L-R Former President Barack Obama, Donald Trump Trump and his followers often tout the stock market and unemployment under Trump as “the best economy in the history of the world.” But crunching the numbers from the final three years of the Obama administration and the first three years of Trump’s time in office – which leaves out the devastation of the current pandemic on the US economy – the data shows Trump is not better on economic issues than his predecessor. I recently came across a report from USA Today comparing the economic records of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. From USA Today:
• Employment: According to the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the economy created 6,979,000 jobs during Obama’s final three years in office. In Trump’s first three years through this past January, the economy added 6,585,000 jobs to a total of 158,714,000. That’s 394,000 fewer under Trump than under Obama during a similar time span.
• Economic growth: During Obama’s final three years, the economy (inflation-adjusted gross domestic product) grew 2.5% in 2014, 3.1% in 2015 and 1.7% in 2016, or an average of 2.43%, according to figures from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Under Trump, the economy grew 2.3% in 2017, 3.0% in 2018 and 2.2% in 2019, for an average of 2.5% a year – just below one-tenth of a percent per year under Trump, who came into office promising to produce an economy that would sprint ahead at a 4% annual pace or even higher.
• Wage growth: During Obama’s final three years in office through January 2017, hourly earnings adjusted for inflation grew 3.3%, according to BLS figures. During Trump’s first three years, inflation-adjusted hourly earnings grew an identical 3.2%. • Stock market: During Trump’s presidency, the S&P 500 climbed 50.4%, from a close of 2,271.31 on Jan. 20, 2017, when he was inaugurated, to 3,4433.12 today. Under Obama, the S&P 500, which was 805.22 on Jan. 20, 2009, grew 182% during his presidency. During his second term, it grew 52% (from 1,492.56 on Jan. 22, 2013).
Former Vice President Joe Biden For the first time since its founding in 1982, the editorial board for USA Today has endorsed a presidential candidate – Joe Biden. An excerpt:
If this were a choice between two capable major party nominees who happened to have opposing ideas, we wouldn’t choose sides. Different voters have different concerns.
But this is not a normal election, and these are not normal times. This year, character, competence and credibility are on the ballot. Given Trump’s refusal to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, so, too, is the future of America’s democracy.
For nearly four decades, the Editorial Board has stood for certain core values: truth, accountability, civility in public discourse, opposition to racism, common-ground solutions to the nation’s problems, and steadfast support for First Amendment rights. These aren’t partisan issues, or at least they shouldn’t be.
Donald Trump has trampled each of these principles, making more than 20,000 false or misleading statements, ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fearmongering, governing more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and relentlessly attacking the free press.
Everything about Biden’s nearly half-century political career suggests he would do a far better job of respecting these values.
Mentioning Biden’s role in the last economic recovery, the editorial board notes that Trump “did no better than the Obama-Biden administration on job creation, the stock market and economic growth.” Also referenced is the national debt which is now $27 trillion, up more than $7 trillion from four years ago. The op-ed closes with this statement: “We may never endorse a presidential nominee again. In fact, we hope we’ll never have to.”
Tiffany Trump (screen capture) Tiffany Trump, the youngest daughter of Donald Trump, hosted a ‘Trump Pride’ event in Florida in hopes of attracting queer votes for her father’s reelection despite his dismal record on LGBTQ rights and protections. From Newsweek:
“I know what my father believes in. Prior to politics, he [Trump] supported gays, lesbians, the LGBQIIA+ community,” Tiffany began before then talking about “fabricated lies” and social media.
She said: “It saddens me. I have friends of mine who reach out and they say how could you support your father, we know your best friends are gay.”
“I know what my father believes in,” said Tiffany Trump in a 10-minute speech at the Westshore Grand Hotel. “Prior to politics he supported gays, lesbians … the LGBQIA+ community, okay.”
Many have pointed out she left out the ‘T’ in the acronym which stands for trans.
