President Biden gave a strong rebuke to the lies, distortions and conspiracy theories made by the Trump/Vance campaign in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton Wednesday, as reported in the center column. 

In the right column, Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay examines Trump’s tariff policy and how the ex-president sent coveted coronavirus test kits to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as reported by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward in his latest book, War. 

Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung called Woodward’s book the “work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. None of these made-up stories … are true.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed delivery of the test kits from Trump to Putin but denied that Trump as ex-president made secret calls to Putin, as described in War.

As we quickly approach the November 5 presidential election, we welcome your civilly stated comments on these and other pertinent issues, whether you approach this news from the left or right, never-Trump or pro-MAGA.

Go to the COMMENTS section of the left or right columns, or email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.

Read our newsletter and subscribe for free at thehustings.substack.com.

_____
THURSDAY 10/10/24

By Stephen Macaulay

One of the things that is underappreciated about Donald Trump is that he is a presidential historian.

How else to explain his pronouncements about William McKinley, 25^th president of the United States?

Trump is bullish about McKinley because what is known as the “McKinley Tariff of 1890.” McKinley wasn’t president at the time of the act’s passage. He was a member of the House of Representatives. But when he was elected, McKinley pursued protectionist policies. So the Idol of Ohio is, well, an idol for at least one person. (You’d think JD Vance, fellow Ohioan, would talk up McKinley, but evidently economics isn’t his thing, fabulation is.)

Trump, of course, wants to apply tariffs to a greater extent than he did in his time in office. (To be fair, Biden has maintained many of them.)

But while Trump describes the dream of across-the-board tariffs of something of a panacea for all the economic woes of all Americans, according to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan research organization that is thought to be business-friendly:

“The Trump administration imposed nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans by levying tariffs on thousands of products valued at approximately $380 billion in 2018 and 2019, amounting to one of the largest tax increases in decades.”

Tax increase?

According to the headline of a “fact sheet” produced by the White House on February 5, 2018, “President Donald J. Trump Achieved the Biggest Tax Cuts and Reforms in American History.”

Turns out, however, that wasn’t the case, as the Economic Recovery Act of 1981 signed by Ronald Reagan was. In fact, The Revenue Act of 1964 (Johnson),  1945 (Truman), 1948 (Truman), and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (Obama) were all bigger.

And then there’s that assessment of the Tax Foundation.

Well, no one said he is an economic historian.

But on the subject of American history, let’s go back to January 30, 1799, when the Logan Act was signed into law.

As the act opens:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Vladimir Putin leads Russia. Russia is an enemy of the United States.

Yet Donald Trump is evidently his pal.

According to Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book War, after Trump left office he communicated with Putin an alleged seven times.

While we don’t know that to be the case, let’s consider this from the debate with Kamala Harris, when Trump was asked about the Russian attack on Ukraine:

“I want to get the war settled. I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship. And they respect your president. Okay? They respect me. They don't respect Biden. How would you respect him? Why? For what reason? He hasn't even made a phone call in two years to Putin. Hasn't spoken to anybody. They don't even try and get it. That is a war that's dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president. If I win, when I'm President-elect, and what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other, I'll get them together. That war would have never happened. And in fact when I saw Putin after I left, unfortunately left because our country has gone to hell, but after I left when I saw him building up soldiers, he did it after I left, I said oh, he must be negotiating. It must be a good strong point of negotiation.”

He also said:

“And I'll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I'm President-elect, I'll get it done before even becoming president.”

Sounds like he and Putin have kept a line open. And the Logan Act is still in effect.

But there is something that is claimed in Woodward’s book — and let’s face it, outside, primarily, members of Team Trump who cast aspersions in abundance with no factual basis for them, Woodward’s reporting has proven to be solid over the years — that should be more disturbing than Trump and Putin having a jaw-boning session about who knows what:

Trump, in 2020, reportedly sent Putin COVID testing equipment.

Equipment that was in short supply in the U.S. in 2020. The year that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 350,831 American citizens died from COVID.

Presumably some of those people would have been saved had there been more available testing.

America first? Really.

_____
THURSDAY 10/10/24

How to define a liberal? How to define a conservative?

