Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
“If you don’t have integrity, you have nothing. All the money in the world cannot buy it.” Henry Kravis
Trying to separate policies from the person initiating them is an exercise in futility. Given truth serum, Trump supporters admit he’s lacking the basic human and humane instincts one would consider prerequisites in a normally functioning adult, let alone a world leader. But their caveat is, “Look at his accomplishments.”
To paraphrase Lady Ella and Bananarama, among others, “It’s not just what you do but the way that you do it.” Both matter. So let’s look at both the end and the means by which he got there.
He gave us the tax cut. (Who’s “us?”) He gave us conservative judges (at what cost to SCOTUS?) and the stock market is booming (when it isn’t tanking). Each of these has come at a cost. Each has resulted in further eroding trust in him and our institutions.
Republicans had corporate tax cuts at the top of their wish list, so let’s use that as an example. To get middle-class support, Trump called it a tax cut for … the middle class. It wasn’t, because 83 percent of the benefits went to the top one percent.
He said the average family would take home $4,000 more per year. They won’t. Whatever mini-bump they see will disappear in 2025; the massive cuts for corporations are permanent. He said CEOs would share their windfalls by increasing salaries. They did – for themselves. They also used the money for stock buybacks that artificially increased the stock market. Trump does not tell the truth.
Trump promised to eliminate tax loopholes in the new law. Actually, the bill retains most of them and created a few more for the ultra-wealthy. And he forgot to get rid of those available to real estate developers.
Poor Jared. Example: In 2015 he earned more than a million dollars, took $8 million in losses (thanks to a loophole that still exists) and actually got a refund of $4,000. (New York Times, Oct. 13, 2018; Vanity Fair, Oct. 15, 2018).
As Trump told his friends at Mar-a-Lago the night he signed the bill, “You all just got a lot richer.” He should have changed the pronoun from “you” to “we.” Trump does not tell the truth.
Meanwhile, under Trump’s watch, and because of the tax law, the national debt topped $21 trillion for the first time and the budget deficit reached a 6- year high.
So here’s the question. How do Republicans in Congress propose to deal with an 18 percent increase in the deficit? That’s $793 billion this fiscal year (cbo.gov) and almost $2 trillion projected over the next decade. Balanced budgets and paying down the national debt had been a cornerstone of the Republican Party.
Ah, but they have a solution… This tax law serves as the perfect excuse to implement the other conservative fantasy. This huge deficit (which Trump and Congress created and from which they gain) has to be addressed, therefore programs like Medicare and Social Security must be cut. But Trump supporters say he promised not to do that. Spoiler Alert: Watch what happens after the mid-terms. Trump does not tell the truth.
There are so many policies that have Trump stigmata attached to them. His caveman view of climate change (as demonstrated by pulling out from the Paris Climate Accord) was reinforced when asked about the latest catastrophic report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He pooh-poohed it, adding that his uncle was a great professor and although “we never talked about this subject, I have a natural instinct for science.”
Trump believes he’s the smartest person in the room and knows more than anyone. About everything. No need to consult others. He knows it all. What could be more dangerous?
Then there’s the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump spoke in support of the Saudi Arabian government as it tried to cover up the grisly murder of a journalist working for The Washington Post. Trump’s more concerned about maintaining family financial ties and military contracts with a despot than protecting human rights and freedom of the press. Trump’s comment that he has no financial connections to Saudi Arabia is a blatant lie. During the campaign, he bragged about his connections to the kingdom and the fact they own many of his properties and “they give me millions. Why wouldn’t I like them?”
And that’s the measure of how he judges everything – his near-sighted, single-lens view of how what-ever-it-is affects him. Integrity doesn’t matter to Trump or apparently to his supporters. That’s convenient, since he has none.
Everything he does is seen through the prism of his ego. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 2, 2018), he said he had been “successful at everything I ever did.” “I’m smarter than all of them put together.” No, he’s not. But he is the smallest.
Our country may not always make the right policy decisions but if citizens here, and governments worldwide, trust the basic integrity of the government as personified by the president, then dialog and compromise and change and progress are always possible. But without it, nothing of lasting value will be achieved because it simply is not possible without trust.
And trust begins and ends with truth. Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
Marsha Shearer is a Villager and a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com.
