Trump's energy policies increased energy production and reduced consumer costs across the board.
More specifically, Trump's energy policies were great for the big polluters and he made a big show of being on their side. Trump's energy policies regarding wind and solar, on the other hand, were bad and promise to continue to be bad, despite wind and solar being probably the best part of the energy industry to be investing when it comes to energy security and job creation for multiple reasons.
This was directly to the benefit of the middle and low income class Americans. Those Americans prospered under Trump policies.
More specifically, the rich prospered under Trump policies. Middle and low income people prospered more in relation to the inertia from the Obama Administration. As I'm pretty sure you're aware, there's turnaround time on investment. Middle and low income people fairly certainly did benefit to some extent, yes, much like they benefited to some extent from the Trump tax cuts. The rich ended up with the overwhelming share of the benefits, though, with marginal effect on those not rich.
Regarding prosperity more directly, under Trump, the increase in the wealth gap accelerated dramatically. Again, that's not actually a good thing.
A strong Military promotes peace.
It can, if it's not misused.
Your claim that "Trump, in particular, showed his disdain for soldiers over and over" is laughable. You have embraced lies.
Mmm.
Trump Has Mocked the U.S. Military His Whole Life
Egged on by his father, the U.S. president began expressing contempt for Americans who fight in wars as far back as high school, his classmates say.
Actions do speak louder than words, though, and Trump's actions point to something fundamentally different than actually supporting the military. Using it as a political prop, sure. The Republican Party's actions don't really point to the Party supporting the military, either, except as a tool to other ends. The Two Santa Clauses strategy is of particular note when it comes to that.
Either way, the overall general actions of the two major parties when it comes to the military quite seems to boil down to two simple concepts. Republicans treat the military as a disposable tool to be used to further their ambitions, with all that that entails. Their constant attacks on Veteran Care while pretending to support Veterans and the military demonstrates that plenty well, among various other things. In contrast, Democrats treats the military as people doing service for the country, with all that entails.
By contrast, Biden's war on oil put the Country in a direct decline during the first 3 years of his Presidency. This was directly responsible for the record high inflation increases, record high energy costs and record high consumer pricing.
You conveniently forgot Covid and its many serious consequences across the board in your rush to blame Biden, eh? With regards to the oil and gas industries, more than 100 oil and gas companies went bankrupt in 2020 because of Covid. That had real consequences as the country rebounded under Biden that you keep seeming to want to totally ignore every single time that you've trotted out similar claims to this. You also ignored OPEC's antics, Trump's bragging about how he got OPEC to restrict production specifically to
raise oil and gas prices, and the disruptions that Putin caused. Again, those factors don't seem to appear in your assessments except when you're trying to push some anti-Biden angle with them. This does not seem to be the behavior of someone interested in accuracy, to put it nicely.
Now, with that said, there is a real argument to be made that Biden's not been super-friendly to the oil industry, yes, especially in comparison to Trump's quite excessive "friendliness." By the look of it, though, you're embracing fallacy when it comes to when and how the effects are felt, though.
The middle and lower classes are not prospering under Biden, they're struggling.
By the numbers, people in all brackets are better off now than they were pre-pandemic.
Based on Incomes, Americans Are a Lot Better Off Under Biden Than Under Trump
Despite a spurt of high inflation that has dramatically receded, Joltin’ Joe’s economy is far more robust than that of his oft-indicted predecessor.
It’s the Biden vs. Trump Economy—and Hell No, It’s Not Even Close
The facts are clear: Biden has overseen a stronger economy than Trump did. That reality should dominate his reelection campaign.
And, a bit more directly -
The Purchasing Power of American Households
Real wages have risen since before the pandemic across the income distribution. In particular, middle-income and lower-income households have seen their real earnings rise especially fast. And in the past 12 months, real wages overall have grown faster than they did in the pre-pandemic expansion.
