Tag Archives: Trump

As explained by Dean Baker here.

People well informed about the current US presidential election should know that the neoconservatives – America’s all-star team of warmongering foreign policy GOP elite – have had a massive falling out with Donald Trump (e.g., see here). That assault on the neocon and GOP elite is summed up by this amusing cartoon here.The result of all this has been that now one neocon faction prefers to vote for Hillary, and the other faction led by neocon-in-chief William Kristol is supporting an...

Just watch this clip from his interview with Larry King in 1999:[embedded content]Yes, you heard right. The man was for universal health care in America in 1999. He began as a moderate or liberal Republican (or what was sometimes called a “Rockefeller Republican”), different from the quasi-libertarian conservative Republicans.If Trump wants to win over Bernie voters and actually do something no other US president has ever done, he ought to return to that issue, but framed in a way that does...

Serious question in light of this:[embedded content]Note well: the question is not whether Trump will actually do anything after he is elected to raise minimum wages (excuse me while I laugh… because I would be genuinely astonished if he did), but whether, once he’s the official Republican party candidate, he will be smart enough to make a play for all those angry Bernie Bros who hate Hillary, the Democratic establishment and neoliberalism by presenting himself as pro-working class and as...

At least in terms of public rhetoric as described here and here. It is difficult to see how he could do both this and cut taxes (a promise of his) without driving the US into deep, deep deficits.We can also turn to Chapter 12 of Trump’s Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (New York, 2015). I am not sure how much weight one should attach to this supposedly ghostwritten book, which Trump signed off on. But for what it is worth we find the book praising infrastructure projects as a...

By L. Randall Wray The drumbeat is quickening as Hillary’s surrogates insist that Bernie’s supporters fall in line. Bernie’s chances are said to be hopeless. Continuing to run only plays into the hands of truly despicable Republicans. And forget about trying to pressure the Democratic Party’s establishment to let Bernie play a role in formulating the convention’s platform. That also would just play into the hands of the Republicans. Time to unite behind Hillary, and let her move further to...

A really fine analysis here, with an excellent history of American neoconservatism: Michael Lind, “The Neocons Are Responsible for Trumpism,” The National Interest, March 7, 2016. Trumpism, at least in the rhetoric we hear from Trump, is a rejection of second wave “fusionist” neoconservatism and its foreign policy, and is a kind of protectionist statism and a rejection of aspects of neoliberalism.He notes too that the left is also partly responsible for Trump. The mainstream Democratic left...

Details here. People on the left: take careful note of this. Many neoconservatives may even desert the GOP for Hillary Clinton.Trump also caused hysterical outrage by the mere suggestion that maybe – just maybe – when running for US president he should display “neutrality” on the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And now the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) – an organisation of neoconservatives and US evangelical Christians who think their ticket to heaven depends on Israel...

Just listen to his rhetoric in the video below.[embedded content]In other words, Trump poses as a billionaire white knight who is now a kind of class traitor: nobody can buy him because he is too rich! But all the other guys are bought and sold by corporate America.Trump is a Republican Bernie Sanders, and both are vehement anti-establishment candidates who claim they can’t be bought.

We all know that Donald Trump has said some extreme and hateful things, but here he is in the videos below condemning the 2003 invasion of Iraq (in the first), and also admitting that he was once a supporter of a single payer health care system in the US. It is unclear exactly what his current health care proposal is, but it would seem that he wants (1) universal access and (2) to provide a heavy dose of government funding for anyone who cannot afford private health care.These things are...