sotu state union speech

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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">stand up for seniors and they did; preempted hostage?</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">an 2 23 no vid? twt</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Ex-GOP congressman: 'Awful' Marjorie Taylor Greene should face 'censure' for heckling the State of the Union</font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement February 08, 2023</div><div>   </div><div>U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) numerous times heckled President Joe Biden as he delivered the State of the Union Address, including repeatedly calling him a “liar.”</div><div>
</div><div>Not in modern history has anyone so clearly disturbed the decorum of the nationally-televised event watched live by 40 million Americans. Not even U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who infamously also called the President a liar – “You lie!” – during another nationally-televised event, that one by President Barack Obama in September of 2009.</div><div>
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</div><div>OBAMA YOU LIE</div><div>youtu.be]</div><div>
</div><div>Tuesday night Congresswoman Greene repeatedly yelled, “You lie!” and, “Liar!” at President Biden, who, ironically, was sitting one seat back from his current position the last time it happened.</div><div>
</div><div>Here is that moment:</div><div>
</div><div>\u201cRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yells <b>"you lie, you lie" and "liar" after President Biden says Republicans are proposing to sunset Medicare and Social Security.</b>\u201d</div><div>— The Recount (@The Recount) 1675824479</div><div>Greene also heckled President Biden at other times throughout his speech – something she and Rep. Lauren Boebert did one year ago, also during the State of the Union.</div><div>
</div><div>Republican former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger Tuesday night tweeted, “Did @RepMTG just yell ‘liar’?! Awful. Yet she will not be punished in response.”</div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: ‘Salute Their Flags’: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Appears to Attack LGBTQ Americans and BLM During Angry GOP SOTU Response</div><div>
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</div><div>He then called for Greene’s censure – and called for her fellow Republicans to do it.</div><div>
</div><div>“The GOP should lead the censure of @RepMTG for her behavior,” Kinzinger tweeted.</div><div>
</div><div>He wasn’t done.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Posting a screenshot of Greene standing during the State of the Union heckling President Biden, with her thumb pointing down, Kinzinger asked, “My fellow Republicans… you really want this as a role model for your kids? Do you really think the next generation will want to be part of this? I don’t.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Kinzinger went one step further, reposting a tweet likening Congresswoman Greene to the fictional Disney villain Cruella de Vil – a comparison many on social media had been making during the evening’s event.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Representative Joe Wilson was formally rebuked by the House on Tuesday for his outburst during President Obama’s health care address,” The New York Times reported, less than a week after what was at the time an unthinkable act. “The vote came after a Congressional clash over civility that showcased the deep partisan divisions in the House</span>.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Congressman Wilson also apologized for calling President Obama a “liar,” barely hours after his outburst.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill,” he said in a statement. “While I disagree with the President’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Congresswoman Greene likely will not apologize, and likely will not face any formal rebuke.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> =</font></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cdv salon an 3 22</font></p><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I voted for Joe Biden in 2020. He was the best option available for defeating Donald Trump and buying time to organize a defense of American democracy against the neofascist assault. More than a year into Biden's first term in office, I have no regrets. I'd make that same decision again.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Despite tremendous obstruction from the Republican fascists (and their "centrist" allies embedded within the Democratic Party) — a group of sadists determined to cause maximum harm to the American people as a way of obtaining, keeping and expanding political power — Biden has accomplished a great deal as president. </b>This includes slowing down the coronavirus plague, resuscitating the economy, taking long-overdue steps to fix the country's infrastructure and restoring America's leadership role in the world.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a moment of great crisis when Vladimir Putin and Russia are waging war on Ukraine, to know that America has a leader who, unlike his predecessor, is intelligent, experienced and patriotic, as well as mentally and emotionally stable, brings no small amount of relief. Moreover, one does not have to ask the obvious questions that circled around Trump like flies around manure on a summer's day: "Is the president of the United States merely a useful idiot and stooge for Russia, or is he actually an agent and saboteur?" That too brings considerable peace of mind.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED: Biden calls out the attack on democracy: But he didn't just mean Vladimir Putin</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By all accounts Joe Biden is a humble, honorable and decent man who loves his family, has experienced great challenges and losses in life but has not succumbed to bitterness. That also signals to a type of wisdom demanded by the many crises facing the United States and the world.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To see Joe Biden, who overcame a significant speech impediment as a child, give the State of the Union address while millions of people around the world watched — and to watch him stammer occasionally while doing so — shows him to be a role model of perseverance, humanity, and vulnerability. He has been weathered by life, sometimes badly beaten down, and is still standing.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there has always been a lingering doubt that gnaws at me as I watch Biden's presidency unfold in a time of plague and political crisis, and in a moment where America's present and future are nebulous and greatly in doubt. Unfortunately, his State of the Union address only served to reinforce my anxiety.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joe Biden is a career politician who is now the leader of the free world and arguably the most powerful person on the planet. And like all politicians, he is a disappointment<b>. Biden is far too quick to seek "compromise" with the Republican fascists </b>— which mostly means outright capitulation. He represents the interests of big corporations at least as much as those of the American people. He is a professional centrist. He will in all likelihood never cancel student loan debt or make other efforts at great and lasting economic relief. Although driven by circumstance to embrace more progressive policies, Biden was one of the Clinton-era "New Democrats" who helped unleash neoliberalism and gangster capitalism on American society, greatly damaging the middle class he claims to care so much about.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My greatest worry about Biden is simple: America needs a fighting champion if its democracy is to be saved. To this point, as this week's State of the Union address made clear once again, he does not appear to be up to that challenge.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In total, Biden's speech was an attempt to claim credit for his administration's many successes and to soothe an anxious American public that is deeply worried about the war in Ukraine, the economy and the pandemic. On that account, public opinion polls show that the speech was successful.