Household purchasing power has increased as a result. In 2023, the median American worker can afford the same goods and services as they did in 2019, plus an additional $1,000 to spend or save—because median earnings rose faster than prices.
The U.S. economy now has over 2 million more jobs than pre-pandemic forecasters expected. Therefore, more and more workers are benefitting from increased purchasing power, thanks to the strong and resilient labor market.[1]
This pattern of rising purchasing power is particularly American: other advanced economies have generally seen lower, and in many cases negative, real wage growth.
Trump, on the other hand, well...
How Trump Took the Middle Class to the Cleaners
The president promised a return to shared prosperity, but the benefits of his economic policies only bubbled up to the richest
Funny thing, there's more to the economy than projects that aren't producing anything and wouldn't for years, contrary to your claim.
As an example I would point out that only at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 was energy production increased to at and finally above 2019 levels.
See: Covid and how it disrupted everything and bankrupted lots of oil and gas companies.
Biden's embrace of the Far Left has also generated an increase in wokeness. Which is in direct opposition to Conservative views.
Fair enough. It IS in direct opposition to Conservative views. After all, to be "woke" politically in the Black community means that someone is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality. Fundamentally, Conservatives seek to preserve existing power structures, including the injustices and inequality. Being informed, educated, and conscious of injustice and inequality challenges efforts to maintain and increase injustice and inequality, because most people don't like being villains or being forced to confront that their actions invite condemnation, especially when they are prone to trying to look at things in black and white.
Trump wants to cut taxes. Tax cuts in combination with energy production to be more specific. One doesn't work without the other. Keep in mind the US economy accounts for roughly 25% of the World economy. When the US prospers, so does the World. Likewise, when the US suffers, so does the World.
Let's cut through the BS here. Tax cuts on the rich. Increases in big polluters while attacking renewables. Really short-sighted stuff.
I'm not impressed, even before getting to how he can safely be expected to cause the national deficit and debt to skyrocket again, which never seems to be a problem during Republican Administrations. Come Democrats trying to actually help people and invest in the future, though, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Republicans is utterly predictable. Again, preserving power structures is what conservatives are all about, even if it means causing immense preventable suffering.
Biden wants to increase taxes. I don't see any way an increase in taxes coupled with a decrease of energy production which leads to higher energy and consumer pricing can build a strong economy. I believe it was Steve Forbes that said something like "you can't tax an economy into prosperity."
The quote you're thinking of is likely to be originally Winston Churchill's - "For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
With that said, taxes are a necessary and foundational tool to provide the conditions for prosperity and to counter the various threats to prosperity. Increasing taxes on the rich, in particular, rarely has meaningful negative effects - taxes rising to 90% at the highest bracket was accompanied by quite a bit of prosperity. Taxes being cut on the rich more and more hasn't led so much to prosperity as it has increasing inequality and exploitation.
Americans have an overwhelming view that our economy is headed in the wrong direction.
Especially after all the shoves that Republican propagandists have given, regardless of fact.
Ah, that's certainly a spin on the prior battles to combat Human trafficking at the border. Yes, there used to be a border during Trump's Presidency but Biden made it all go away on the first day he was in office.
Well, that's one way to try to defend it. It has about as much merit as the rest of the points that you've been trying to make, though. You've been refuted on this repeatedly in the past and repeatedly shown yourself to be utterly unable to defend your claims. All of that is pants on fire false, either way, and I'm not impressed by your fringe resets on this.
Trump "combating human trafficking" involved Trump directing resources away from addressing human trafficking, feeding the human traffickers by forcing large numbers of the vulnerable to stay in their active hunting grounds, incentivizing the vulnerable to try to employ the human traffickers out of desperation as they were being actively prevented from being able to exercise their legal rights, and plenty more along those lines. Oh, and tossing out a couple much touted gatherings of words to distract from all that.
