Making News: Protesting Too Much About My Trump Populism Article

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Economic Policy Institute, EPI, Making News, middle class, Populism, The American Conservative, Trump, working class

This “Making News” item will be a little different, since a new detailed crtitique of my recent American Conservative article challenging the charge that President Trump is a phony populist reveals so much about the agitated way so many Americans – including the so-called experts – discuss and debate public policy.

I’ll start by saying flat out that it was flattering to see two economists at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) bother to take on my article. As I’ve written previously, I’ve long worked with EPI researchers on trade issues, learned a great deal from them, and believe that their findings in this area (the one with which I’m most familiar) unusually important.

At the same time, an October 28 analysis of my article disappointed for several important reasons. Principally, the authors got my overall argument wrong. Contrary to their claim, I never contended that the faster wage growth during the Trump years compared with relevant Obama years “justifies the vote-flipping” in most of the counties that supported Trump in 2016 after opting for Barack Obama twice “because the Trump administration has done something that has boosted wage growth in these presumably blue-collar counties.”

What I did say was that the faster wage growth was one development that “clashed loudly with the Trump-as-phony-populist charge.” And this conclusion seemed all the stronger given, as I noted, “the common companion depiction of the last Democratic administration as a working- and middle-class champion.”

After all, the phony populist charge implies that while sweet-talking the working- and middle-class populations of flip counties, the President has spent the last four years working on enriching his fellow one-percenters while leaving his less affluent supporters ever deeper in the hole economically.  

The EPI authors are correct in observing that during the first three Trump years, wage growth in these flip counties lagged the national average. But just how important is that point? As I made clear in the 2019 version of this article:

“The only grounds for economic complaint that Trump flip county residents might legitimately have concerns the gap between their well-being and the rest of the country’s. During the last two Obama years, the number of flip counties whose annual salary growth rates topped the U.S. average rose from 89 to 116. During the first two Trump years, their numbers dropped to 84 and then 83. (Between 2015 and 2016, the salary growth in one of these counties matched the national average.)

“But some context is needed here—and quite possibly it hasn’t been missed by flip county voters. Average annual U.S. salaries rose considerably faster during the first two Trump years (3.41 percent and 3.36 percent, respectively) than during the Obama years (3.08 percent and 1.21 percent, respectively). So since the national salary bar for the flip counties has been significantly higher during the Trump years, the fall-off looks pretty moderate, and in absolute terms, the annual increases remain an improvement.”

And son-of-a-gun: Although I didn’t perform this exercise for the latest article, a check of the same government data relied on by the EPI authors and by me shows that the “national salary bar for the flip counties” (which they call “pivot counties”) remained “significantly higher during the Trump years” through 2019.

It’s entirely possible that flip county voters are seething with anger because by this measure, inequality has widened. But it’s at least as possible that they’re mainly impressed that, for the most part, their own annual pay has risen faster under Mr. Trump than under his predecessor.

The EPI authors make a great deal of the argument that, although my factual case is correct, the President had nothing to do with the flip counties’ improved performance. As mentioned above, however, I never claimed cause-and-effect. I simply described the trend, and then did emphasize its great inconsistency with characterizations of Mr. Trump. Determining cause-and-effect entails both analyses of the many moving parts of the economy during the two periods in question, and then inevitably making judgment calls about the conclusions, and which conclusions count the most (e.g., as discussed, do absolute gains matter the most, or does closing the economic gap).

But I do find myself wondering why they say absolutely nothing about the Trump trade tariffs and immigration restrictions that surely helped the national labor market keep tightening, and wages continue their rise — especially for the kinds of jobs that lower- and middle-income Americans tend to hold.

The Shakespearian observation that it’s possible to “protest too much” is a wonderful description of complaints or rejoinders that are so over-the-top that they suggest more than a smidgeon of underlying doubt. That looks like a good way to describe EPI’s treatment of my recent Trump populism article.

