Political Irony

When I read the news yesterday that two pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return were sent to reporter David Cay Johnston and shown on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC, I immediately wondered if this was a false flag operation. The whole thing was just too contrived. Especially when the White House immediately verified the authenticity of the leak, and bragged about how much Trump had paid in taxes. And why just two pages? If this was a real leak, where are the rest of the pages, which might show to whom Trump owes money (perhaps some Russians?).

Apparently, I was not the first person to think this.

Even Johnston suspected as much, saying to Maddow, “It’s entirely possible that Donald sent this to me. Donald Trump has over the years leaked all sorts of things. … Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it’s in his interest.” We all know that Trump frequently posed as his own publicist.

Trump’s comments about leaks have always been hypocritical. Just a few weeks ago, Trump called for a criminal investigation into all the leaks coming from his administration, blaming “political sabotage” by Democratic anti-Trump bureaucrats.

But during the campaign, Trump announced “I love WikiLeaks” because they were leaking internal emails from the Democratic party that helped him. But once he became president, he started attacking leakers again.

UPDATE: Trump condemns the leak of the tax return as “fake news” after the White House verified that the return is authentic. Maybe the “fake” part is the leak — because Trump knows that he leaked his own tax return?

Monday, the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) report on the Republican health care bill came out, and it was even harsher than I expected. The CBO says that the new bill will increase the number of uninsured by 86%. Donald Trump promised that no Americans would lose coverage.

In fact, the Republican bill is so bad, it will make things worse than before Obamacare. In the first year alone, the number of people without health insurance will increase by 14 million. Not only that, but premiums for the people who still have insurance will increase (on average) 15 to 20 percent. The individual market and older people will see the largest increases.

The only “good” news from the CBO is that the new bill will decrease the deficit, but only because it will severely cut Medicaid, reducing enrollment by 14 million unlucky people. Some of that savings will reduce the deficit, but the rest will go into tax cuts for the wealthy. Of course, that savings is a mirage, because as we know these people will still get sick, and will end up in emergency rooms (which are required to treat anyone regardless of ability to pay). So in the end, we will pay for that too in the form of higher hospital charges to make up for the shortfall.

I’m guessing the Republicans knew this report was going to be bad, because they have been falling over each other trying to discredit the CBO. They couldn’t really attack the CBO as being partisan, because Republicans appointed its director in 2015.

Instead, Republicans attacked the CBO’s accuracy, complaining that the CBO projected in 2010 that the ACA would reduce the ranks of the uninsured by 30 million, but so far only 22 million have gained insurance under the bill. What the GOP conveniently forget to mention is that two years after the bill was passed, 21 Republican-led states refused to expand Medicaid. That deliberate sabotage was the major cause of the shortfall.

Predicting the future is difficult, but even so, experts have studied the CBO and found their projections to be sound. Between 1983 and 2014, the CBO’s two-year revenue forecasts were only off by 1.1%, which is pretty darn accurate. Five-year forecasts were only off by 5.3%, which is amazing.

But arguing over the absolute accuracy of the CBO is arguing over the wrong question. The more important question is whether the CBO projection was more accurate than the predictions of gloom and doom spewed out by the Republicans. Remember all the warnings about “death panels”, and how Obamacare would destroy our economy? Indeed, Donald Trump is now bragging about the economy that Obamacare was supposed to have destroyed.

© Jen Sorensen

The Washington Post lists 19 times that Donald Trump declared that the government unemployment numbers are fake. Starting in Sept 2012, when he called them “phony numbers”, and then a month later when he called them “a complete fraud”. In 2014, he said “Unemployment is a totally phony number.”

A year later Trump graced us with his own, personal numbers: “Our real unemployment is anywhere from 18 to 20 percent. Don’t believe the 5.6. Don’t believe it.” Just two months after that, his numbers doubled: “Then you hear there’s a 5.4 percent unemployment. It’s really — if you add it up, it’s probably 40 percent if you think about it.” Just over two weeks later, it had somehow gone up to 42 percent. He also said “It is not a real economy. It is a phony set of numbers. They cooked the books.”

In 2016 he gave a prescient pronouncement, saying “You hear a 5 percent unemployment rate. It’s such a phony number. That number was put in for presidents and for politicians so that they look good to the people.” and “The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.” And finally in December, after he won the election he still maintained “The unemployment number, as you know, is totally fiction.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 4.8%.

But all that has changed. After Trump’s first full month in office, the US added 235,000 jobs, bringing unemployment down slightly to 4.7%. And Donald Trump is happy to take all the credit. At the news, he tweeted “GREAT AGAIN” and “Great news. We are only just beginning. Together, we are going to #MAGA!”, with a link to the jobs report.

I guess he believes in the jobs report now. I wonder what his response will be the next time unemployment goes up?

Republicans are trying to ram their Obamacare replacement bill down the throat of Congress as quickly as possible. The bill was only introduced on Monday, and already the House Ways and Means committee was kept up until 4am (that’s 18 hours) so they could approve the bill. Which they did, even though the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) hasn’t even scored the bill. Very strange!

Why are they in such a rush? One big reason is because they don’t want anyone looking at the bill too closely. It is likely that the CBO will discover that the new bill will cause around 10 million people to lose their health insurance, while at the same time costing more money than Obamacare and also increasing the deficit. That’s supposed to be an improvement?

Another reason is to get the bill passed before the opposition can get organized. How’s that working out for them? It is only Thursday, but already the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the US Catholic Health Association, the Children’s Hospital Association, and the AARP (American Association of Retired People) have come out against the new bill. The AARP is even running a TV ad against it.

It seems like the only significant organizations that are for the bill are the US Chamber of Commerce and Grover Norquist’s anti-tax group, the Americans for Tax Reform. They like it because it offers large tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthy, which caused a Democratic Congressman to ask “Is this health care, or is this a tax-cut bill?”

Even conservatives don’t like the bill, which they are dubbing Obamacare 2.0 or Obamacare Lite. Surprisingly, even Breitbart News, formerly run by “President Bannon”, attacked the bill.

Even press secretary Sean Spicer is having problems defending the bill. Spicer is claiming that the bill is a “full repeal of Obamacare”. When a Breitbart reporter responded to him that it was hardly a full repeal, Spicer said “I don’t care”.

Also attacking the bill are conservative commentators Laura Ingraham, who complained that the bill doesn’t increase “transparency in pricing” or “competition across state lines”, and by Ann Coulter, who remarked “Who wrote this piece of crap Obamacare replacement bill?”. The bill was even attacked by Fox News, with host Eric Bolling noting “You’ve had six years to come up with a replacement. Fix it!”

Even Donald Trump doesn’t seem sure about the bill. Even though Trump officially supports the bill, he seems to be hedging his bets already. In a White House meeting with conservative groups, he told them that if the bill doesn’t pass, then Plan B is to let Obamacare fail and blame it on the Democrats. The only problem with this is that Obamacare isn’t actually in any danger of failing unless Republicans find some way to purposely sabotage it, in which case it would be obviously hypocritical of them to try to blame it on Democrats.