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein offers this generous summary, arguing that Biden's speech "portrayed him as a resolute champion of financially squeezed families at home and freedom abroad":</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Repeatedly through the speech, Biden rejected stark political choices. </b>Vigorous at points, meandering at others, the speech was neither a full-scale course correction, like Bill Clinton's 1996 declaration that "the era of big government is over," nor a stubborn reaffirmation of the strategies Biden employed during his trying first year in office. The president at times gave each faction in his party reasons to cheer, but did not align entirely with either liberals or centrists.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, the address showed Biden and his advisers trying to define a distinctive political space centered on providing kitchen-table assistance to average families, encouraging greater national unity, and reasserting America's role as the leader of the small-d democratic world against challenges from aggressive autocracies symbolized by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The speech was the performance of a president who remains confident in his political compass, even as the steep and persistent decline in his job-approval ratings since last summer has caused many people in both parties to question it. Throughout, Biden underscored his determination to combine positions often considered incompatible…</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Biden also, as Brownstein observes, reverted to his habit of seeking to placate Republicans and to distance himself from Democratic progressives:</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Toward Republicans, Biden was alternately conciliatory (proposing "a unity agenda" and praising their involvement in the bipartisan infrastructure bill) and confrontational (denouncing Donald Trump's tax cuts and the surge of red-state laws rolling back civil rights and liberties). He pointedly renounced one of the most polarizing battle cries of his own party's liberal vanguard, calling to "fund the police" rather than "defund the police," while reasserting his commitment to criminal-justice reform and gun control, both enduring priorities for the left.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What was most notably absent from Biden's speech was any forceful and sustained discussion of the country's democracy crisis, the role of the Republicans in creating and amplifying it, and the fact that we now face a moment where the voting rights and civil rights — indeed, the fundamental human rights — of Black and brown people (along with members of other marginalized groups) are under existential threat from a new Jim Crow system.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Black Americans are among the Democratic Party's most important constituencies, and its most loyal voters. Without the support of Black people in both the Democratic primaries and the general election, and especially the support of Black women, Joe Biden would not be president today.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During Biden's victory speech in November 2020, he said: "Especially at those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. You've always had my back, and I'll have yours." Those are fine words, but in terms of protecting Black America's voting rights and civil rights, Biden and his administration have not lived up to them.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED: Media messes up coverage of voting rights, blames Biden for GOP's racism</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>His State of the Union speech was one more example of that failure. In several key moments, Biden signaled that he is temperamentally unable to do what is necessary to stop the Republican fascists' attempt(s) to end multiracial democracy.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden repeatedly spoke of the need to "unify" Democrats and Republicans. That means seeking "unity" with those who actively tried to nullify the 2020 election and supported a violent coup to prevent him from becoming president. Moreover, the Republican fascists have in no way ended their campaign to end American democracy and terminate Biden's presidency.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden often speaks boldly about American democracy being in crisis, and draws eloquently upon the images and legacy of the civil rights movement and Black Freedom Struggle while doing so. But he does not act with the "urgency of now" in seeking to defend that democracy.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reasons for Biden's behavior are not mysterious. He is the product of an American political regime that is dying, but whose leaders and principal figures have, for the most part, not realized that fact. Biden genuinely believes that as a leading member of the American political caste he can somehow save the country's obsolescent political order. He is a Washington insider, an older white man and a "moderate". Once upon a time that might have meant that Republican leaders would work with him in good faith to find solutions to the country's many problems.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But in believing that is still true, Biden has committed a grievous error: Today's Republican Party and "conservative" movement comprise a revolutionary force, which seeks to destroy American democracy and replace it with fascism or some other form of authorit</b>arianism.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Biden speaks of "unity" or "compromise" with the Republicans he is giving aid and comfort to the neofascist movement --if not surrendering to it altogether. In a recent essay for the New York Times, Charles Blow echoes these concerns as embodied by Joe Biden's description of Mitch McConnell as his friend:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, how can Biden maintain that McConnell is an honest, honorable friend?</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It seems that Biden suffers from the same blind spot as other white liberal leaders throughout history: looking past the oppressive impulses of other white men to see kinship and commonality. Where the oppressed see an existential threat, men like Biden only seem to see a disagreement among decent men on a political issue. They see them as simply on the "other side" rather than "other than."…</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But this version of politics is an extension of the Looney Tunes cartoon of Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog, where they are enemies on the clock but are friends off the clock, and is offensive to the people whose very lives are at stake. And yet Biden continues to proclaim his affections for those supporting oppression.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These bonds across bigotry smack of the insecurity of allies. They smack of a privilege of which only white men can boast, because the threat is almost always aimed away for them and at others.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it comes to the issue of power and politics, the Bidens and McConnells of the world maintain their own affinity group.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an essay for the Guardian, Thomas Zimmer expands on this:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the past few weeks, President Joe Biden has repeatedly emphasized his friendship with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. At the National Prayer Breakfast in early February, for instance, he praised McConnell as "a man of your word. And you're a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Biden's publicly professed affinity is weirdly at odds with the political situation. Going back to the Obama era, McConnell has led the Republican Party in a strategy of near-total obstruction which he has pursued with ruthless cynicism</b>. It is true that he has, at times, signaled distance to Donald Trump and condemned the January 6 insurrection. But McConnell is also sabotaging any effort to counter the Republican party's ongoing authoritarian assault on the political system.