The answers to those questions have been elusive since long before The Hustings began publishing in the autumn of 2020. But the ascendence of Donald J. Trump’s political career as he descended his Golden Elevator in 2015 has made the issue of how to define “left” and “right” even more acute. 

Is former US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) a RINO for endorsing Kamala Harris for president? How liberal is Harris herself after reversing her stand on fracking?

We are always up for debating such arguments at The Hustings, but if Cheney wants to write a column for us (email us, Ms. Cheney, at editors@thehustings.news) we certainly will post it in the right column, not the left because she may or may not be, officially, a Republican, but she certainly remains a conservative.

In today’s right column, Rich Corbett, a regular reader and occasional contributing pundit for the conservative side calls out The Hustings for posting criticism of Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, in that right column.

And that is what the right – and left – columns are for: civil commentary from pundits and readers from various points on the political spectrum and to foster political discussion with respect for the facts and for readers and writers who may not agree with your point of view. 

The Hustings invites you to join the discussion. Go to the Comments section in any of these columns or email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your leanings – from moderate liberal to hard-left/progressive or moderate conservative to hard-right/populist in the subject line. 

Don’t forget our regular newsletter/blogs at thehustings.substack.com.

_____
WEDNESDAY 10/9/24
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Editors:

My assumption is either only leftists are reading (the audience) or are writing (the opinion columnists) for The Hustings. Lately, the “Right” column does far more to criticize the Republican candidate running for president than to present an opposing point of view to the Democrats. Either leave it blank or fill it with an opposing POV to the radicals on the left — there’s not much balance if that’s what is supposed to be represented by the columns.

--Rich Corbett

(The author is an occasional guest pundit for The Hustings)

•••

Email your comments to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.

_____
WEDNESDAY 10/9/24
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

What are your thoughts and hopes about the escalating war between Israel and Hamas, and now with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon? 

What are the realistic prospects for a ceasefire in Gaza before the end of the year?

Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enabling a Trump/Vance win in the November 5 US presidential election? Would a Trump administration use Netanyahu’s proposal for Israeli judicial “reform” as a model?

As always, we seek your civil comments on these and other current issues. You can use the Comment section in this column or in the column on the right, if you lean toward political conservatism. 

Or email editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line. 

Sign up for our free Substack newsletter here.

•••

Don't miss these commentaries in the right column ...

• "The Art of the Lie," "Laws, Schmaws" and "Advantage: Intellectual Arteriosclerosis?" by never-Trumper Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay.

• "Vance Was Rock-Solid" by pro-MAGA contributor Rich Corbett.

And in the left column ...

• Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay (again, this time as counterpoint on the vice presidential debate), "About Second Place."

_____
MONDAY 10/7/24

By Stephen Macaulay

In my neighborhood in a suburb of Detroit, the number of Trump lawn signs vastly outnumber those for Harris. The signs are graphically consistent, with the dominating factor being the names Trump and Vance. 

The differences are found just below the top of the signs.

Sometimes it says “Promises Kept.” This is a curious statement. Near as I can tell, the only promise Trump kept was to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. What is somewhat ironic about that situation is the pertinent justices, when questioned in the Senate about their positions regarding Roe v. Wade, cited stare decisis, saying that this is settled law. Then they, in effect, broke their implicit promises and treated it as though it wasn’t.

One of the things often noted today is that there were no wars during Trump’s term in office thanks to his mastery of international affairs, which included siding with Vladmir Putin and sending and receiving love letters to and from Kim Jong Un. Presumably that lack of a war is meant to underscore that he would “keep us safe.”

But a promise to keep us safe seems to have been shattered given that in 2020 350,821 Americans died from COVID — something that he repeatedly assured the public would “just go away.”

To be sure Trump didn’t cause COVID. But his administration’s efforts to mitigate the effects of the virus was something short of robust.

And to put that number of COVID deaths into context, 58,220 Americans died in the war in Vietnam, or 17% of the number of Americans who died from COVID during Trump’s last year in office.

Which lead to another of the slogans on the signs, the now-familiar “Make America Great Again.”

