Trump Speech Missing Several Of His Favorite Talking Points
Shannon Pettypiece
While President Trump launched attack after attack on Joe Biden, he left out a number of his favorite topics of criticism in his acceptance speech.
He made no mention of mail-in voting, which he has alleged, without evidence, will lead to widespread voter fraud and could prevent the country from ever knowing the result of the election. There is no evidence that mail-in voting is at risk for fraud.
Trump also avoided bringing up Bidens son Hunter, a line of attack his campaign believed at one point would be central to their takedown of Biden. He also made no mention of Bidens running mate Kamala Harris, who his campaign has struggled to find an effective way to criticize.
With protests raging outside the White House gates and in Wisconsin over racial injustice, Trump made only a passing mention of race and there was no mention of racism.
Rnc Features A Sports Segment Amid Historic Walkouts
One of the many video segments during the fourth and final night of the convention touched on American sports. But it comes at a historic moment.
The NBA is in the midst of a player walkout over police violence, one that has also reached Major League Baseball and the NHL. President Trump earlier on Thursday took a jab at the NBA, claiming its ratings were down.
It’s an odd juxtaposition and a reminder that while the RNC has sought to draw connections between Trump and parts of American culture, many parts of that culture do not feel particularly connected to Trump.
Fact Check: Trump Repeats Out
President Trump, arguing that Americans wouldn’t be safe under Joe Biden, repeated a claim Mike Pence made Wednesday, quoting the former vice president as saying, “Yes, absolutely,” as a response to whether he’d broadly support cutting funding for law enforcement.
“When asked if he supports cutting police funding, Joe Biden replied, yes, absolutely,” Trump said Thursday night.
The accusation repeats, nearly verbatim, a false claim touted in a series of ads being run by the Trump campaign and by the pro-Trump PAC America First Action.
In one such ad, a narrator discusses how “the radical left wing of the Democratic Party has taken control” and says, “Joe Biden stands with them and embraces their policies defunding the police.”
Biden is then heard saying, “Yes, absolutely.” Another ad follows the same pattern, with a narrator saying Biden supports “reducing police funding” and Biden saying, “Yes, absolutely.”
The remark in both ads that Pence cited is taken out of context. It is from a , in which Biden is responding to a question from progressive activist Ady Barkan about whether some government funding for law enforcement should redirected to other areas, like increased social services.
“Yes, absolutely,” Biden replies.
Biden has explicitly said he doesn’t support “defunding” the police. In an interview with CBS News, he said he instead supports “conditioning federal aid to police, based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness.”
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Fact Check: Cotton Says Biden ‘opposed The Mission To Kill Osama Bin Laden’ This Is Misleading
This is misleading. Biden has offered multiple versions of the advice he provided to Obama regarding whether the then-president should move forward the 2011 mission that ultimately killed bin Laden.
In 2012, Biden revealed what he told Obama during a Situation Room meeting where top administration officials were going around the room offering their advice president should or shouldnt move forward.
“He got to me. He said, ‘Joe, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘You know, I didn’t know we had so many economists around the table.’ I said, ‘We owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there,'” Biden said, according to reports at the time.
Democrats Seize On Trump’s Payroll Tax Deferral As An Attack On Social Security Medicare
Entitlements are a key issue for older voters.
Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez looks on during the Democratic Presidential Committee summer meeting on August 23, 2019 in San Francisco, California. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
08/10/2020 08:25 PM EDT
Democrats are pouncing on President Donald Trumps new, temporary freeze on payroll taxes as his secret plan to end Social Security and Medicare traditional priorities for older voters that have not been central themes in this years presidential campaign.
They hope Saturdays executive order, coming less than three months before Election Day, will shore up their messaging that Trump is knee-capping the entitlements for seniors he had vowed to protect.
Trumps executive order would apply only to the Social Security payroll tax and not to Medicare, and lasts only through the end of the year. After that, employers would have to start paying up again unless Congress makes the deferral permanent as Trump wants and thats unlikely. But Democrats immediately framed his directive as a massive danger to both programs, reviving their older talking points against Trump budget proposals that would have cut entitlements.
The message on Medicare springs from Trumps press conference on Saturday when the president said if he won reelection he planned to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax.
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Trump Deferred The Tax That Funds Social Security And Vowed To ‘terminate’ The Tax In The Future
The vast majority of Social Security is financed through the payroll tax, according to the Social Security Administration. In 2019, 89% of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance was financed via payroll taxes equal to $944.5 billion.
One of the Aug. 8 executive orders instructed the Treasury Department to allow employers to defer payment of payroll taxes for employees who make less than $100,000 each year.
