Many “distortions” in Trump letter, says reader

December 7, 2016 · 0 Comments

(Re: Media “controlled” election message”, December 1)

There are many distortions in the letter “Media ‘controlled’ election message” that was published in The Auroran on December 1.
The writer says Donald Trump was unfairly labelled racist by the media. Apparently she has successfully managed to overlook the long list of racist remarks candidate Trump made that have been recorded on audio and video.
He has refused to disavow the Ku Klux Klan, labelled American born Judge Gonzalo Curiel as biased because he was “Mexican” after the judge ruled against him in a lawsuit, characterized illegal immigrants from Mexico as “rapists”, and repeatedly demonized Muslims because of their religion.
His real estate company was sued by the Justice Department in the 70s for violating the Fair Housing Act by refusing to rent to African Americans. Is this behaviour “racist” or just “insensitive” as the writer would have us believe? His election win appears to have increased racially motivated attacks, not only in the U.S. but in Canada.
Media bias? The New York Times estimated that during the campaign Donald Trump received around $2 billion worth of unpurchased media exposure, during which many of his outrageous remarks were not fact-checked in any significant way by main-stream media.
This may reveal media bias, but certainly not anti-Trump bias. A number of web sites and news organizations attempted to fact check many of Trump’s pronouncements and found that he lied 70% of the time.
It’s also worth noting that the letter’s suggestion that the Obama administration somehow damaged the U.S. economy is a bit ridiculous.
Certainly the national debt increased during Obama’s administration as it did significantly during the Bush administration. George W. Bush nearly doubled the debt by giving big tax cuts to the already wealthy, starting two wars, and presiding over a historic economic crash in 2008. Obama inherited all these liabilities from Bush including the huge monetary bailouts for the financial players who were largely responsible for the crash and recession in the first place.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate at the end of Bush’s term in 2008 was 7.3%. At the end of 2009, it was 9.9% but this can hardly be blamed on Obama since he inherited Bush’s budget and recession. It now stands at 4.6%. This can hardly be called mismanagement of the economy by Obama.
The home ownership rate is low because the housing bubble burst in 2008 at the end of Bush’s presidency, and subsequently the banks foreclosed, sometimes illegally, on record numbers of homeowners after tightening the rules for taking out mortgage loans.
No, Donald Trump will not be the saviour of the white working class. He didn’t even win the popular vote in the election. If his recent selection of the wealthiest cabinet in American history is any indication, he will continue to be the bloviating con man he has always been and will likely profit from it. Let’s hope his history of business bankruptcies which stiffed shareholders, creditors and working people alike doesn’t carry over to his management of the American economy to the detriment of the world.

John Connolley
Aurora