She completely did not say the "T" in LGBTQIA+…she knows sooooooo much about us that she forgot that "T" that stands for Trans…you know the people that her dad wanted to kick out of the military and discriminate against…Those "T"
if i didn’t have better eyesight i would’ve actually mistaken this for an SNL skit with Miley as Tiffany. the missing T in LGBTQIA… this has to be satire pic.twitter.com/YobVPWNxc3
Donald Trump is D-O-N-E done with the coronavirus pandemic. During a conference call with campaign staffers, Trump expressed frustration with infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and other health officials calling them ‘idiots.’ From Politico:
“People are tired of Covid. People are saying, ‘Whatever, just leave us alone.’ People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots,” Trump said on the call, which included press.
“He’s been here for, like, 500 years. He’s like this wonderful sage telling us how — Fauci, if we listened to him, we’d have 700,000 [or] 800,000 deaths.”
Trump described Fauci as a “disaster” and added that “every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb. But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him.”
Trump also commented on the call that he “couldn’t care less” if the media reported the remarks. “If there’s a reporter on, you can have it just the way I said it. I couldn’t care less.” Trump’s statement was probably in response to an interview Fauci gave CBS’s 60 Minutes where he told the venerable news magazine that Trump’s reluctance to wear a face mask in public is because he “equates wearing a mask with weakness.” “You know, a statement of strength,” Fauci said. “Like, ‘We’re strong. We don’t need a mask.’ That kind of thing.” Asked if that makes sense from a scientific stand point when facing a pandemic, Fauci answered, “No, it doesn’t. Of course not.”
“I think deep down, [the president] believes in science. If he didn’t, he would not have entrusted his health to the very competent physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center,” says Dr. Fauci. https://t.co/JSDtvPknpOpic.twitter.com/pRBp8xrxvg
On call with campaign staff, President Trump says people are tired of hearing about coronavirus. “People are saying whatever. Just leave us alone. They’re tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots…Fauci is a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years.”
Trump’s message two weeks out, based on call with staff: -Dr. Fauci is a “disaster” who is a “bomb” every time he’s on TV -Other health officials are “idiots” -Americans no longer care about the pandemic and just think “whatever” -News reports are “fake”
Guest post by Lawrence Pfeil Jr. As the 2020 Election heads into the home stretch it’s all hands on deck, but for One Night Only it’s all divas on deck, as in the “stage deck.” This Sunday, October 18th at 8 pm EST Drag Out the Vote presents the fiercest divas from Broadway and RuPaul’s Runway together for a streaming evening of entertainment, Divas For Democracy: United We Slay.
Hosted by Entertainment Tonight’s Keltie Knight and RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Nina West, Divas For Democracy: United We Slay is a variety show where the divas of Broadway join forces with the divas of the drag world to encourage participation in our democracy. Broadway divas will sing some of the most iconic musical theatre songs while their drag counterparts match their vocal prowess with lip sync passion and style. Special segments will feature LGBTQIA+ activists in a nonpartisan fashion to promote the importance of the LGBTQIA+ community engagement and voter participation. “Drag Out The Vote™’s mission is to educate, register, and turn out voters with the art and activism of drag.” They also server voter realness: • 100 million people did not vote in 2016 • 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ Adults is not Registered to Vote • Youth voter turnout had a historic high in 2018… of only 35% And you better believe Divas for Democracy is going to have more stars than a Drag Queen’s ass has sequins! See for yourself at Divas for DemocracyDivas for Democracy streams exclusively on StageIt, October 18th, 2020 at 8 PM EST. Tickets are “donate what you can” with a minimum $5 donation, with optional “tipping” for additional donations. All proceeds benefit Drag Out The Vote’s get-out-the-vote efforts in 2020 and beyond. Click here for tickets.Lawrence Pfeil, Jr., is a freelance writer/playwright who has written for media outlets including The Randy Report, the New York Blade, and Edge Publications. You can follow him at TheOUTfront.com.
Recent statistics from the Florida Division of Elections have revealed that more people already voted by mail in the 2020 general election than did in the August 2020 primaries. The numbers also show that more Democrats have sent in their ballots than Republicans.
