In this witty, sharp commentary from Tobin Harshaw, the spotlight falls on Donald Trump’s controversial statements and political manoeuvring during his latest debate with Kamala Harris. Harshaw delves into Trump’s past accomplishments and present challenges, while addressing economic trends under Biden-Harris. He highlights the nuances of political discourse, reminding readers that both sides often cherry-pick facts.
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By Tobin Harshaw
True Lies
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Does cat taste like chicken? Ask Donald Trump, who has gone from predator to poultry on the issue of another debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE,” sounds like a solid concept of a plan for a former president obsessed with the abundantly unverified claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield (!!!), Ohio are preparing feline griot and chen nan sòs.
Trump of course claimed victory “by a lot” in Tuesday’s faceoff. But conservative fanboys were reduced to saying things like “disaster” (Senator Lindsay Graham); “Well, um, that job’s got to get done” (Senator John Thune, on Trump’s effort to “define” Harris); “Trump was never very good at debates” (Scott Johnson of Powerline); “Harris had a bad makeup job” (GOP consultant Roby Ryan); “That’s a good question. You are putting me on the spot” (Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, when asked to identify Trump’s best answer of the night).
Actually, I’ll put myself on the spot with that last one:
- “We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in.”
- “We were being ripped off by European nations both on trade and on NATO. I got them to pay up by saying … if you don’t pay we’re not going to protect you.”
- “I took in billions and billions of dollars, as you know, from China. In fact, they never took the tariff off because it was so much money, they can’t.”
- “In your last run for president you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don’t.”
- “I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. I believe strongly in it. Ronald Reagan did also.”
- “I’m a different kind of a person.”
Those lines, while not all perhaps 100% accurate, are probably close enough by the standards of political discourse — certainly nobody could argue about the truth of final one. Trump’s bigger problem might be that if voter-sentiment polling is accurate, crowing about stock market booms, NATO funding and China tariffs don’t seem likely to sway much of the undecided public.
My larger point is that if you overlook the unhinged ranting about executing babies and Hungarian strongmen, Trump has some legitimate achievements from his tenure worth pointing out — and a few legitimate criticisms of the Biden-Harris record. So, too, do several of Bloomberg Opinion’s columnists in the latest edition of our Biden-Harris Metrics Extravaganza. Consider all this on the economy alone:
“In a country that’s used to seeing compensation growth outstrip rising costs, the typical American household has been just about treading water during the Biden-Harris administration, with large nominal wage increases eaten up by major upticks in prices,” writes Jonathan Levin.
“Presidents love to take credit for a booming market and disavow a sagging one. The truth is they have little to do with either,” Nir Kaissar adds. “Still, some policies are better for asset prices than others, even if it’s difficult to quantify how much. Trump wants to extend the 2017 tax cuts and lower corporate taxes, which could boost spending and corporate earnings, pushing stocks higher.”
“The consensus has been that the economy is a negative for the Biden-Harris administration because consumer sentiment measures remain below pre-pandemic levels,” Robert Burgess writes. “Observers say that mostly reflects the toll of inflation, which has left everyday items such as groceries costing more than before the onset of Covid. Then there’s housing, which is the least affordable on record, locking out potential homeowners and making current ones feel trapped.”
Allison Schrager has a similar take on Biden’s tenure. “When adjusted for inflation, most Americans are only now recovering the ground lost in the early years of his administration while high earners remain worse off,” she writes. “Trump has been the only president to preside over positive real wage growth for all groups.”
“Americans largely say they have trouble paying for even the basics because overall prices remain elevated — dissatisfaction that the Trump campaign has capitalized on,” Matthew A. Winkler adds.
Bad stuff, right? Actually … I’m simply doing what both Trump and Harris did on Tuesday night: Cherry-picking the facts. Again, that’s fair in politics (to an extent), but good journalism looks at the flip side.
So Jonathan goes on to say that “Inflation, while painful, is already coming down” and that Harris “should lean into the administration’s job-creation record, highlighting the high-paying manufacturing jobs already in train from this White House’s policies.”
“Harris wants to raise corporate taxes and steer that money to workers and families as tax credits and support for first-time homebuyers,” adds Nir. “Putting money in consumers’ pockets is generally good for business.”
“American families continue to get wealthier and are in better financial shape than at any time since the start of the century,” says Bob. “The surge in wealth has an underappreciated benefit: Household debt fell to 97% of disposable income as of the end of March, the lowest outside a pandemic year since 2001.”
“Income inequality has narrowed under Biden,” Allison notes. “Biden’s tenure coincided with the reversal of a decades-long trend of most wage gains going to the highest earners. In the past four years, lower-income workers had a few years with real wage gains.”
“Rising prices were supposedly undermining ‘Bidenomics’ when increases in the consumer price index peaked at 9.1% in 2022, according to prevailing media narratives featuring many prominent economists. There’s been an unprecedented moderation in price gains since, with CPI rising 2.9% in July from a year earlier,” concludes Matthew. “The resulting disinflation — occurring while gross domestic product expanded 3% last quarter — is unmatched in modern history and the opposite of the 1970s, when inflation took eight years and five months to subside to 3%.”
And all the moaning and groaning about consumer sentiment? That index just rose for the fourth month in a row. All this bodes well for Harris, but it’s way too soon to break out the liqueur de cerise in Springfield.
Heading for the Door
Probably the safest ground Trump can take in attacking Harris is on immigration (but please please please let’s get past the silly semantic debate over whether she’s Biden’s border “czar” or not). “The Biden-Harris administration seemingly put a cork in the immigration bottle with a June executive order that narrows access to asylum and speeds up the removal of those not qualified to enter the US. But it may be too late to deflect criticism after four years of record-breaking migration across the southern border,” writes James Gibney. “More than 8 million encounters between ports of entry have been recorded; more than 1 million foreigners were given temporary admission through targeted parole programs; and the asylum case backlog in the court system nearly doubled.”
Again, if we believe the polls, there may be less to gain from border disorder than conservatives hope. Immigration is tied with violent crime for just fifth place in Pew’s latest survey of voter concerns — and its only that high because a remarkable 82% of Republicans, all ostensibly voting for Trump anyway, consider it “very important.”
Yet there is no understating the fraught legacy of the immigration-politics nexus in the American story. Stephen Mihm, writing as part of Bloomberg Opinion’s new “Republic of Distrust” series, points out a conundrum: a “nation of immigrants” had more faith in its government when immigration slowed to a halt.
The 40-year period between 1924, when Congress passed the harsh Immigration Act, and 1965, when it re-opened the door, was a period marked by great public confidence. “Put differently,” writes Stephen, “the period with some of the highest levels of trust was also an era when the population became more homogenous and less pluralistic.”
We may decry our polarized politics, but I’d rather argue in the open than slam shut the door.
Read also:
- 🔒Trump’s debate defeat signals GOP’s decline – Timothy L. O’Brien
- Chuck Stephens on Harris-Trump debate: Rookie platitudes vs. veteran grating
- 🔒 FT: Kamala Harris v Donald Trump: Money flows suggest it was the lady’s night
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