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The distinct asymmetry in the way the two sides treat each other extends well beyond Biden and McConnell. …</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option and a return to "normalcy" imminent.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I actually like Mitch McConnell," Biden said during a press conference a few weeks ago, providing a window into what he sees in Republicans: No matter what they do, underneath they're good guys, they'll snap out of it. Promise. It's the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of Republican radicalization — a perspective that severely hampers the fight for the survival of American democracy….</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some weeks ago, a prominent Black comedian asked on Twitter if Joe Biden thought that, because he's a white man, it meant Republicans would work with him in ways they refused to with Barack Obama? The answer to that question appears to be yes.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED: Mitch McConnell's moment of truth: For many whites, Black people aren't real "Americans"</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whiteness is almost never a liability in American society. But when it comes to the Republican fascists, Joe Biden's skin color may not be helping him much. The Republicans, their followers and their media sycophants view Biden as the white leader of a predominantly Black and brown political party. (That is of course false, but the truth is irrelevant to the Republican fascists and larger white right.) In their eyes, Biden is a "race traitor," even if they do not use that exact term. For the Republican fascists and larger white right, no compromise is possible: Their almost-explicit goal is to create a 21st-century Herrenvolk society in which Black and brown people, to quote the infamous words of Chief Justice Roger Taney, have no rights the white man is bound to respect.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden and too many other white liberals and moderates continue to believe that compromise with the Republicans is still possible, and that finding "common ground" can redeem this moment of democratic crisis. That kind of white racial innocence may well be America's undoing.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">transcript</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://time.com/5777857/state-of-the-union-transcript-2020/">https://time.com/5777857/state-of-the-union-transcript-2020/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/fact-checking-president-trumps-2020-state-union-address/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/fact-checking-president-trumps-2020-state-union-address/</a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div>Fact Checker</div><div>Analysis</div><div>Fact-checking President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address</div><div>By </div><div>Glenn Kessler, </div><div>Salvador Rizzo and </div><div>Sarah Cahlan </div><div>February 4, 2020 </div><div>
</div><div>President Trump’s State of the Union speech once again was chock-full of stretched facts and dubious figures. Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them. Here, in the order in which he made them, are 31 statements by the president.</div><div>
</div><div>As is our practice with live events, we do not award Pinocchio ratings, which are reserved for complete columns.</div><div>
</div><div>“I am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been.”</div><div>
</div><div>The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. Our database of Trump claims shows he has made a variation of this claim some 260 times. There are several metrics one could look at, but the current economy falls short, according to experts we consulted. The unemployment rate reached a low of 3.5 percent under Trump, but it was as low as 2.5 percent in 1953. Trump has never achieved an annual growth rate above 3 percent, but in 1997, 1998 and 1999, the gross domestic product grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. But even that period paled against the 1950s and 1960s. Growth between 1962 and 1966 ranged from 4.4 percent to 6.6 percent. In 1950 and 1951, it was 8.7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the U.S. economy … enacting historic and record-setting tax cuts.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump constantly claims he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history, but that’s Four-Pinocchios false. The best way to compare tax cuts (or spending plans) over time is to measure them as a percentage of the national economy. The Trump tax cut, according to Treasury Department data, is nearly 0.9 percent of GDP — compared with 2.89 percent of GDP for Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, the actual largest tax cut. When measured as a share of the U.S. economy, Trump’s tax cut is the eighth-largest in the past century.</div><div>
</div><div>“Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump often inflates the number of jobs created under his presidency by counting from Election Day, rather than when he took the oath of office. There have been almost 6.7 million jobs created since February 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><b>Job creation under President Barack Obama’s last three years, 227,000 a month, still exceeds the monthly average of 191,000 a month under Trump.</b></div><div>
</div><div>“Incredibly, the average unemployment rate under my administration is lower than any administration in the history of our country.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is worth fact-checking because the average over three years is hardly comparable to a four- or eight-year average for other presidents. For example, the unemployment rate average was lower in Lyndon B. Johnson’s second term than it has been under Trump. But when Johnson’s first term is factored in, Trump gains the edge.</div><div>
</div><div>“The unemployment rate for disabled Americans has reached an all-time low.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported this rate since 2008, so it’s a big stretch to call it an “all-time low.” The rate was 7 percent in December.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>“Under my administration, 7 million Americans have come off of food stamps.”</div><div>
</div><div>About 6 million people (not 7 million) have stopped receiving food stamps since February 2017, according to the latest data. (An earlier version of this article offered an out of date number.) But experts say the improvement in the economy may not be the only reason for the decline. Several states have rolled back recession-era waivers that allowed some adults to keep their benefits for longer periods of time without employment. Reports have also suggested immigrant families with citizen children have dropped out of the program, fearing the administration’s immigration policies. Moreover, the number of people collecting benefits has been declining since fiscal year 2014.</div><div>
</div><div>“In eight years under the last administration, over 300,000 working-age people dropped out of the workforce. In just three years of my administration, 3.5 million people, working-age people, have joined the workforce.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Trump never seems to remember — or prefers to forget — that Obama took office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, when 800,000 jobs a month were being shed. The labor force participation rate fell, sharply, as millions of jobs were eliminated and people had trouble finding work. In January 2009, the labor force participation rate was 65.7 percent, and it fell to 62.8 percent by the time Obama left office. It has since inched up a bit, to 63.2 percent, under Trump, but it is still not back to pre-recession levels of 66 percent.</div><div>