‘I Thought I Was Going to Die.’ How Donald Trump’s Immigration Agenda Set Back the Clock on Fighting Human Trafficking
To barely touch on the information in that article -
Counter-trafficking lawyers, victim advocates, and former Trump Administration officials offer a starkly different perspective. They say that by cracking down on all forms of immigration, including legal and humanitarian avenues, the Trump Administration has made the work of preventing human trafficking more difficult in key and measurable ways. Specific policy changes across a variety of federal agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice, have increased barriers to victim protections, complicated investigations into trafficking networks, and warped Americans’ perspectives of what the problem looks like. Those harms, counter-trafficking experts say, will be hard to reverse, even if Trump’s not reelected this year.
Now, with that addressed to some extent, none of this is any defense for how brazenly opposed those actions are to the values that you're purporting Republicans care about. The Republican Party's actions there and elsewhere make it plenty clear that they're not actually trying to protect or strengthen marriage. They're trying to use marriage as a weapon to further their goal to maintain prior power structures, injustice and all. On that note, that "grooming" that the far right likes to talk up? There is one major group in the US whose behavior fits all too well. Those who actively fight to limit women into the role of a "Traditional Wife."
Now we have millions of Illegal Immigrants inside the US. How many have entered since Biden took office and opened the border?
Is it your intent to ignore circumstances, actions, and reason in your quest to score some hollow political point?
To be perfectly clear, there's no good reason to blame Biden for this. Nor is there good cause to believe that a Republican in charge would be handling things anywhere close to as well as Biden and the Democrats are. As with Trump, they'd be far more likely to be pointedly acting to make things worse and hiding that with showy but unhelpful actions, yet again. Trump recently and openly made it perfectly clear again that he's happy to sabotage the situation at the border whenever it suits him. Why should
anyone trust Trump to actually handle things better?
More deservedly, the blame should lie with those incentivizing the illegal immigrants to come. A large majority of that has long been "conservative" business owners seeking cheap, easily exploitable labor.
NATO is an agreement. Either one fulfills their part of that agreement or they do not. It really is that simple.
1) In the context of the subject immediately at hand, this is a red herring. Ukraine is not part of NATO. The Kurds were not part of NATO.
2) To be perfectly clear, for all Trump's misrepresentations, the NATO agreement, as actually made, was indeed being fulfilled and Trump had no honest basis for that particular line of complaints regarding NATO. With that said, there was a related complaint that could be made, but the implications and effects of that were notably different. Either way, now that Russia's chosen to become a more directly active threat, defense spending certainly has risen.
3) It's no surprise that you choose not to address how Trump disarmed and betrayed the Kurds to those who were well known to want to commit genocide against the Kurds. It was indefensible. Further, blindly backing Trump without real acknowledgement of what his tactics actually have been in practice causes much less cognitive dissonance than acknowledging that he has a deeply problematic history that very much informs the expectations that he will make things worse all around and often in atrocious ways.
I'm all for a great discussion of fact. Opinions can be fun as well as long as they're based in fact.
As for me, as a general rule, I'm far more interested in the quality of an argument than I am with the conclusion. Fact is important, but facts being cherry-picked and misused are not things that I tend to appreciate.
The issue is, since I'm one of the Conservative minority members on the forum, I have to be more careful than most about wandering off topic in a thread. That's part of the game some play here. To pull the opposition off topic, let them run with it, then report their off topic posts. If you'd like to restate some of your points in the form of a comparison between Trump and Biden I'd be more than happy to address them as time permits.
I can say simply that I have not ever done that. I cannot control the actions of others, though, and it's entirely possible for others to choose to report such, so please understand that me saying such is not an attempt to belittle your stated concern, but merely a statement of whether I engage in such. To me, that route would count as a dishonest tactic to pursue.
Now, with that said, I addressed claims that you made that quite weren't some comparison between Trump and Biden. Some of those claims are repeat claims that have been soundly refuted multiple times before, yet you've done nothing that actually defends them, regardless of thread, and just keep forwarding them. This is not behavior that lends your polite explanation here as much credence as you would likely prefer.
