Under Trump
As expected, there has been A LOT of revisionist history taking place with regards to the Trump presidency. Between the war in Ukraine, inflation, and rising gas prices, there is a cadre of people eager to remind you of how “good” things were under the Orange One. They must be remembering a different time period than I am. So let’s take a look at some of the claims and demonstrate why it’s a bunch of hogwash.
Up first is idiot lacking a village, Marsha Blackburn. You might remember her as the person whose bill made it impossible for the DEA to slow down the opioid crisis. I wonder if that had anything to do with the nearly million dollars worth of donations her campaign received from pharma companies. Hmmm. Well, I’m sure if someone pointed this out to her she’d give back the money, right? Nah, she said it would be absurd to do so. Aside from looking like a wino just woken up from an afternoon nap, Blackburn is one of the worst people going.
All that aside, let’s look at her claim about gas prices. She’s not wrong about gas being cheap in 2020. The year started off with gas being about $2.63/gallon on average and ended up being around $2.28/gallon. Now, looking at all of Trump’s terms, gas stayed right around the $2.20-$3.00 range. Towards the end of 2018, there was a little bit of a peak. But then, mysteriously, there was a sudden drop in 2020 that carried throughout the year, leading to a low average of under $2 during the summer. Geez, I wonder why that would have been?
Oh right. The whole once-a-century pandemic thing. The Trump Depression thing. I bet those might have had something to do with low gas prices! But no, let’s examine this like children and just say something idiotic like Marsha here did. Sure, hundreds of thousands of people were dying and millions more lost their livelihoods but gas prices! Man, what a disingenuous moron.
People also like to pretend that the US had energy independence under Trump (we didn’t) and that because Democrats and those pesky progressives canceled the Keystone pipeline (which was a bad thing and should have never been allowed) we’re now stuck importing foreign oil. Damn them tree huggers and Biden right to hell. Only…
Man, that’s weird. It’s almost like Trump increased purchasing oil from his “genius” buddy Putin at the expense of Americans and Ukrainians alike!
One other revision I’ve seen from Republicans over the last week or so is this notion that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was president because Putin was scared by him. There are a few variations on this theme. Some say that Putin knew Trump was a bit of a wild card and if Putin invaded Ukraine he might have used nukes on him. OK… and this is a good thing? Imagine saying out loud that another nuclear power was worried about our country having such an unstable leader that he’d start a nuclear war without thinking about it. This is supposed to be good? Hell no. I want a president who wants to avoid nuclear war at all costs and not just act out with the biggest weapons he has.
Another line in this same vein is that Trump was so smart that he outmaneuvered Putin at every turn. Well, it’s hard to argue that Putin didn’t, in fact, invade Ukraine until Trump was voted out of office. But why would he? He was getting everything he wanted from Trump. Putin’s stated goal has been to fracture and prevent NATO from growing. Trump was planning on pulling the US from NATO!
As someone on twitter recently said, the crook doesn’t have to rob the old lady when she’s about to sign her house away. Putin was getting everything he wanted from Trump. Why would he invade Ukraine when he had Trump to do his bidding in disarming them? Oh what, you’ve already forgotten what the first impeachment trial was about?
That’s right, the infamous “I would like you to do us a favor” call that was “perfect”. Such a perfect call that people inside the White House categorized it as classified and tried to prevent the public from ever knowing about it. In this twisted version of the “Putin don’t mess with Trump” that call never happened and Trump was such a big ol’ tough guy that Putin knew not to step. Of course, this is all a nonsensical distortion. But hey, what are Republicans good for if not lying and rewriting history!
The final revision of Trump’s administration is an all-encompassing one, that, simply put, none of this would be happening if Trump were still president:
You get the idea.
And look, they may be right about that! If Trump had won a second term (he didn’t and he lost big time) then perhaps none of this (whatever “this” is) would be happening. There would have been no insurrection to try and overthrow the government and install a fake president. There would not have been a war in Ukraine because Trump would have left NATO and given Russia whatever it wanted. Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to defend itself because Trump would have withheld weapons unless they played ball with his election fraud. Gas prices would still be low because we’d be buying up lots of Russian gas (like we did under Trump the first time). And our national standing with Russia and North Korea would be better because Trump probably would have appointed Kyle Rittenhouse as Secretary of Defense or something.
But just because things would be different doesn’t necessarily mean things would be BETTER. And that’s really the key here. Would it be better to be at war with Russia? Or China? How do you think the Chinese government took Trump’s musings the other day about how we’d attack Russia and blame the Chinese? Probably not great.
Trump is a great, many things. A serious diplomat or brilliant military commander is not among them. He would have done whatever Putin asked him to do. He would have done whatever was in HIS best interests and not ours. If there’s one thing that’s clear from his presidency, Trump cares about himself and no one else.
Do me and everyone else a favor: cut it out with this Under Trump bullshit. We were WAY worse off with him at the helm. And to say otherwise is to deny his record and reality. There’s a reason he was voted out of office and it ain’t because he was so good at the job.