Making News: New Magazine Article (Again) Debunks the Trump-as-Phony-Populist Claim

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Making News, middle class, Populism, The American Conservative, Trump, working class

I’m pleased to announce that a new article of mine has just been published in The American Conservative. It updates a piece I wrote last year for this magazine, and reports that, as then, official U.S. data indicate that President Trump’s administration has worked out well economically for most of the middle- and working-class voters in his base who bet that he’d be a genuine champion of their interests.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: The Globalist Never Trump Blob Shows its True Colors

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America First, Biden, Blob, Byron York, democracy, election interference, globalism, globalists, Im-Politic, Michael McFaul, Never Trumper, Russia, Senate Intelligence Committee, social media, The American Conservative, The Atlantic, Trump, Twitter, Washington Examiner

If you believed that you’d been wronged on social media because someone had erroneously described your tweet on purpose, wouldn’t you stand by that tweet or post? Apparently not if you’re Michael McFaul. At least not for a while.

And his activity on Twitter in the last few days is worth highlighting because even though you haven’t heard of him, McFaul is a card-carrying member of the bipartisan globalist U.S. foreign policy Blob. A recent tweet of his, moreover, epitomized the views of this group of current bureaucrats, former officials, Mainstream Media journalists, and think tankers that even President Trump’s partial implementation of a fundamentally different foreign policy strategy he calls “America First” poses such a mortal danger to both national and international security that any means justify the end of defeating it.

In addition, McFaul’s reaction to criticism also adds to the thoroughly Orwellian spectacle that’s been staged this last week by these and Never Trumpers in politics in (a) charging (based entirely on anonymous sources) that Mr. Trump has privately expressed contempt for Americans servicemen and women who have risked their lives for their country; (b) claiming that this unsubstantiated report, published Thursday in The Atlantic, proves the President’s contemptible character; and (c) insisting that some or all of the Atlantic piece’s allegations have been confirmed because they’ve been repeated by other anonymous sources to other journalists. (BTW, for all anyone knows – and for all these other journalists know – the sources they’re using may be the same accusers.)

As indicated above, McFaul is not your every day, garden variety tweeter. He’s considered a leading academic authority on Russia who served in the Obama administration for five years, including two as ambassador to Moscow. He’s got nearly 517,000 followers. He also tweets a lot: 85,000 to date! (Almost as much as yours truly!) And if you spend more than thirty seconds on his feed, you’ll see that he really doesn’t like the President or his policies.

Which is his right. It’s also his right to have tweeted the day the Atlantic article came out that “Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief?”

But Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron York was just as entitled to respond on Twitter the following morning (Friday) that “This tweet has disturbing undertones in our democratic system. Trump is commander-in-chief because he was elected president, and he will remain commander-in-chief as long as he is president, for a second term if re-elected.” 

McFaul, not surprisingly was outraged. He tweeted back to York that evening : “Byron, you know DAMN well that I was not advocating a coup! You know damn well that I support democracy 100%, at home and abroad. Of course Americans voters, including 2 million federal workers, determine who the CiC is. I tolerate such nonsense from trolls. But from you? Wow.”

But here’s an even bigger “Wow.” When you clicked on the York cite of the original tweet, Twitter told you it was no longer available. McFaul had deleted it.

The plot sickened yesterday afternoon when McFaul himself evidently recognized how feckless his actions looked. He sent out the following Tweet, which added a sentence to the original: “Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief? Our soldiers, diplomats, and agents deserve better. We deserve better. #Vote.”

Which returns us – and him – to Legitimate Opinion-Land. But McFaul needed prompting, as several of his followers and others had previously asked him why he deleted the original if was so indignant over York’s comments. Moreover, McFaul is hardly inarticulate. Why didn’t he include this qualifier in the original?

Even stranger: In a follow up tweet, McFaul stated “I retweeted with a clarifying sentence. 50,000 + people understood exactly what I meant. But trying to be more precise to the handful who I confused or deliberately distorted my views. But I know @ByronYork personally. There’s NO WAY he could believe that I’d support a coup.” In other words, lots of furious backtracking for a confused or mendacious handful.

Or was it a handful? Shortly before that tweet, McFaul had told his followers “Im deleting this tweet below. It has been misunderstood –whether deliberately or unintentionally — too much. Here is what I meant to say: If you believe Trump has not served our country well as Commander in Chief, vote him out of the job in November. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1302071499914842112”

At the same time, McFaul’s clear and ongoing belief in the fundamental illegitimacy of Mr. Trump’s presidency can’t legitimately be questioned. Just late last month, in an on-line op-ed , he wrote that a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report had shown that:

“Far from a hoax, as the president so often claimed, the report reveals how the Trump campaign willingly engaged with Russian operatives implementing the influence effort.”