The figures from the Division of Elections website showed that of the more than 2 million mail-in voting ballots sent in, about 49 percent of them were from Democrats. About 30 percent of the ballots submitted were from Republicans, and approximately 20 percent were from people with other party affiliations or no party affiliation.
As of Saturday morning, 2,423,573 people had sent in ballots, with about 1,190,508 of them Democrats and 730,123 of them Republicans. The number just surpasses the 2,342,751 people who voted by mail in the primaries in August.
According to Politico, this is the first time ever at this stage of a general election, Democrats here are outvoting Republicans in the Sunshine state. That said, let this serve as inspiration for you to get out and VOTE!
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Lara Trump (screen capture) During an interview on CNN on Sunday morning, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump denied ever mocking former Vice President Joe Biden who has struggled with a stutter his whole life. Ms. Trump tried to say that she “had absolutely no idea” that Biden had ever struggled with a stutter, but then declared that Biden’s speech patterns were indicative of cognitive decline. CNN’s Jake Tapper quickly pointed out that lots of folks have diagnosed her father-in-law from a distance as having his own decline and noted she has no background to do the same to Biden. Tapper finally gave up on the segment as Eric Trump’s wife continued to toss a word salad trying to defend her attacks on Biden.
Let us all be grateful for Claudia Conway who sidelined her evil genius mom and forced the Trump campaign to rely on Lara Trump's off-brand Velveeta version of Trumpism.
Lara Trump's defense of Trump repeatedly ginning up "lock her up!" chants direct toward Gretchen Whitmer is pure whataboutism: "Well gosh, I'd like to show people my social media & the threats against me, the threats against my children… [Trump] was having fun at a Trump rally" pic.twitter.com/YZIhIUt5cA
Former Vice President Joe Biden (via Instagram) The Biden campaign is asking supporters to not let current polling results lull them into a false sense of security that the race is over. From the Washington Post:
In a memo obtained by The Washington Post, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon urged supporters to “campaign like we’re trailing” heading into the final weeks of the election.
“We cannot become complacent because the very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire,” Dillon wrote.
Dillon encouraged supporters to use 2016 as a reminder that polling can be wrong and that it all comes down to who can secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. While Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, reflecting national polls, Trump won an electoral college victory by winning several Midwestern states that previously had gone to the Democrats.In key battleground states, Dillon wrote, the “race is far closer than some of the punditry we’re seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest.”
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (screen capture) A new report set to air Sunday night says former White House chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, has told friends that President Donald Trump “is the most flawed person” he’s ever known. From CNN:
“The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,” the retired Marine general has told friends, CNN has learned.
The reporting comes from a new CNN special to air Sunday night, “The Insiders: A Warning from Former Trump Officials,” in which former senior administration officials — including former national security adviser John Bolton, former Health and Human Services scientist Rick Bright and former Department of Homeland Security general counsel John Mitnick — explain why they think the President is unfit for office.
Kelly’s sentiments about the President’s transactional nature and dishonesty have been shared by other former members of the Trump administration who also appear in the special.
Olivia Troye, a former top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, has said the President knew about the impact the coronavirus pandemic would have on the US by mid-February, but that “he didn’t want to hear it, because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year.”
Miles Taylor, a former DHS chief of staff who now serves as a CNN contributor, has asserted Trump essentially calls individuals within the federal government who disagree with him “deep state.”
L-R Former Vice President Joe Biden, Donald Trump It was a tale of two Town Halls last night as Donald Trump and Joe Biden took questions in separate events from likely voters. As many on social media noted, the tone and tenor of the events couldn’t have been more different. Donald Trump was being combative with his host, NBC News’s Savannah Guthrie when she would ask follow-up questions to many of his vague responses. Over on ABC, Biden was calm and collected as he looked each person in the eye as he answered their questions. At one point, his answer was so lengthy and detailed, host George Stephanopoulos interrupted to ask the questioner if they’d gotten the response they needed. Another clear difference between the two events was Trump’s town hall was only an hour (low-energy) and Biden’s was 90 minutes. But even after those 90 minutes, Biden stayed in the TV studio and answered follow-up questions from folks in the venue.