Presumably this now implies that things were “Great” during his administration. As the deaths from COVID indicate, perhaps not so much.

When Barrack Obama took office in January 2009 the U.S. unemployment rate was 7.8%. As you may recall, the economy in 2008-2009 was in horrible shape.

When Obama left office in 2017 the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7%.

So when Trump came into office he started with a 4.7% unemployment rate.

He left with a 6.4% unemployment rate.

What’s “Great” about that? Well, I guess you could say the 14.8% unemployment rate that occurred in April 2020, while he was still in office, makes that 6.4% really, really good.

And speaking of Obama, about whom Trump has nothing good to say, the average GDP growth rate during his time in office was 2.3%. He inherited the economic conditions from the Great Recession, so that’s at least positive.

One would imagine that under Trump the Gross Domestic Product soared.

Nope. 2.3%.

So how “Great” did Trump make America?

And finally, there’s this slogan on a Trump sign:

“No More Bullshit!”

This, I must confess, is a mystery to me. The Biden-Harris Administration has done plenty of things that can be vigorously criticized, but one thing that seems evident about the both of them is that they are anything but bullshit artists.

So while on that subject I submit this from a speech Trump gave on September 27 at Macomb County Community College in Warren, Michigan.

He opened by talking about voting. “I will, once and for all secure our elections.” There is little evidence that 2020 was unsecure, so arguably he secured that election, although he has spent the past many years arguing against that.

The next sentence, “We’re going to go to paper ballots.” Odd that there are supporters like Peter Thiel, who has made a fortune on digital technologies.

Then Trump said, “We’re going to have same-day voting, voting ID.”

But within a matter of seconds he told the crowd, “Whether you vote earlier, absentee, by mail, or in person, we are going to protect the vote.”

Didn’t he just say “We’re going to have same-day voting”? And didn’t he vote early this past August in Florida?

But people vote about the economy more than election methodologies.

Trump said:

“We had the greatest economy in the history of our country and we were just getting started actually. But we had the greatest economy, the greatest employment for everybody, men, women, African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, everybody, young people with a diploma, without a diploma.”

Well, as we have seen, to call the economy or the employment rate “the greatest” is quite a stretch. What’s more, the current unemployment rate is 4.1%, which is better than the 6.4% he left with.

Now, Trump claimed that illegal immigrants are taking the jobs of Americans. So, of course, when the issue is immigration, he has to talk about the Wall.

Trump:

“We built more wall than I said I was going to build. And then we had 200 miles of wall ready to go. It was all fabricated, all made to the highest specifications of Border Patrol and ICE, and it was all set. And then we got more votes than any sitting president has ever gotten by far. And they say we lost the election, so let’s leave it at this. You know what? We have one coming up in 39 days, so that’ll be a wonderful replacement. 

Wonderful replacement.”

This one is really chock full of, well, bullshit.

During the 2016 campaign Trump said he’d build 1,000 miles of wall. Then he ratcheted that back to 450 miles of wall. Then when he left office U.S. Customs and Border Protection revealed there were 80 miles of new wall built. There were 452 miles in total, so that means 372 miles of replacement, reconstruction and secondary wall.

Mexico paid for none of it.

And amusingly enough, during the Obama administration there were 299 miles of vehicle barriers and 350 miles of pedestrian fencing built.

Then there was the clever use of a modifier in his statement regarding the number of votes he received as a sitting president.

Obama was the last sitting president who ran for reelection prior to Trump. 

In terms of votes, Obama received 65,915,795 votes in 2012 compared with Trump’s 74,223,234 in 2020.

However, Obama’s number is 51.06% of the total votes cast in ’12 while Trump’s number is 46.8% of the total popular votes cast in ‘20.

So while, yes, Trump got more popular votes than Obama did, he got fewer votes on a percentage basis.

And then there’s the fact that Joe Biden received 81,282,632 votes, or 51.3% of the popular vote, which is even better than Obama’s 51.06% and significantly better than Trump’s 46.8%.

Final example: China. While Trump has called Xi Jinping a “brilliant man,” China is as much of a boogie man as illegal aliens.

