The Gulf of America

Here we go again

Following a Trump screed on his social platform in which he continued to demean and bully former Wyoming Rep, Liz Cheney, for having had the audacity to execute her Constitutional obligation by co-chairing the Select Committee on January 6^th, Cheney responded: “Donald, this is not the Soviet Union. You can’t change the truth and you cannot silence us.

“Remember all your lies about the voting machines, the election workers, your countless allegations of fraud that never happened? Many of your lawyers have been sanctioned, disciplined or disbarred, the courts ruled against you, and dozens of your own White House, administration, and campaign aides testified against you. Remember how you sent a mob to our Capitol and then watched the violence on television and refused for hours to instruct the mob to leave? Remember how your former Vice President prevented you from overturning our Republic?

“We remember. And now, as you take office again, the American people need to reject your latest malicious falsehoods and stand as the guardrails of our Constitutional Republic—to protect the America we love from you.”

Although the Biden administration is leaving the once-and-current President a robust economy and nation, which by all economic indicators is on the rise, Trump continues to complain that our nation is “a disaster.”

Of course it is in the New Guy’s interest to claim that things are worse than they are, saddling his predecessor with negative perceptions even if they don’t represent reality. Eisenhower did it to Truman, and Kennedy did it to Eisenhower. In both cases, the country was already strong and healthy.

Mr. Trump is inheriting a country that by nearly every measure is in better shape than any president has inherited since George W. Bush inherited the robust Clinton economy, and budget surplus. One assumes the President is aware of this, but can’t let his voters think that he was born on third base. He needs them to think he hit a triple.

From the New York Times: “For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.”

Voters who only get their news from the right-wing media ecosphere, believe that we are a crime-ridden, drug-infested, high-inflation nation. The remaining seventy-some million are unable to recognize the disaster he talks about.

“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”

Even before the retribution begins, the whining has. Donald Trump decried the tradition of lowering the flag for 30 days when a president dies. He complained that he shouldn’t have to be inaugurated under flags that are flying at half-staff, so his loyal follower, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, ordered the Capitol flag raised for inauguration day, as did sycophantic Texas governor, Greg Abbott. Try though I will, I can’t make sense of this. I have to wonder that if the tables were turned, wouldn’t Trump want flags flying at half-staff for him. I’ll bet he’d want them that way for 30 years as opposed to the mandated 30 days.

While all the chatter about taking over the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada, by force if necessary, blends into talk about pardons for the J6 rioters, short shrift is given to the Biden accomplishments that actually got the country moving again after the pandemic. Thomas Edsell points out that “detailed economic studies compiled by the Brookings Institution clearly demonstrate these favorable trends.” The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act were all crucial to the effort of restoration, and all passed without Republican votes. That inconvenient fact did not stop Republicans from cutting ribbons and taking credit for these practical measures that have benefitted us all.

According to Georgia lawmaker, Andrew Clyde, January 6^th was just an average tourist day at the Capitol. The magician’s gift is sleight of hand, driven by misdirection. It appears that all the talk of retribution, expansionism, and the re-writing of recent history, is intended as misdirection; something to keep Trump loyalists from seeing, or at least remembering the truth.

The information gulf is a chasm separating Americans from the truth and each other. Now we’ll see what the new President does versus what he says.

©2025 Jon Sinton