This awesome mom Mieke Haeck asked Joe Biden about how he’d protect her trans daughter, cited the Trump-Pence administration’s rollback of trans rights pic.twitter.com/k23GTQkAKA
The Biden town hall marked one of the few times LGBTQ issues came up in a broadcast election event as Joe Biden clearly and with no equivocation vowed to protect the rights of LGBTQ Americans. When Mieke Haeck, a mother of two including an 8-year-old transgender daughter, asked how he would reverse Trump’s anti-LGBTQ actions, “The Trump administration has attacked the rights of transgender people,” asked Haeck, “banning them from military service, weakening non-discrimination protections, and even removing the word ‘transgender from some government websites. How will you, as president, reverse this dangerous and discriminatory agenda and ensure that the lives and rights of LGBTQ people are protected under U.S. law?” Biden was direct and unwavering in his response. “I will flat-out just change the law,” he told Haeck, adding that he would reverse Trump’s anti-LGBTQ executive orders. Biden also recounted an anecdote from his youth when he and his father witnessed two men sharing a kiss in public. Upon seeing the kiss, Biden turned to his father who said simply, “Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.” Circling back around to the beginning of the issue, Biden was clear: “There should be zero discrimination.”
Asked what he would say to LGBTQ Americans and others who are worried “about erosions of their rights,” former VP Biden says “I think there’s great reason to be concerned for the LGBTQ community, something I fought very hard for.” https://t.co/JEyTOkB6qk#BidenTownHallpic.twitter.com/BnZ8XSOJSA
Biden also took a question from a gentleman who asked Biden what he would say to LGBTQ Americans and others who are worried about erosions of their rights. Biden said, “I think there’s great reason to be concerned for the LGBTQ community, something I fought very hard for.” At the Trump Town Hall, things were a little bit more contentious. When Savannah Guthrie asked Trump about retweeting misinformation and conspiracy theories, he blew the question off. One such retweet contained a conspiracy theory that Biden and President Barack Obama orchestrated a cover-up regarding Navy SEAL Team Six faking the death of terrorist Osama bin Laden. “That was a retweet,” defended Trump. “That was an opinion of somebody and that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don’t take a position.” “You’re the president,” Guthrie responded. “You’re not someone’s crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.”
Pres. Trump: “That was a retweet, I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves.” @SavannahGuthrie: “I don’t get that. You’re the president. You’re not, like, someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever.” #TrumpTownHallpic.twitter.com/Im0QFy7VOU
Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg saw his tweet go viral (shared over 47K times, Liked over 350K times) when he shared, “Just imagine turning on the TV, seeing your president, and feeling your blood pressure go down instead of up.” And Donald Trump’s own niece, Mary Trump, scored with a single word tweet when someone playfully took issue with Savannah Guthrie referring to Trump as “someone’s crazy uncle.” #Actually By the way, Biden’s town hall on ABC News reportedly drew 2.3 million more viewers than the Trump town hall on NBC News. Variety reports Biden drew 12.7 million total viewers on the Disney-owned network, while Trump drew 10.4 million in the same 9-10 p.m. time slot on NBC.
SIREN! The Biden Town Hall on ABC drew 2.3 million more viewers than the Trump town hall on NBC. There is nothing @realDonaldTrump cares about more than ratings. https://t.co/03OMGhEVLM
The event is over, the commentators are moving on, the studio crew closing up… and yet @JoeBiden stands and continues to take questions from the voters in the room. This is a man that truly cares about people. pic.twitter.com/r2ciq9ABVW
After an hour the candidates appear… wait…Trump is done?!! Left the building already.? @JoeBiden is still holding his town hall? Talking to voters? Answering questions? Sorry @realDonaldTrump you may call him Sleepy Joe, but we know who’s got the stamina! #TownHalls
Lawrence Pfeil, Jr., is a freelance writer/playwright who has written for media outlets including The Randy Report, the New York Blade, and Edge Publications. You can follow him at 
