Donald Trump brought some props with him to his speech Wednesday, promoted as an opportunity to hear about the Republican presidential nominee\u2019s economic agenda: Tic Tacs.<\/p>\n
About halfway through his remarks, he held up two containers of the mints, one large, one small.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just happened to have \u2014 somebody gave me this one today,\u201d he said, referring to the small one. \u201cI said, I think we\u2019ll put it up as an example of inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The point, it seemed, was to show (as he did last year) how Tic Tac container sizes had shrunk while remaining the same price. (His assertion that his use of the mints was \u201cthe greatest commercial [Tic Tacs] ever had\u201d would therefore seem not to be true.) But he didn\u2019t actually make that point. He just held up the Tic Tacs.<\/p>\n
Never mind the irony of Donald Trump criticizing someone for making a promise to consumers that was misleading. It\u2019s also remarkable that Trump would emphasize that he carries around Tic Tacs, given that the mints were revealed as his breath-freshener of choice in the \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape.<\/p>\n
But the broader issue here is that Trump\u2019s \u201ceconomy\u201d speech was not a speech on the economy. It was a standard Trump campaign speech, with a few more lines about economic proposals slotted in on occasion.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the nearly 12,000 words spoken from the stage, about 2,000 actually detailed the economy. And even those were generally a mishmash of robotic teleprompter pledges and off-the-cuff riffs about whatever happened to be on Trump\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n
This is not what he promised beforehand or even as the speech got underway.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing this as a intellectual speech,\u201d he promised the raucous audience. \u201cYou\u2019re all intellectuals today. Today we\u2019re doing it, and we\u2019re doing it, right now. And it\u2019s very important. They say it\u2019s the most important subject.\u201d Later, he added that \u201cI\u2019m not sure it is. But they say it\u2019s the most important. Inflation is the most important. But that\u2019s part of economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Immediately after deciding that inflation counted as \u201ceconomy,\u201d Trump got started \u2026 by disparaging Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.<\/p>\n
\u201cKamala Harris wants to be in charge of the entire U.S. economy, but neither she nor her running mate \u2014 he\u2019s a beauty, isn\u2019t he?\u201d Trump said. \u201cHe signed a bill. He wants tampons in boys\u2019 bathrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n
What actually happened is that Walz signed a number of bills related to the state budget, one of which dealt with schools and included new funding for menstrual products that would be placed in school bathrooms. But here we are, already not talking about the economy.<\/p>\n
When he did talk about the economy, it generally went the way it did when he was talking about energy prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m announcing today that under my leadership, the United States will commit to the ambitious goal of slashing energy and electricity prices by half,\u201d he said, reading from the teleprompter. Then, he turned to the audience. \u201cAt least. Half.\u201d This is how Trump operates: He reads his prepared remarks and, almost invariably, has to juice them up. Cut them in half? Nah, at least half! Probably more!<\/p>\n
Back to the prompter: \u201cWe intend to slash prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.\u201d And then off-prompter again: \u201cAnd if it doesn\u2019t work out, you say, oh, well, I voted for him. I still got it down a lot, but we\u2019re looking to do it. We\u2019re looking to cut them in half, and we think we\u2019ll be able to do better. And every single thing that I promised, I produced. Every single thing. You will never have had energy so low as you will under a certain gentleman known as Donald J. Trump. Have you heard of him? So we think your energy bills will be down by 50 to 70 percent. How good would that be for a thing called inflation?\u201d<\/p>\n
Okay, sure. So how? Eventually he suggested it would be by increasing oil production, which has already hit record highs under President Joe Biden. But not before asides on how even doughnut shops need energy and about Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop.<\/p>\n
His central criticism of Biden\u2019s handling of the economy, which he blamed mostly on Harris for obvious reasons, is that bad things in the economy are functionally downstream from \u2014 wait for it \u2014 immigration. No wonder he began the speech by arguing that maybe the border is actually the most important subject.<\/p>\n
Harris, Trump said, had a \u201cthree-step plan to destroy Medicare and to destroy Social Security.\u201d Not cutting funding for those programs (which Trump\u2019s proposed budgets as president consistently endorsed). But, instead, because she \u201chas thrown open our borders,\u201d allowing immigrants to access those programs. Of course, unauthorized immigrants are generally not eligible for those programs, though portions of pay earned by many of those immigrants is withheld to help fund Social Security and Medicare. The other two steps of the three-step plan, incidentally, were in the same vein: misrepresenting both Harris\u2019s approach to immigration and the extent to which immigration strains government programs.<\/p>\n
After fearmongering about the purported threat of violence by immigrants, he summarized his argument: \u201cThe Kamala migrant invasion is also a major factor in crushing your wages and driving up the cost of health care and the cost of all of your goods.\u201d Wages are up significantly since 2021.<\/p>\n
Trump offered various other eyebrow-raising comments in the guise of discussing the economy. For the most part, though, he couldn\u2019t help but simply revert to campaign mode, despite telling the intellectuals in the audience that the speech would not be a political rally.<\/p>\n
He spent 21 words talking about how he wants to lower prescription drug prices (without going into detail), hours before the Biden administration announced billions in savings from allowing the government to negotiate purchase prices. Trump also spent 90 words insulting Harris\u2019s laugh. And that contrast, perhaps better than anything, encapsulates his speech.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump brought some props with him to his speech Wednesday, promoted as an opportunity to hear about the Republican presidential nominee\u2019s economic agenda: Tic Tacs. About halfway through his remarks, he held up two containers of the mints, one large, one small. \u201cI just happened to have \u2014 somebody gave me this one today,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}