The deferrals, which may start Sept. 1 and extend through 2020, are intended to allow Americans to use the totality of their income amid the pandemic’s hardships.
The order also instructed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “explore avenues, including legislation, to eliminate the obligation to pay the taxes deferred” a goal Trump reiterated in remarks after he signed the order.
If Im victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax,” Trump said, per the Washington Post. Im going to make them all permanent.
“In other words, I’ll extend it beyond the end of the year, and terminate the tax,” he added. He reiterated his plan at a press conference on Monday.
“We will be ending that tax. We will be terminating that tax,” Trump said, per a transcript from CNN. “The payroll tax is a big deal for people. It’s a tremendous saving for people. And we’re going to be doing it, and we intend to terminate it at the end of the appropriate period of time.”
Is Trump Defunding Social Security And Medicare Concerns Mount After President’s Executive Order
President Donald Trump’s Saturday decision to sign an executive order to defer payroll taxes has fueled concerns that he is attempting to defund Social Security and Medicare, with the latest order drawing criticism from conservatives and liberals alike.
“First one is on providing a payroll tax holiday to Americans earning less than $100,000 per year,” the president said during a Saturday press briefing. “In a few moments, I will sign a directive, instructing the Treasury Department to allow employers to defer payment of the employee portion of certain payroll taxes…”
Trump said that he would make the temporary tax deferral permanent if he was re-elected in November. “So I’m going to make them all permanent,” he said.
Notably, this is not a tax cut. Under the wording of the executive order, the payments would simply be deferred until next year unless further actions were taken.
Whether Trump’s executive orders, which also provided an extension of extra federal unemployment benefits at a reduced rate of $400 per month, will withstand legal scrutiny is a matter of debate. His decision came as Republicans and Democrats in Congress remained at an impasse over a new round of coronavirus economic stimulus legislation. Under the Constitution, Congress, not the Executive Branch, is granted power over spending federal funds.
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Ben Carson Discusses Jacob Blake Says Trump Isn’t Racist
Ben Carson made what appeared to be the first mention of Jacob Blake, the Wisconsin man shot seven times by police, at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.
“Before I begin, Id like to say that our hearts go out to the Blake family, Carson said. The images everyone has seen from this tragic event in Kenosha are heart-wrenching. This action deserves a serene response, one that steers away from the destruction of a community that molded Jacob and his family into the kind of man his family and friends know today.”
In order to succeed in change, we must first come together in love of our fellow citizens, he continued. It may be hard to believe now, but indeed our country, our world, have been through worse and history reminds us that necessary change comes through hope and love, not senseless and destructive violence.
Carson then transitioned his speech into pitching Trump as not racist, echoing several other speakers of color at the Republican convention.
Trump Broke This Promise From The Beginning
This is Trump on the campaign trail in 2015:
I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.
Donald J. Trump May 7, 2015
Trumps budgets and the policies he has supported around health care and government spending in Congress reflect the opposite. Some of this can be attributed to Trumps appointed budget chief Mick Mulvaney the former Congress member who was part of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus has long rallied for cutting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.
In fact, Mulvaney once bragged to a Politico reporter that he tricked Trump into accepting a proposal to cut Social Security by calling SSDI just disability insurance spinning it to the president as general welfare reform. The idea has been in every single one of Trumps budget proposals to Congress since the president came to office.
Then there was the Republican Obamacare repeal push every bill proposed massive cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts elsewhere. Trump supported every iteration of Republicans Obamacare repeal-and-replace bills. He even held a party for House Republicans in the White House Rose Garden when the lower chamber of Congress narrowly passed a proposal that slashed more than $800 billion from Medicaid over 10 years.
Now his policy positions around those programs break from that promise.
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A Partial Or Permanent Elimination Of The Payroll Tax
The third and most recent example of President Trump’s call for Social Security benefit cuts involves his pursuit of a partial or permanent cut to the payroll tax. The 12.4% payroll tax on earned income was responsible for $944.5 billion of the $1.06 trillion that Social Security collected in 2019.
In an effort to combat the economic struggles tied to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Trump signed an executive order in mid-August that deferred payroll tax collection between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31. This deferral was designed to beef up workers’ paychecks for the remainder of 2020 but have those same workers repay what was deferred in 2021. Some states and businesses have chosen to opt out of the voluntary deferral program.