Trump told the assembled in Warren:

“I charged hundreds of billions of dollars to China in tariffs and taxes. No other president has ever charged China 10 cents, and we’ve taken hundreds of billions of dollars.”

As the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) wrote in July 2022, “Two years ago, President Donald Trump signed what he called a ‘historic trade deal’ with China that committed China to purchase $200 billion of additional US exports before December 31, 2021. Today the only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure.”

Huh? Isn’t he the consummate dealmaker?

PIIE continues, “In the end, China bought only 58% of the US exports it had committed to purchase under the agreement, not even enough to reach its import levels from before the trade war. Put differently, China bought none of the additional $200 billion of exports Trump’s deal promised.”

Where do those “hundreds of billions of dollars” come from? Well, a non-trivial amount is from the pockets of people like those in Warren, every time they shop for goods at the local Walmart that are made in China. They are paying the price of tariffs.

The truth is hard. Bullshit is easy.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, writing primarily for the right column.

_____
MONDAY 10/7/24

That question is still up for debate at The Hustings. Email editors@thehustings.news with your thoughts and with your political leanings (independent of your pick for winner in the Vance v. Walz event) in the subject line.

Scroll down this page with the trackbar on the far right to read our center-column analysis, “Ohio Normal Meets Minnesota Nice,” with right-column commentary by guest contributing pundit Rich Corbett and left-column commentary by Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay.

You’ll not that Macaulay is back in the right column at the top of the page with his latest commentary, “Laws, Schmaws.”

Further down the page in the right column, don’t miss Macaulay’s “Advantage: Intellectual Arteriosclerosis” and “Where Have You Gone, Edward Gibbon?”

Sign up for our free newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.

_____
THURSDAY 10/3/24

By Stephen Macaulay

It is fair to say that all readers of The Hustings are law-abiding citizens. Meaning that we don’t do things like shoplift when we go pick up a prescription at CVS — you know, grab a package or razors or a stick of antiperspirant, whatever might not be locked behind a Plexiglas screen.

In fact, most Americans of all walks of life are law-abiding citizens.

So when someone says something about a way to address crime, we are probably interested because when those objects from CVS take the five-finger discount out of the store, we all eventually pay.

Convicted felon Donald Trump announced his plan for reducing theft during a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, last weekend:

“One rough hour — and I mean real rough — the word will get out and it will end immediately, you know? It will end immediately.”

The “rough hour” would be undertaken by law enforcement.

Presumably some people get pumped up by talk like that. After all, they think, they’re not criminals, they don’t steal things, so why not?

Why not have the people who serve and protect beat the hell out of people so those miscreants will never think about lifting even a free, proffered snack at Costco?

Maybe because it is against the law.

It is really sad that the man who wants to lead the country — a country that was heretofore one where people are expected to abide by the law, even if it means stopping at a red light in the middle of the night on a deserted street — is encouraging people to break the law — people whose job and sworn duty it is to uphold the law.

What if police officers were encouraged not only to smack down shoplifters but even other infractions? Forget the protections of the Fifth Amendment. Wait, that was to be suspended, too, on day one, along with the rest of the founding laws of the U.S.A.

What kind of country would this be? Certainly not the one that one that people have pledged to uphold and defend.

And what’s “Great” about that?

_____
THURSDAY 10/3/24

By Stephen Macaulay

As of August/early September JD Vance had a favorability rating of 36% among Americans and Tim Walz edged him out by 5%, at 41%, according to Gallup.

This means that Walz was tied with Mike Pence in 2020 and Vance was tied with Mike Pence in 2016.

Mike Pence is likely not voting for either of the two men.

But what Gallup also found was that 19% of U.S. adults don’t know who Walz is and 17% don’t know who Vance is.

Which puts the two men squabbling on TV with each other in perspective.

What’s more, the citizens of Houston, Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, Atlanta, and San Diego all had something else to view last night that was a solid concern of more than a slice of their populations: Major League Baseball playoff games.

The last time the Tigers were in the playoffs, for example, Obama was president.

While John Nance Garner is the name of an individual that only Ken Jennings might get (“Who was the 32^nd vice president?”), his comparison of the office to a bucket of warm spit is equaled by Will Rogers’ lesser-known “The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ‘How is the president?’”