Even worse, in his eyes,

“[S]ome of the most egregious practices from the 2016 presidential campaign documented by the Senate investigation are repeating themselves in the 2020 presidential campaign. Once again, Putin wants Trump to win and appears to be seeking to undermine the legitimacy of our election. Just like in 2016, Putin has deployed his conventional media, his social media operations and his intelligence assets to pursue these objectives.

“Most shockingly, Trump and his allies have decided to — again — play right along.”

To McFaul’s credit, he at least acknowledged that “China, Iran and Venezuela now in the disinformation game” as well. (For details on China’s massive efforts, see my recent American Conservative article.)

He added that “it will be up to American voters to decide when and how cooperation with foreign actors during a presidential election crosses the line,” but indicated that the main reason was “Because waiting for criminal investigations or more congressional hearings will be too late….”

Most ominously, McFaul continues to maintain that the President has remained loyal to Putin, not once criticizing him in public and often undermining policies from his own administration to contain and deter Putin’s belligerent behavior abroad.”

In contrast, Democratic nominee Joe Biden “has affirmed that his campaign will not use information or accept assistance provided by foreign actors….In addition, Biden has assured Americans that he would retaliate in response to any foreign interference.”

So when McFaul declares that “Trump and Biden’s contrasting positions on Russian interference in American elections are clear. Whether voters care about these differences, however, is not as obvious,” it sounds to me that if the President is reelected, the de-legitimization campaign by McFaul and the rest of the Blob will continue. You don’t have to call that a coup to recognize it’s not democratic politics-as-usual, either.

Making News: Quoted on a Navarro Hit Piece and China Political Meddling

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Breitbart.com, Cato Institute, China, election 2020, elections, Mainstream Media, Making News, Peter Navarro, Ted Galen Carpenter, The American Conservative, The National Interest, The Washington Post, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that my views were cited in two major media articles last week.

The first was a Breitbart.com article examining a Washington Post piece on Trump trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro that I dismissed as a by-now-standard Mainstream Media hatchet job.  Here’s the link.

The second was a post in The National Interest by the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter (full disclosure – a close personal friend).  It mentions my American Conservative article on China’s widespread and thoroughly under-reported efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and broader politics. Click here to read.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

 

Following Up: New Podcasts On-Line Covering the U.S.-China Trade War & Beijing’s U.S. Politics Meddling

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decoupling, economy, election 2020, elections, Following Up, Frank Morano, Gordon G. Chang, Obama, The American Conservative, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Trump, WABC AM

I’m pleased to announce that the podcasts of two recent radio appearances are now on-line, and both focus on headline-making China-related issues.

The first is a recording of my interview last night on John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show.  Click here for an incisive update on the fast-evolving trade and tech conflict between the world’s two largest economies provided by John, co-host Gordon G. Chang, and me.

The second reprises my session this morning with Frank Morano of New York City’s WABC-AM radio spanning a wide range of topics, from comparisons of the Trump and Obama economies to my new American Conservative article on China’s massive and massively under-reported efforts to interfere with U.S. politics and elections.  Here’s the link; my segment comes in at about the 7:40 mark.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other events.

Making News: New Magazine Article on China’s (Massive) Election Interference Now On-Line…& More!

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Adam Schiff, China, Democrats, election 2020, Mainstream Media, Making News, Nancy Pelosi, Phase One, Russia, The American Conservative, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my latest freelance article – a piece in this AM’s issue of The American Conservative explaining why China’s interference with American politics is much more wide-ranging and successful than Russia’s, despite claims to the contrary by Democrats and by Never Trumpers in the Mainstream Media and elsewhere.  Click on this link to read.

Sharp-eyed RealityChek readers will see that the article closely resembles August 13’s post.  I don’t like recycling material, as the practice is known, but in this case, The American Conservative saw that piece and asked to run a version.  I was happy to comply because, as sharp-eyed readers also will notice, I was able to add new material that’s surfaced in the last two weeks.