President Trump has also tossed around the idea of permanently eliminating the payroll tax, if reelected. This would allow workers to receive beefier paychecks but would remove the most critical source of Social Security’s funding. It should be pointed out that while Trump has mentioned the idea of eliminating the payroll tax on more than one occasion, no one else in his administration has taken the idea seriously, as it would leave a gaping hole in the Social Security program. Neither Democrats nor Republicans would be in favor of eliminating the payroll tax.
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The Biden Campaigns Questionable Social Security Claims
The Biden camp justifies its claims about President Trumps proposed cuts to Social Security by pointing to the Trump administrations recent efforts to implement a payroll tax holiday as part of the ongoing efforts to blunt the economic impact of Covid-19. Payroll taxes help fund Social Security, but they are not synonymous with the program.
In August, the CARES Acts supplemental $600 weekly unemployment benefit ran out. Negotiations for a second stimulus package among the White House, the House Democrats and the Senate Republicans were going nowhere fast. In response to the deadlock in Congress, President Trump enacted a payroll tax holiday by executive order.
Ending the payroll tax has been something of a pet goal for President Trump, even though economists say it wont do much to alleviate the pain endured by laid-off workers.
At the end of the year, the assumption that I win, Im going to terminate the payroll tax, which is another thing that some of the great economists would like to see done, Trump said in mid-August. His political team tried to clarify and massage those comments later, saying Trump was referring to his executive order to defer payroll taxes.
At the end of August, the chief actuary at the Social Security Administration penned a letter saying that removing payroll taxes would cause funding for Social Security to run dry by the middle of 2023.
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Did Trump Say He Will Terminate Social Security If Re
If Your Time is short
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Trump has deferred about $100 billion in payroll tax payments through the end of the year. The payroll tax currently funds 90% of Social Security.
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Trump told reporters that if he wins re-election he wanted to terminate the programs primary funding source. He cant do that on his own.
A Facebook post has a dire warning about the future of Social Security under President Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump says he will terminate Social Security if re-elected,” states the Aug. 10 post by Social Security Works, a nonprofit group that supports expanding the federal program. “A vote for Trump is a vote to destroy our Social Security system.”
This post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.
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Trump did use the word “terminate” when speaking about the payroll tax that funds Social Security, but his actual memo only pauses the tax for some employees for a few months. Trump hasnt said he would end Social Security payments, but he has made comments that many have interpreted as him wanting to eliminate the payroll tax entirely.
That means someone making the median weekly wage of about $1,000 would see an extra $62 in their paycheck. Trumps memo applies to people making up to $2,000 per week, so people who earn $104,000 a year or higher wouldnt get the tax break.
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Cuts To Social Security Take Benefits Away From Wounded Warriors
President Trumps budget cuts Social Security benefits by at least $24 billion over 10 years despite the Presidents claims he would leave Social Security alone. This cut reflects $11 billion of the Presidents vague $63 billion disability reform to restructure and reduce federal disability benefits including Social Securitys Disability Insurance program along with payment integrity measures affecting programs administered by the Social Security Administration. The budget is silent on how much of the total $63 billion cut comes from DI versus other disability programs, so the total Social Security cut in the budget is unknown, but it is likely much larger than $24 billion. The DI benefits provide coverage for severely disabled workers and their dependents, including veterans. The budget cut to DI benefits could financially harm wounded warriorsapproximately 621,000 military veterans received these benefits in 2016.
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Trump Betrays Seniors By Ordering Social Security Cuts
The following statement was issued by Richard Fiesta, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, regarding President Trumps statement that he plans to sign an executive order to cut the payroll tax.
After learning that Democratic and Republican Congressional Leaders would not go along with his harebrained scheme to cut Social Securitys dedicated funding source, President Trump lashed out and announced he would begin dismantling the system single-handedly.
Seniors pay for their housing, food and medicine with their Social Security, putting $1 trillion into our economy every year. Older Americans have earned their benefits through a lifetime of work. Their retirement security should not be put at risk because President Trump is mad at Congress for not bending to his will.
The 4.4 million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans will fight this attempt to gut Social Security, and when voting starts in September we will remember who was willing to defend and protect our earned benefits.
Fact Check: Trump Claims Biden Wants To ‘close All Charter Schools’ That’s False
“Biden also vowed to oppose school choice and close all charter schools, ripping away the ladder of opportunity for Black and Hispanic children,” Trump claimed on Tuesday night.
This is false. The Biden campaign does not oppose charter schools, though they’ve advocated against for-profit charter schools and supported different regulations and oversight of the schools.
And while “school choice” is a buzzy word, it can means different things to different people. Trump supports letting students take federal funds to private schools, something Joe Biden and many Democrats oppose, instead supporting allowing families to make choices within publicly-funded school districts.
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