</div><div>As for Trump’s math here, we’re not able to replicate it. Over the course of Obama’s two terms, labor force participation times the working-age population gets you a gain of about 5.5 million under Obama and nearly 5 million under Trump. (Update: On Feb. 6, we published a full fact check of this statistic.)</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“This is a blue-collar boom.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the past year, things have gotten grimmer for many blue-collar workers. The manufacturing sector is in a technical recession, and only 9,000 manufacturing jobs have been gained since June, compared with the 460,000 in the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency. Job growth has slowed in many “blue-collar” sectors such as transportation, construction and mining.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>“Since my election, the net worth of the bottom half of wage earners has increased by 47 percent — three times faster than the increase for the top 1 percent.”</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Trump is just spinning here. Net worth for the bottom half has gone up, but it was from such a low base that it’s pretty silly to call it a boom.</b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">People in the bottom half have essentially no wealth — just 1.6 percent of the nation’s wealth — as debts cancel out whatever assets they might have. The top 5 percent hold more than 70 percent of all net worth in the United States.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>“Everybody said that criminal justice reform couldn’t be done, but I got it done and the people in this room got it done.”</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Trump signed the First Step Act in 2018. One of the biggest pieces of the First Step Act — a provision that reduced sentences for crack cocaine offenses — was an extension of Obama’s efforts in 2010.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We gave Three Pinocchios to Trump for claiming that he accomplished what Obama could not. (In his speech tonight, Trump didn’t mention Obama when discussing the criminal justice law.)</span></div><div>
</div><div>“All of those millions of people with 401(k)s and pensions are doing far better than they have ever done before with increases of 60, 70, 80, 90 and even 100 percent.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump often boasts that the value of 401(k) retirement accounts has skyrocketed during his presidency, even though there’s no evidence of such huge gains and even though the Census Bureau reports only 32 percent of Americans are saving for retirement with such plans. An analysis by Fidelity Investments showed the average 401(k) balance increased less than 1 percent when comparing the first quarters of 2018 and 2019.</div><div>
</div><div>“Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world, by far.”</div><div>
</div><div>The notion that a revolution in energy began under the Trump administration is wrong. The United States has led the world in natural gas production since 2009. Crude oil production has been increasing rapidly since 2010. The United States was the top producer in 2013. In September 2018, the United States once again passed both Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the largest global crude oil producer. But the energy revolution he takes credit for began under Obama.</div><div>
</div><div>“With the tremendous progress we have made over the past three years, America is now energy independent.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is false. The United States continues to import energy. “In 2018, the United States imported about 9.94 million barrels per day (MMb/d) of petroleum from nearly 90 countries,” according to an Energy Information Agency report, with 43 percent coming from Canada and 16 percent from Persian Gulf countries.</div><div>
</div><div>“After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new factories under my administration, with thousands upon thousands of plants and factories being planned or built.”</div><div>
</div><div>“Factories” conjures up images of smokestacks and production lines, but the data set Trump cited is not really about factories.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump is using a Bureau of Labor Statistics database set known as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. The data show that United States gained nearly 12,000 additional “manufacturing establishments” between the first quarter of 2017 through the second quarter of 2019. (There was also a gain of 10,000 in Obama’s second term.)</div><div>
</div><div><b>But more than 80 percent of these “manufacturing establishments” employ five or fewer people.</b> If those sound like pretty small factories, that’s because many are not “factories.” The BLS counts any establishment “engaged in the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products,” s<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">o that also includes businesses “that transform materials or substances into new products by hand or in the worker’s home and those engaged in selling to the general public products made on the same premises from which they are sold, such as bakeries, candy stores, and custom tailors.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>“Following NAFTA’s adoption, our nation lost one in four manufacturing jobs.”</div><div>
</div><div>This is misleading, as Trump attributes all manufacturing lost to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) when many other factors were responsible, such as automation and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.</div><div>
</div><div>“Many politicians came and went, pledging to change or replace NAFTA — only to do so and then absolutely nothing happened. But unlike so many who came before me, I keep my promises. We did our job. Six days ago, I replaced NAFTA and signed the brand new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) into law.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>The USMCA is a modest reworking of NAFTA launched in 1994, with about 85 to 90 percent the same as the deal Trump repeatedly trashed as terrible.</b></div><div>
</div><div>The U.S. International Trade Commission, which is tasked with evaluating the impact of trade agreements, calculated the new deal would have a relatively minor impact: The USMCA would raise U.S. real gross domestic product by $68.2 billion (0.35 percent) and U.S. employment by 176,000 jobs (0.12 percent). (The report actually said USMCA will cause growth to decline by 0.12 percent, but then made some assumptions about investment and an end of policy uncertainty to achieve positive growth. Some analysts found those assumptions dubious.)</div><div>
</div><div>“The USMCA will create nearly 100,000 new high-paying American auto jobs.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>This is a dubious figure; we often warn readers to be wary of job-creation claims.</b> The USITC report said the agreement would create about 28,000 jobs in the auto sector. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative estimated that the deal would support 76,000 jobs in the auto sector -- 22,800 assembly jobs and then additional auto supply jobs.</div><div>
</div><div>“To safeguard American liberty, we have invested a record-breaking $2.2 trillion in the United States military.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Trump is just talking about three years of defense funding added up together. On an inflation-adjusted basis, not one year of Trump’s defense budgets has exceeded the high point in 2010 under Obama.</b></div><div>
</div><div>“I have raised contributions from the other NATO members by more than $400 billion, and the number of allies meeting their minimum obligations has more than doubled.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump gives himself too much credit. Since 2006, each NATO member has had a guideline of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense spending. Defense expenditures for NATO countries other than the United States have been going up — in a consistent slope — since 2014. That’s when NATO decided to boost spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region. NATO estimates that its European members and Canada will add $130 billion in cumulative defense spending through 2020, in 2015 dollars, as an increase over 2016 spending. NATO also estimates the cumulative figure will rise to $400 billion through 2024.</div><div>