Vance and Walz could have wrestled in a bucket of warm spit for nine minutes rather than the 90 spent talking and the effect might have been better.

It is commonly said that the purpose of a vice-presidential candidate is to serve as an attack dog for whoever is running for the top job. It is a shame that Don Rickles died in 2017 because he would have been superlative in that role.

But last night the two men were not attack dogs so much as somewhat-civil surrogates for their partners in politics.

Walz looked uncomfortable at the start, as though he wished he was wearing a Cabella’s cap and fishing at Lake Winnibigoshish.

Vance was his usual basilisk-like self.

The outlets that did fact-checking of what the candidates said pretty much indicated that Vance held forth with a litany of lies, although there was the tendency to be more euphemistic about what Vance said (“Misleading”? Really?). All I can say is that Vance must spend a whole lot of time in the confession booth.

While Walz wasn’t exactly a choir boy in some of his answers, The Washington Post’s fact checker seemed to go out of his way to throw shade at Walz, as though they were afraid the multiple “This is false” declarations appended to Vance’s lies would be a bit much for the readers.

Walz claimed:

“Donald Trump had four years. He had four years to do this. And he promised you, America, how easy it would be. ‘I’ll build you a big, beautiful wall, and Mexico will pay for it.’ Less than 2% of that wall got built, and Mexico didn’t pay a dime.”

And the Post assessed:

“The percentage is exaggerated. About 458 miles of a border barrier was built during Trump’s presidency, but most of it (373 miles) was replacement for existing primary or secondary barriers that were dilapidated or outdated, according to a January 22, 2021, report by Customs and Border Protection. About 52 miles was new primary wall, and 33 miles was new secondary wall. Trump had promised to build 1,000 miles of barrier, so even taking the lower numbers gets Trump 8.5 percent.”

Well, that’s one way of slicing the numbers. Another way is this:

The length of the border between the U.S. and Mexico is 1,954 miles. When Trump talked about his Wall, he didn’t mean fixed up portions or secondary structures. It was going to be a sight to behold, one that would strike fear into the hearts of anyone who dared gaze at it with a notion of trying to surmount it. (Fear, incidentally, is what the Trump-Vance team is big on when it comes to other countries.)

So Trump built 52 miles of wall. Which is 2.66% of 1,954.

Still, the overall assessment is that it was a tie.

In other words, fairly irrelevant.

Although there are those who claim there are those who are undecided or independent who’d be swayed one way or another — get serious:

1. People vote for the person running for president, not the vice president.
2. There was a lot of good baseball on last night.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings. A never-Trump conservative, his commentaries most often appear in our right column.

_____
WEDNESDAY 10/2/24

By Rich Corbett

As a conservative voter, my reaction to the vice-presidential debate is that Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) was rock-solid. He reinforced Republican strength when it comes to the economy, border and foreign policy stability. 

Vance was likable, polite, connectable, professional and convincingly competent. By Vance answering the moderators with … “you asked the question, so I’ll answer the question” … it reminded voters just how few answers we have received from Kamala Harris on her flip-flopped positions. As a running mate, he definitely is an asset to former President Donald Trump. 

As for Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), he did no harm to Kamala Harris. He was good enough on the Democrat positions in talking about health care and abortion, but less convincing that Trump is a “threat to democracy” or that Americans would see much change from the last three-and-a-half years. His defense over his past embellishments such as a visit to Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square in his non-answer, “I’m a knucklehead at times,” was memorable, but a reminder that politicians mislead — lie — if they think it will benefit their political future. 

If voters came to the debate not knowing JD Vance or with a negative impression, he likely improved his stature and may have advanced the Trump/Vance ticket. For Tim Walz and his “neighborly guy” image, it disappeared to what seemed artificial anger over January 6^th. He appeared far more nervousness than Vance and had difficulty in defending himself and Harris, but quickly deflect into to blaming Trump. It was a hard sell after three-and-a-half years of Biden/Harris. 

Corbett is a longtime reader and a contributor to The Hustings’ right column.

_____
WEDNESDAY 10/2/24