Also, I’m slated to return tonight to John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show tonight on the latest developments in the U.S.-China trade conflict.  Since during the CCP Virus era, these segments are pre-recorded, I don’t know when exactly the interview will air.  But you can listen to John’s show every night on-line here. Moreover, as usual, if you can’t tune in, I’ll post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Making News: New American Conservative Article Shows that the NY Times is Flunking Journalism 101

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CCP Virus, commentary, coronavirus, COVID 19, globalism, journalism, Mainstream Media, Making News, MSM, nationalism, reporting, The American Conservative, The New York Times, Wuhan virus

I’m pleased to announce that my latest article for an outside publication is now on-line.  The piece, titled, “Front Page NYT: ‘Nationalism Is Jeopardizing’ COVID Fight,” appears in The American Conservative. 

Click here and you’ll find a detailed look at a recent front-page news article in our nation’s supposed newspaper of record that reveals a scary truth:  Either The New York Times‘ staff has forgotten the difference between fact and opinion, or it no longer cares.  Not coincidentally, by the way, the slant is all pro-globalism. 

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Following Up: More Data on America’s Dependence on Foreign Healthcare Goods

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Barack Obama, Department of Health and Human Services, facemasks, Following Up, George W. Bush, health security, healthcare goods, imports, Lena H. Sun, manufacturing, masks, Mike Bowen, Prestige Ameritech, Rachel Siegel, supply chain, The American Conservative, Trump, Washington Post

Since news organizations can be so unreliable, I always do whatever I can to use information from primary sources instead of items in the media. I’m making an exception this morning, however, because I’ve failed to find a government document mentioned in several news articles, and reportedly it contains such important data that it deserves mention. Specifically, this document seems to add vital detail to my recent description in The American Conservative of how extensively the United States relies on foreign sources for crucial health care goods, and how long this gaping hole in the nation’s healthcare security has existed.

The document I can’t find has been described in this Washington Post piece as “a 2014 briefing released by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” Among its findings, according to Post correspondents Lena J. Sun and Rachel Siegel:

“Up to 95 percent of surgical masks are made outside the continental United States, in places like China and Mexico….”

The 2014 date, of course, is revealing in that it was two years before Donald Trump was elected President. Also revealing: The authors interviewed a domestic mask manufacturer who showed them letters he’s written to American Presidents warning that mask availability could be disrupted during a pandemic outbreak.

The first was written to Barack Obama in 2010. And apparently little or nothing was done. But the manufacturer, Mike Bowen of Texas-based Prestige Ameritech, says he reached out to George W. Bush’s administration as well – with the same results.

But just in case you think this is an establishment-bashing exercise, it’s important to note also that Bowen says he sent the same warning in 2017 – when Mr. Trump did occupy the Oval Office.

Contrary to much (self-serving) conventional wisdom, I’m not at all opposed to finger-pointing and blame-casting, even during a crisis. In fact, I view it as critical to ensuring that mistakes aren’t repeated. But I am opposed to cherry-picking finger-pointing. Because by now it should be abundantly clear that when it comes to U.S. national leaders and American health security, both Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives and even populists have let the country down.

And the faster all partisans get off their high horses and focus on identifying lessons that need to be learned regardless of political effect, the faster Americans will overcome this crisis and the lower the chances of a rerun.

Making News: American Conservative Article Details Scary U.S. Health Security Vulnerability

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, facemasks, health security, imports, Making News, medical devices, pandemics, pharmaceuticals, The American Conservative, Trade, Wuhan virus

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my latest freelance article.  Posted this morning at TheAmericanConservative.com, it presents never-before-seen statistics (gleaned from official U.S. government data) showing alarming U.S. vulnerability to cutoffs of vital medical goods from abroad. P.S.  It makes clear that the problem far transcends China.

And keep checking in at RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments.

Making News: A New China (and Basketball!) Op-Ed, and Back on CNBC Today!

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China, CNBC, European Union, Hong Kong, human rights, Making News, National Basketball Association, NBA, The American Conservative, Trade, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that a new op-ed article of mine was posted last night.  Appearing on the website of The American Conservative, it explains why the National Basketball Association and its often politically outspoken players and coaches can easily afford to lead a global campaign to press China to clean up at least some of its human right act in Hong Kong and elsewhere.  Click here to read.

Also, I’m scheduled to return to CNBC this afternoon to discuss all the fast-breaking developments in U.S. trade policy across the board – including with China and the European Union.  The segment is slated to begin at 2 PM EST and, as usual, if you can’t tune in (or if you’re dying to see it again), I’ll be posting a link to the streaming video as soon as one’s available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.