The Witness Chronicles, 1/14/25

How low can they go? Really low.

This is not a political opportunity. Photo by Chris Karidis on Unsplash

Trump Backs Off on Economy Claims

He is realizing that he can’t improve on the strongest economic numbers in decades

Deep breath. The disruption we have expected from the incoming Trump administration has already gone beyond my worst expectations and I’m pretty skeptical by nature. It’s a bit hard to keep up with it. But here we go. Hang on.

It looks like Trump is going radio silent on his grandiose claims of ‘fixing’ the economy. And the reality he faces has two aspects causing him to back off. First, Joe Biden has left him a stellar economy on a silver platter and it is hard to improve on those numbers.

And this time around, the press appears poised to not blindly accept his lies about what Biden left him. It’s revisionist history and his people know it. Yes, his MAGA followers continue to believe the economy is in tatters and that won’t change. They don’t want to know that the reality he sold them is based on outrageous falsehoods.

But reality has a way of eventually showing up. Maybe not for them, but frankly, their viewpoint has no basis in reality. Trump knows this stuff and he also may have an eye on history, though that is questionable. What it seems he is realizing is that his myths about how bad the economy has been are lies too big to be sustained.

So the likely outcome is that he avoids the topic, or more likely, falsely claims to have miraculously ‘fixed’ things by simply claiming the Biden economy as his own. Nothing new there of course.

But the constant media reminders that the Biden economy is almost unbelievably strong, especially after we came so close to collapse due to the poorly handled the pandemic during Trump’s last years of his first term. Biden’s name for it, Bidenomics, was easy to mock during campaign rallies but the term is seemingly now gaining viability as the numbers are quite astounding.

Slowly falling interest rates are still too high for consumers, but there is virtually nothing Trump can do to magically lower them without crashing the economy. That just takes time. But record employment, rising wages, and record low unemployment rates are hard to hide.

Even gas prices have plummeted. In that indicator Trump is revealing his own ignorance of what gas costs because why would he personally care? His supporters are gradually realizing they are getting more for their buck at the pump, finally. And Trump had nothing to do with it.

The Republican Party has seen a lot of shameful behavior during the Trump years but their reaction to the Los Angeles fires is beyond shameful as they make absurd claims about the fires’ cause. But now they are seriously talking about bargaining with financial aid for budget changes they want to make.

This is inhuman and heartless and says things about the next four years of political drama in DC. Even before Trump is sworn in, they are openly threatening Democrat-leaning states by refusing to send humanitarian aid to their fellow citizens. I honestly do not know how these expletives sleep at night.

It’s ironic that the party that constantly claims the moral higher ground is willing to go so low for political brownie points. It’s as though Donald Trump’s sociopathic tendencies are some kind of communicable disease that is spreading through his party.

And the good news just keeps coming. As I write this Pete Hegseth has made a defiant opening statement in his Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense. He wants to reinstall lost warrior culture into the Pentagon. If he exemplifies warrior culture we have a real problem. Are our soldiers, airmen, and sailors supposed to emulate his sexist, racist, drunken frat boy antics?

The Senate has to stop this guy and do it quickly.

I think most of us paying attention have expected the political chaos to accelerate as the inauguration nears but it’s already far worse than I expected. I’m stunned by the heartlessness and opportunism the right is displaying in reaction to a terrible disaster in one of our greatest cities, a disaster that has nothing to do with political affiliation.

As an aside, of the six California Assembly members who voted against funding for fire prevention, five are Republicans.

‘Former Washington Post writer’ label is now a badge of honor in DC

If that’s not enough, we are seeing a lightning fast shift in the nature of news media, right at a time when its role is critical. Highly respected journalists are leaving major media in droves as the owners of those media outlets openly embrace Trumpism. And they now have a platform like Substack, where you’re reading this newsletter, that allows their audiences to seamlessly follow them as they quit their jobs and go out on their own.

The latest is Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post opinion writer who over the Trump years moved from old school conservative to brilliant anti-Trump attack dog. She has started, with colleagues, a new Substack publication called The Contrarian and I wish her all the success she will undoubtedly experience. We need her voice. We need all their voices.

If you read this newsletter regularly, you’ve seen my requests for financial support that I tack onto the end of each letter. I’m not a famous journalist and my platform is tiny. I’m just a guy with major concerns with the direction our country has taken. I write because I believe we all need to stand up for decency and compassion, regardless of our political preferences.

The lack of decency in DC and beyond is the worst legacy of the Trump years. It is joined by the culture of openly lying for personal benefit that has contaminated the right in what is a truly 1984 style of autocracy. And decency is for chumps. But I’m not buying it and neither are my readers.

That’s a source of comfort right now and I’ll take it anywhere I can get it these days.

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Thank you,

Martin