have vetoed the Republican bill? Given his history of cheating people out of their savings in Trump University, is there any doubt that he would have been a cheerleader for allowing financial advisors to cheat and steal as much as they want?