IT’S NOT NONSENSE, IT’S NONSENSE

Posted on by Vaseline

Yesterday, after his speech to the Economic Club of New York, Donald Trump answered questions, including this one:

If you win in November, can you promise to prioritize legislation to make child care affordable? And if so, what specific legislation will you promote?

This is his answer:

A transcript of his long, meandering answer:

Well, I would, and we’re sitting together, and I was, someone, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you’re talking about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. Couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it – in this country, you have to have it.

But when you compare those numbers to the numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign countries at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it won’t stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax burden when they send products into our country. Um, those numbers are so much larger than any of the numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s not that bad.

We’re going to — I, I look forward to having zero deficits in a fairly short period of time, along with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of these other things that are happening in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth is also driven by what the plan is that I just told you about.

We’re going to bring in trillions of dollars, and while child care is, uh, called expensive, it’s not that expensive, relatively speaking, compared to the numbers that we’re bringing in. We’re going to make this an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’re going to worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our own country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again, we’ve got to do it because we’re a failing nation right now, so we’re going to take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.

I’m supposed to believe this is a rambling word salad, and that it’s further evidence that Trump is in advanced stages of dementia. However, I think what he said makes sense — in a way. Brendan Nyhan sums up my take on this:

For the sake of completeness: he tries to say that the cost of childcare is covered by his rate and economic growth, but he can’t say anything about childcare because he *doesn’t know anything about it* and he just rambles on like a college student who hasn’t read.

That’s right. Trump knows nothing about the cost of child care or specific proposals for how to fund it, so he beats around the bush and says that his magic rates will generate huge amounts of revenue — presumably with zero inflation! — as well as economic growth and the same crackdown on “waste and fraud and all the other things that are going on in our country” that every Republican has promised since at least the late 20th century, and as a result we’ll be able to throw huge amounts of child care money at families with young children and still have enough left over for everything else we need to do. Oh, and we’ll stop running deficits!

This is not dementia. This is to lie. It’s basically the same kind of lying that Republicans have been doing for decades, except they’ve said that their tax cuts won’t result in revenue-reducing deficits and he says that tariffs will make all of our economic problems go away, including revenue cuts, without creating any new problems of their own. Trump got here in part by being a dishonest used car salesman who promises you anything to make the sale. He wins or comes close to winning a general election because after a decade of The student, A lot of people who aren’t super fans hear him and say, Well, he’s a brilliant businessman, so I trust him when he says he can do this.

I understand why the Kamala Harris campaign and other Trump critics want to paint this as the product of a brain that no longer works the way its owner wants it to. I hope that message hurts Trump at the ballot box. But Trump’s brain still works more or less as intended. He’s a lifelong bullshit artist, and he’s still pretty good at bullshitting. (At the end of his answer, the audience gives him a round of applause, even though his listeners are people who know his numbers can’t possibly be right.)

And here’s a passage from the speech itself that is ridiculed:

But this also makes sense — at least if you consume massive amounts of right-wing media. This isn’t about the school shooting. Here’s a transcript:

Colorado. Aurora. Has anybody been there? I think you better stay away for a second. They had AK-47s. The ultimate weapons. AK-47s. They can blow a lot of people away really fast. And the sheriff wouldn’t touch them. Nobody wants to touch them. “Sheriff, there are eighteen Venezuelans attacking my building. Would you please come over here and take care of this situa–?” He’s got a deputy. You know what they say? “Ah, well, no thanks. Let’s call in the military.” They’re taking over, and I’ve been saying this for four years (clip stops)

Like your right-wing uncle whose tirades every Thanksgiving are incomprehensible unless you watch Fox News six hours a day, Trump assumes that everyone in his audience is familiar with a story that has been heavily promoted by the New York PostFox and other right-wing media.

If you believe these sources, you’d think the entire city of Aurora, Colorado, has been taken over by a Venezuelan criminal gang. But other news sources tell a different story. Here’s AP:

Police in the Denver suburb of Aurora say a Venezuelan street gang with a small presence in the city did not take over a run-down apartment complex. Still, the accusation continues to gain traction among conservatives and was amplified by former President Donald Trump at a Fox News town hall on Wednesday, where he said Venezuelans were “taking over the whole city.”

The unsubstantiated accusation gained traction after a resident of the complex shared a video last month showing armed men knocking on an apartment door, raising fears that the Tren de Aragua gang had taken control of the six-building complex.

However, city officials say the buildings, along with two other apartment complexes, have fallen into disrepair due to negligence by the property manager, CBZ Management.

The news site Denverite tells us the following:

There are a handful of apartment buildings in Aurora that are owned by CBZ Management, a company based in Brooklyn, New York. For years, residents of several of those buildings have complained about rats, mice and insects, concerns about crime and poor treatment by management.

All of this occurred before the arrival of tens of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants to the Denver area.

Over the past two years, Aurora has been working to bring homeowners into compliance with the law, Jessica Prosser, Aurora’s director of housing and community services, said at a news conference in August.

Many newly arrived Venezuelans and other Spanish-speaking immigrants were placed in these apartments by non-profit organizations.

We know there have been recent attacks and shootings on and near some of the properties. Aurora police have arrested a man on suspicion of attempted murder and say he has ties to Tren de Aragua.

The police also report that allegations of rental fraud have been made at several CBZ Management properties.

We also know that there is video of men with guns entering one of the apartments at The Edge at Lowry. Aurora police have not confirmed the identities of those men.

At the same apartment complex, Denver reporters saw multiple mice and bedbugs, mold in a bathtub, a stove that hadn’t worked for two months, a sink that wouldn’t drain and a broken fan.

However, the entire city of Aurora has not been taken over by the gang, as the Colorado Republican Party claimed in a fundraising email. Police have been to The Edge at Lowry to talk to residents, and Aurora’s police chief says there is no gang running the apartment complex. Residents said as much at a news conference Tuesday at the building.

The video is disturbing.

But it is clear that CBZ Management, the Brooklyn-based company that manages this building, is grossly negligent. Aurora’s Republican mayor has called the company “foreign slum landlords.” Online comments about the company, both in Colorado and Brooklyn, have been universally negative (click to enlarge):

We can have a conversation about immigrant gangs in America. That’s fine. But this is a complicated story. And it’s certainly not a story about a gang taking over an entire city, as Denverite points out:

Walk around Aurora and it’s clear: The gang hasn’t taken over the city, even though some gang members have committed a handful of crimes. Just a stone’s throw from The Edge at Lowry, neighbors shop at local stores, mow their lawns, ride their e-bikes, and go about their lives.

Trump’s rhetoric is dishonest, hyperbolic and inflammatory — but that’s par for the course for Republicans in 2024. He’s not losing his mind. He’s just spinning false narratives.

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