</div><div>“Before I took office, health insurance premiums had more than doubled in just five years. I moved quickly to provide affordable alternatives. Our new plans are up to 60 percent less expensive.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump often makes this claim, but we have not been able to verify the claim of a 60 percent reduction in costs. The new short-term health plans authorized by the Trump administration are less expensive for a reason: They offer skimpier coverage and thus provide less protection. As for the doubling in health insurance premiums, that claim is based on a White House report that made some questionable methodological choices.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In an ongoing court case, the Trump administration is supporting a total repeal of the Affordable Care Act — including its guarantee that patients can’t be denied coverage for preexisting conditions. Republicans in Congress tried for years to repeal the whole law. Trump has not presented a plan to cover the gaps in case the court challenge is successful. Moreover, he has promoted short-term plans (which he touted in his speech) that are not required to cover preexisting conditions.</span></div><div>
</div><div>“Through our Pledge to American Workers, over 400 companies will also provide new jobs and education opportunities to almost 15 million Americans.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump usually describes this as jobs already created, but apparently his language was tamed by a teleprompter. These are not new jobs but training opportunities. Moreover, the numbers reflect pledges over a five-year period, not something already achieved. Many companies signed up by offering training programs that already existed.</div><div>
</div><div>“I was pleased to announce last year that, for the first time in 51 years, the cost of prescription drugs actually went down.”</div><div>
</div><div>The consumer price index for prescription drugs in 2018 fell for the first time in 46 years. But that’s only when measuring calendar years from January to December, which is somewhat arbitrary. The president’s record shrinks to 5½ years when measuring non-calendar years. (The CPI had last declined in the 12-month period ended July 2013.)</div><div>
</div><div>Experts say the CPI for prescription drugs fails to account for rebates, which can be substantial, and may be giving a skewed picture because of recent market shifts toward generics and electronic payments by third parties. Studies we found show drug prices have not declined, especially when it comes to branded drugs.</div><div>
</div><div>“As we speak, a long, tall, and very powerful wall is being built. We have now completed over 100 miles and have over 500 miles fully completed in a very short period of time. Early next year, we will have substantially more than 500 miles completed.”</div><div>
</div><div>Trump doubled down on a promise for 500 miles of new border fencing by “early next year,” which would require the current pace of construction to more than double. Department of Homeland Security officials have been trying to lower expectations lately, saying they will have that much built or “under construction.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>He also exaggerates the barrier’s sturdiness. The Washington Post has reported that the steel-and-concrete bollard fence can be cut through with a souped-up power saw and that a series of large floodgates “must be left open for months every summer during ‘monsoon season’ in the desert.</b>”</div><div>
</div><div>“With unyielding commitment, we are curbing the opioid epidemic. Drug overdose deaths declined for the first time in nearly 30 years.”</div><div>
</div><div>Overall, drug overdose deaths fell in 2018 for the first time in 28 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But fentanyl overdose deaths increased 10 percent.</div><div>
</div><div>“Last year, our brave ICE officers arrested more than 120,000 criminal aliens charged with nearly 10,000 burglaries, 5,000 sexual assaults, 45,000 violent assaults and 2,000 murders.”</div><div>
</div><div>Many of the “criminal aliens” Trump is describing are immigrants who were convicted of immigration or nonviolent offenses. He quickly switched from the total for ICE arrests (120,000) to a different number that includes all the different charges. It’s a misleading, apples-and-oranges comparison because one individual may face multiple charges — and not all arrests result in convictions.</div><div>
</div><div>“Before I came into office, if you showed up illegally on our southern border and were arrested, you were simply released and allowed into our country, never to be seen again. My administration has ended catch-and-release. If you come illegally, you will now be promptly removed from our country. Very importantly, we entered into historic cooperation agreements with the governments of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. As a result of our unprecedented efforts, illegal crossings are down 75 percent since May — dropping eight straight months in a row. And as the wall rapidly goes up, drug seizures rise, and border crossings are going down.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Trump administration has tried but has not ended catch-and-release, the policy of releasing asylum seekers and refugees — many of them women and children — into the country while they await a hearing in the clogged U.S. immigration court system. Immigrants continue to be released.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Southwest border apprehensions dropped 75 percent when measuring from May to December, but when looking at all of Trump’s presidency, the gains are almost negligible: 42,359 apprehensions in January 2017, and 40,620 in December 2019.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“In the Senate, we have confirmed a record number of<b> 187 new federal judges.”</b></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s not a record. Trump has a long way to go to have appointed the most federal judges. Reagan has the record, with 383, followed by Bill Clinton with 378 and then Obama with 329. Through Jan. 18, 187 judges nominated by Trump have been confirmed by the Senate. (The Trump campaign notes that Trump ranks second in terms of judges confirmed at this point in his presidency, after Jimmy Carter, and first in appeals court judges.)</span></div><div>
</div><div>“Forty million American families have an average $2,200 extra thanks to our child tax credit.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This is an example of Trump using correct numbers, but he gives too much credit to himself and his Republican colleagues. The child tax credit has existed since 1997, and it has been expanded since then, including in the recent tax law. In 2016, under Obama, 35 million American families took the tax credit, with an average benefit of over $1,500 a year, according to the Treasury Department. So there’s only been a modest increase (in part because of inflation).</span></div><div>
</div><div>“Three years ago, the barbarians of ISIS held over 20,000 square miles of territory in Iraq and Syria. Today, the ISIS territorial caliphate has been 100 percent destroyed, and the founder and leader of ISIS — the bloodthirsty killer known as Al-Baghdadi — is dead!”</div><div>
</div><div><b>The U.S. military warned, in a report issued the day Trump spoke, that the Islamic State remained a dangerous threat and that the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not degrade the group’s capabilities</b>. “USCENTCOM told the DoD OIG [Office of the Inspector General] that following the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s capabilities in Syria remained the same,” the report said. “USCENTCOM said that ISIS remained cohesive, with an intact command and control structure, urban clandestine networks, and an insurgent presence in much of rural Syria.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Qasem Soleimani … directed the December assault and went on to assault U.S. forces in Iraq, and was actively planning new attacks.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Other than Trump’s assertion, there is no publicly available evidence that Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani directed the December attacks or that any possible attack was imminent.</span></div><div>
