Trump Produces Sobs. Democrats Produce Jobs

 

As a Jew and a proud American (by choice, not birth), like so many others, I have spent the past two days with tears in my eyes, so please forgive  me for seeming to politicize the two chilling events of the past week. But the most important election in living memory is just a week away, and. if it was not already clear enough, these two unthinkable occurrences speak so loudly that they alone make the case for the necessity to rein in Trump now, before it is too late.

Is Trump to blame for these events?  Let’s look at the record.

The attempted pipe bomb assassinations of twelve Democratic leaders, including two former US presidents; were all directed at people who Trump has continually vilified in front of the mobs of his base at his rallies. Cesar Sayok, the pipe bomber, is a Trump fanatic, who, before his arrest, was living in a van adorned with pro-Trump material, including a picture of Hillary Clinton it the cross-hairs of a gun sight and other similarly violent items. He  seethes with hatred and has a criminal record.

The cold-blooded murder of eleven mostly elderly Jewish citizens who were worshiping in the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, a suburb of  Pittsburgh, was done by Robert Bowers, a virulent anti-Semite, who was clearly influenced by Trump’s vilification of immigration. A statement of support of the “caravan” by HIAS – the Jewish charitable agency that supports immigration- seems to be what triggered his decision to “Go in”, as he tweeted before entering the synagogue shouting “All Jews must die”.

While neither  Cesar Sayok nor Robert Bowers acted on Trump’s instructions – and it was not Trump’s intent for either of these things to happen – neither of them would have taken place if not for his irresponsible rhetoric. A president’s words have consequences for which he is responsible. In Trump’s case they started on June 16^th 2015, when he rode down the Trump Tower escalator, announced that he was running for president, and almost immediately branded Mexicans as rapists and drug runners. They have continued ever since, When Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us”  in Charlottsville, he called some of them “fine people”. He praised a congressman for body-slamming a reporter. He projects immigrant mothers and children fleeing oppression in Honduras  as a terrorist threat.

Unfortunately, in the three plus years since that escalator ride, Trump’s assertions and lies have become fodder for his base, to the point that America is now a world of two different realities:  the world of facts, which Trump calls “fake news”; and the world of Fox, which is where Trump and his base lives. So when Trump runs on the slogan  “Democrats produce mobs. Republicans produce jobs”, in fact the reverse is true. That is why I propose that the Democrats should adopt the slogan  “Trump produces sobs, Democrats produce jobs.” The sobs are obvious, as depicted above: the child crying while being separated from her mother at the Mexican border; and the people crying at the Pittsburgh synagogue.

As for the jobs, the above chart shows that when Obama took office the jobless rate was skyrocketing, peaking at 10% in Oct 2009. By January 2017, when he left office, it had dropped to 4.8% a drop of 5.2 points in 7½ years. Now, eighteen months later, it is 3.7%, a drop of just 1.1 points in 1½ years – simply a continuation of the Obama trend – to what is now essentially full employment.

Finally, the mobs. In this case all I need do is point to the mobs at Trump rallies yelling “Lock her up’ and “CNN sucks” – and cheering on the denigration of the “caravan” which seems to have lead directly to the tragedy at Squirrel Hill.