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Glena Michal's avatar

When it comes to Trump's broken promises the list is long:

— He claimed he would enact term limits for Congress but took no action,

— promised to release his tax returns but only did after a prolonged legal battle that lasted several years,

— called for a five-year ban on lobbying by former executive branch officials, but then revoked his executive order doing that just days before leaving office,

— promised to lock up Hillary Clinton for using a private email server, but no charges were brought (while Ivanka and Kushner continued to use private email servers),

— promised to bring back manufacturing jobs, but by the end of his presidency, there was a net decrease in manufacturing jobs (in decline even before the pandemic),

— narrow the trade deficit, especially with China, but the overall trade deficit remained higher than when he took office,

— said he would force companies to keep jobs in America, but companies like GE and Ford continued to outsource jobs while receiving tax breaks,

— promised to put miners back to work, but coal production and jobs continued to decline, reaching their lowest levels in decades,

— promised to protect American steel jobs, but the steel industry continued to lose jobs,

— pledged to cut taxes for the middle class, but his tax cuts disproportionately benefited corporations, with the richest 1% receiving 83% of the tax cuts by 2027, while over half of Americans faced higher taxes,

— pledged to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure, but no plan was passed,

— vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare but only eliminated the individual mandate while continuing to support lawsuits to overturn it, while never releasing a plan to safeguard its protections,

— said he would bring down prescription drug prices, but didn't, leaving the Dems to do that recently,

— claimed he would rarely leave the White House but spent 1 in 5 days at a golf club in one year alone,

— pledged to push colleges to cut tuition costs but didn't, while lowering regulations on for-profit colleges,

— and he promised to build a glorious wall.

Some of that is out of his control, but most of it isn't.

You quoted him saying "People in my administration must have thought the gain of function research was important,” and I think that gets to the heart of it: he outsources as many of his jobs as Ford. Much like Biden, it's his people that will break his future promises, while his main hobbyhorse will be incredibly unpopular with the public if he doesn't roll it out right. You can't trust him to do anything but what he's most focused on at the moment... and focus isn't his strong-suit.

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