</div><div>(About our rating scale)</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref seidel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://religiondispatches.org/amid-reality-tv-gimmicks-and-xenophobic-rhetoric-trumps-sotu-appeals-to-evangelicals/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://religiondispatches.org/amid-reality-tv-gimmicks-and-xenophobic-rhetoric-trumps-sotu-appeals-to-evangelicals/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">since late December, 2019, when retiring editor-in-chief of Christianity Today Mark Galli published his infamous “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” editorial, there’s been a great deal of buzz in the pundit class over whether Trump, after a highly publicized impeachment trial, needs to be concerned with possible defections in his white evangelical base. From an analytical standpoint, the buzz is mere noise, horse race politics nonsense from people who don’t understand that most white evangelicals have long since come to regard CT as “too liberal.” As John Stoehr observed on RD back in December, “It’s not going to change much.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And, what many failed to notice or recall, is that the editorial itself was entirely milquetoast, attacking only Trump’s “gross immorality and ethical incompetence,” while agreeing with Trump-supporting evangelicals that “his Supreme Court nominees, his defense of religious liberty, and his stewardship of the economy” are among “the president’s positives.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although this editorial was never going to make a dent in the unflagging support Trump counts on from his white evangelical base, he seems to have been scared enough by the furor around it to start ramping up his evangelical outreach. It’s probably no coincidence that Trump recently became the first U.S. president to address the radical anti-choice “March for Life” event in person.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given that the vast majority of white evangelicals, America’s single most right-wing demographic, are Christian nationalists, we should have expected a substantial presence of Christian nationalist rhetoric in yesterday’s State of the Union Address, along with coded nods to specific evangelical concerns about abortion, schooling, and “religious freedom.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Indeed, all these elements were present in a speech packed chock-full of “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” along with reality-show gimmicks including a surprise reunion of Trump guest Amy Williams and her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Townshend Williams, and<b> awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to right-wing radio charlatan Rush Limbaugh, whose advanced lung cancer diagnosis does nothing to erase his substantial contributions to the destruction of America’s information ecosystem.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s appreciation for post-truth bluster and militarism are certainly among the characteristics that endear him to the Christian Right. And while he remains most in his element with the jingoistic rhetoric of borders, “heroes,” economic protectionism, and “criminal” immigrants, over the last few years Trump has become visibly more comfortable using language that more directly appeals to the conservative, mostly white evangelicals and radical traditionalist Catholics who represent his base, and with whom he has surrounded himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To those with “eyes to see,” Trump’s first clear appeal to the Christian Right came in his use of the phrase “failing government schools” in the midst of his calling for the expansion of “school choice” voucher policies. As a few observers on Twitter pointed out, notably religious studies professor Julie Ingersoll, the pejorative term “government schools” is a hallmark of Christian Reconstructionism, a radical theocratic ideology whose exponents believe that public education should be abolished in favor of homeschooling and/or Christian schools.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Ingersoll’s research demonstrates, such ideas have been mainstreamed in evangelicalism precisely through the spread of Christian schooling and the deregulation of homeschooling, thanks to Christian Reconstructionist influence on curricula.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">julie ingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@julieingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump calls public schools "government schools," a dog whistle to evangelicals and an indication of wide-ranging influence of Christian reconstructionism #SOTU @C_Stroop @profagagne</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">389</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6:43 PM - Feb 4, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">206 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chrissy in the Dumbest Dystopia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@C_Stroop</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> · Feb 4, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Replying to @cutrightest @julieingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They’re not exactly the same thing but Christian Reconstructionism is very racist. But I guess the rhetoric is older:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://t.co/3ng03XqUNY https://twitter.com/julieingersoll/status/1224899037117272065?s=21 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">julie ingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@julieingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I suspect #Rushdoony got it from J. Gresham Machen in the 20s. https://twitter.com/C_Stroop/status/1224898284491173888 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">julie ingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@julieingersoll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I'd say that Rushdoony brought the language into modern popular Evangelical usage as he developed the "biblical" defense of Christian education and the rejection of public education.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">15</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7:40 PM - Feb 4, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See julie ingersoll's other Tweets</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump’s subsequent appeals to his white evangelical base were more obvious. </b>Right after touting the confirmation of new federal judges on his watch, including “two brilliant new Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,” the president boasted about his administration’s “defense of religious liberty, [which] includes the Constitutional right to pray in public schools.” While this right has never in fact been contested, it’s a longstanding evangelical tactic to disingenuously conflate the constitutional ban on school-sponsored prayer with the generic “prayer in schools,” which makes for a more effective rallying cry to agitate the faithful.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">From here, Trump launched into a bizarrely manic description of what “we” do in America, rhetoric that reinforces the authoritarian urge to define “the nation” or “the people” in a way that excludes othered groups:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In America, we do not punish prayer. We do not tear down crosses. We do not ban symbols of faith. We do not muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Few Americans would disagree with the first four sentences, all of which, with certain caveats, represent clearly protected First Amendment freedoms. (If, for example, the proverbial cross happens to be located in a public space that doesn’t permit equal representation to other faiths, then yes, the cross might be removed according to the Constitution.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The last three sentences, however, are a different matter, as they’re clearly meant to define America as a religious nation to the exclusion of non-believers. And, given the proximity of these statements to Trump’s invocation of crosses, it’s no stretch to read these sentences as defining America as a specifically Christian nation.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s awkward transition from this Christian nationalist rhetoric to invoking the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” may seem out of place to some observers. As I’ve argued previously, however, the coziness of God and guns makes perfect sense to Trump’s Christian Right base.