Rotter: Trump did nothing positive while in office

A lady who is supposed to know the truth concerning the Trump administration is either forgetful or completely confused on the March 12 opinion page.

Mr. Trump came into the presidency at the height of the greatest expansion of our economy in history (from President Obama). And, this economy grew slightly until February of 2020 during the Trump administration at which time the economy slipped into recession. To counteract this drop in our economy, Trump cut taxes and spent huge amounts of money, taking several billion from the military budget to build his $31 million per mile border wall, which resulted in an increase of the Federal debt by $7.8 trillion and left President Biden with an additional trillion dollar deficit.

Then, he disregarded the enormity of the COVID problem, saying “I didn’t want to start a panic.” But, he did propose several cures which had no positive effect on the virus but were extremely dangerous to those who tried them. Because of his carefree attitude on the possible expansion of the Covid virus, it is estimated that more than 40,000 died as a result before President Biden took command of the situation.

Trump’s tax cut for those whose annual income exceeded $400,000 was approximately triple that of the other 60 percent of the working people. Now, in this regard, the lady was right. Reagan’s tax cut was along those same lines giving huge tax cuts to the rich so the money would “trickle down.” Of course, this theory has never worked no matter whose name you give it at any given time and never will.

If you take a quick look at history, you will find that every Republican administration since Eisenhower has led us into recession or some other major economic catastrophe and every Democrat administration has brought us out. Sorry, Republicans, but it’s true.

The lady goes on to say “the world is not all that different from the one Reagan inherited when he defeated Jimmy Carter - the Soviet Union was expeditionary and expansive.” The truth, of course, is the Soviet Union was completely broke and Mr. Gorbachev, the Russian leader, recognized that fact. I doubt they were in an “expeditionary and expansive” mood under those conditions. And because of the broken Soviet economy, the Cold War ended.

As to the immigration problem, it has been a problem no one seems to know how to correct. Actually, the president is limited in what he can do until the Congress passes a law allowing the president to act lawfully. And recently, an immigration law was proposed by the Republican and then dropped when Trump told his followers in the Congress to stop it immediately. Mr. Trump’s answer to the problem was to fire many of the judges that hear cases which allow or disallow immigrants to enter the U.S. legally. This slowed down the legal process right away and I question whether Trump’s plan to withhold immigrant children from their parents was of any help in any way to discourage immigration. These hundreds of withheld children then became President Biden’s problem. I am personally unaware of how many were returned to their parents and how many became a ward of the government until they reach the age of maturity. I can’t believe that President Reagan would have ever used this tactic during his administration.

The lady goes on to say that Reagan, like Trump, withheld funds from the World Health Organization. That is true. Trump’s withholding of funds occurred during the global COVID virus pandemic. His reason for withholding funds was due to WHO announcing to the world of the probability of a global pandemic. Is there anyone who thinks this was a smart move at that important time?

Frankly, I am unable to think of anything positive that Trump did in his four-year term. If someone would enlighten me with something positive, I promise to listen attentively. I could on and on to inform people of crimes and indictments of Mr. Trump, but Dee Fauls of Sun City did a nice job of that in a previous Independent paper.