</span> Likewise, Trump’s subsequent lines on “manifest destiny,” “frontiers,” and defeating terrorism are red meat for Christian nationalists (if rather bizarrely thrown together with assertions that America will send the first woman to the moon and be the first nation to plant a flag on Mars).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump drove his speech to a close with more secularized and—despite references to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman—racist nationalist appeals to “pioneers,” “settl[ing] the New World,” and “the beautiful, beautiful Alamo.” This language of “national greatness,</b>” it’s worth noting, may be regarded as the expression of a type of political religion, an essentially secular expression that Christian nationalists nevertheless embrace enthusiastically. In the end, for those worried about attacks on the separation of church and state and about the unwavering support for Trump among white evangelicals, the 2020 State of the Union will do little to assuage these concerns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bio</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Latest Posts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fake@gmail.com'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chrissy Stroop</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A prominent ex-evangelical writer, speaker, and advocate, Chrissy Stroop is (with Lauren O’Neal) coeditor of the essay anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. A senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches, her work has appeared in Dame Magazine, Foreign Policy, Playboy, Political Research Associates, and other outlets, including peer-reviewed academic journals. Holding a Ph.D. in modern Russian history from Stanford University, Stroop is a Senior Research Associate with the University of Innsbruck’s Postsecular Conflicts project. In 2019 Chrissy came out as a transgender woman and began her journey of medical transition. She resides in Portland, Oregon.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-how-trumps-state-of-the-union-address-was-a-white-christian-nationalist-dog-whistle/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-how-trumps-state-of-the-union-address-was-a-white-christian-nationalist-dog-whistle/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Here’s how Trump’s State of the Union address was a white Christian nationalist dog whistle</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Andrew L. Seidel / Religion Dispatches February 8, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amid the ripping paper and misbegotten medals, Trump’s State of the Union address promised nationalism with a distinctly Christian bent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Trump wants to steal $5 billion from public schools (which he decried as “failing government schools”) to give to private, i.e., Christian, schools. </b>Trump wants to roll back reproductive rights and ban abortion. But more than anything, Trump wants to weaponize religious freedom. If he is successful there, it will be a win for his war against abortion and public schools too. He said:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">My administration is also defending religious liberty, and that includes the constitutional right to pray in public schools. In America, we don’t punish prayer. We don’t tear down crosses. We don’t ban symbols of faith. We don’t muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith, we cherish religion, we lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Constitution already protects students’ right to pray in public schools. What Trump actually wants is to use the machinery of the state to impose religion on students.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The allusion to tearing down crosses is a nod to the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow the 40-ft tall Bladensburg cross to remain on government land and be maintained at government expense. Justice Alito’s opinion was full of irreconcilable contradictions and it bought in to the idea that curing First Amendment violations would show “hostility toward religion.” Until last summer, that was a claim that the Supreme Court had repeatedly rejected going all the way back to its very first state-church decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The placement of this passage, with its Christian nationalist dog whistles, belies its true meaning. It came immediately after he touted the Federalist Society’s “pipeline” set up to get conservative lawyers—many patently unqualified—lifetime appointments as federal judges:</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Working with Mitch McConnell — thank you, Mitch — and his colleagues in the Senate, we have recommended 180 new judges to uphold our Constitution as written. This includes Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Those aren’t Trump judges, they’re McConnell/Federalist judges. And they’re the ones who will make Trump’s religious freedom subtext a legal reality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s also worth noting that immediately following this nod to Christian nationalism Trump claimed to be “defending national security and combating radical Islamic terrorism.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, in fact, the speech may have been edited to drop an even more blatant call to Christian Nationalism. Politico’s transcript includes the following line (emphases mine):</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In reaffirming our heritage as a free nation, we must remember that<b> America has always been a Christian nation.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Time magazine’s transcript, meanwhile, reflects what the president actually said:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In reaffirming our heritage as a free Nation, we must remember that America has always been a frontier nation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s entirely possible that the speech wasn’t deliberately edited; that Trump, who’s famous for ad-libbing, simply misread or decided to deviate from the speech as written, but it’s meaningful that the speech appears to have been toned down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Even so, the message is out in the open: These judges will make Christian nationalism the law. They will redefine the Constitution so that it creates two classes of people: conservative Christians and everyone else.</b> That is and has been the goal of Christian nationalism—to codify Christian privilege and elevate Christians to a special, favored class. All others will be second-class citizens.<b> As Chrissy Stroop noted in her Religion Dispatches piece on the SOTU, these ideas have been mainstreamed due to the influence of the radical Christian Reconstructionist movement.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right now, Christian nationalists are raging against the dying of their privilege. Trump’s State of the Union encapsulated this rage. And, as America nears the tipping point at which conservative Christianity’s power and privilege are reduced to equality for all, the Christian nationalist myths will be spouted more often and more loudly. But the end is near for this movement. That is the true state of our union.</font></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-the-terrifying-truth-about-trumps-hysterical-nuremberg-style-state-of-the-union/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/heres-the-terrifying-truth-about-trumps-hysterical-nuremberg-style-state-of-the-union/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s the terrifying truth about Trump’s hysterical, Nuremberg-style State of the Union</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald J. Trump delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020, in the House Chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Michael Winship / Common Dreams February 6, 2020</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Dear Leader wound up his State of the Union, and Nancy Pelosi tore its pages in quarters as she stood behind him, I had the same reaction that many colleagues out in the Twitter universe had. We all instantly recalled George W. Bush’s words at the end of Donald Trump’s inaugural address in 2017: “Well, that was some weird shit.”</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Except that Trump’s speech wasn’t just weird, it was some Nuremberg shit, too, the rhetoric and Republican hysteria in the hall all too reminiscent of those terrifying days of the 1930s when Adolph Hitler harangued adoring crowds, the whole spotlighted production designed for Leni Riefenstahl’s cameras, with the intimidation dial turned up to 11.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s State of the Union wasn’t in a stadium filled with tens of thousands of Nazis, but it was similarly camera-ready, fueled by craziness as it took advantage of every reality show trick he learned during his years posing as an ersatz billionaire on The Apprentice.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig point out in their bestseller, A Very Stable Genius, Trump cares “more about putting on a show than about the more mundane task of governing.” He’s terrifyingly good at the razzle-dazzle, vectoring in on the good old lowest common denominator that television made so famous – although he’s not as interested in what will least offend as he is in whatever will most stir up his frightened, angry base.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Example: Presidents have been using the yearly address to headline heroes since 1982, when Ronald Reagan pointed to the presence in the gallery of government employee Lenny Skutnik, who had rescued a plane crash survivor from the frigid waters of the Potomac. It quickly became a way for the commander-in-chief to associate himself with heroes and others whose life experiences illustrated key points in the State of the Union.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These attempts to include a little human interest or have some glory rub off on the chief executive have sometimes been heavy on the hokum but largely harmless and often even touching. Tuesday night, though, Trump took what has been a fairly benign tradition and turned it into a game as cynical and manipulative as that old TV show Queen for a Day, on which housewives won prizes for whomever had the most poignant and/or tragic life’s story.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was Retired Brigadier General Charles McGee, 100 years old, one of the last of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, fresh from the Super Bowl coin flip on Sunday, his presence moving for sure but part of the Trump effort to peel away African American voters from the Democrats. He was there with his great-grandson who Trump says wants to be part of his mighty Space Force. Phasers on stun!</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There, too, were Stephanie and Janiyah Davis from Philadelphia, Pa., a single mom and her fourth-grader who had hoped to get a tax credit scholarship for private school. Trump announced he was awarding it to her because “no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school”—“government school” now the conservative buzz words for public education, a hard-won system essential to democracy but which the hard right is determined to destroy as they continue their push to dumb down the populace even further.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was the Iraqi war widow and the brother of a man shot by an undocumented immigrant—Trump would never ever mention that in truth, the immigrant crime rate is lower than the general population’s. There was the staged reunion of a military family—live and in person! And of course, the horrifying image of Melania Trump wrapping the presidential medal freedom around the neck of talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the purveyor of decades of vitriolic hatred against any and all minorities.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No one deserves cancer, but, “It’s impossible to find a topic on which Limbaugh hasn’t been odious,” Mark Sumner writes at Daily Kos. “On which he hasn’t been intentionally hurtful. On which he hasn’t been cruel, spiteful, and deceitful. It’s difficult to find a single admirable quality in the man, either on the air or off.” And so, the perfect choice for an honor from a dishonorable Trump.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The speech itself was aswarm with Limbaugh-style lies, mendacity being the currency of choice at the White House and within the Republican Party—“chock-full of stretched facts and dubious figures,” as per The Washington Post. “Many of these claims have been fact-checked repeatedly, yet the president persists in using them.”</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Post cites 31 statements, pointing in detail to his false claims about the economy, his brags about unemployment rates for minorities and the disabled, his claims that no one—no one!—has done better than he.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Trump never seems to remember — or prefers to forget — that Obama took office during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” the paper reports, and Associated Press notes, “Trump never quite managed to achieve the liftoff he promised during the 2016 election. Instead, gains have largely followed along the same lines of an expansion that started more than a decade ago under Obama.”</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nothing about climate change. Lies about criminal justice reform, trade, energy independence, immigration and that damned wall, guns, health care! “We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions,” he declared, even though his administration supports a current court case that would completely repeal the Affordable Care Act.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And so forth and so on, ad nauseum. A celebration not of the State of the Union but the State of the Mighty Me. Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy said, “Working Americans struggle to make ends meet, vulnerable neighborhoods pay the price of a changing climate, desperate patients crowd source medical bills and communities of color battle systemic and overt racism, yet this President chooses self-adoration over solutions.”</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The problem is that this weird Nuremberg shit is working. If you’re not paying attention, chances are it sounds great, and if you’re someone living in white fear or more focused on just getting by, you simply may not care or even notice that Donald Trump is systematically eviscerating every branch of government, every law, every regulation, any semblance of moral behavior.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fat cats don’t seem to mind either, looking the other way from Trump’s ignorant, corrupt and contemptible behavior as long as the cash register keeps ringing and the fuel’s topped off on their private escape jets to New Zealand.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump reigns over an ugly Cloud Cuckoo Land of his own making, much of it only existing in his addled brain. He calls it The Great American Comeback, but while Republicans collapsed from the vapors as Speaker Pelosi ripped apart pages of The Gospel According to Donald, he rips apart the Constitution and tears asunder the families of immigrants, families of the poor and helpless.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some comeback. Better to rephrase that sentiment, better to implore our nation to Come Back, America, to return us to a place where we can try to uphold decency and the rule of law, where we can organize and vote, where we can endeavor to restore the values of a democratic republic. Because it’s almost too late.</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Winship is the Schumann Senior Writing Fellow for Common Dreams. Previously, he was the Emmy Award-winning senior writer for Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, a past senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy group Demos, and former president of the Writers Guild of America East. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelWinship</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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