By CJ Waldron
As I indicated in "Promises, Promises - Part 1," President Trump loves to use the slogan “Promises made. Promises Kept” to deceive his base into believing he actually has done something.
He erroneously claims victory when he creates a crisis, only to “solve” it at the last minute, meanwhile failing to follow through on many of his campaign promises. Despite this, his base continues to believe his false claims.
Here are some more of his failed promises.
I Will Release My Tax Returns
From the start of the 2016 campaign, he has repeatedly promised to release his tax returns once an IRS audit is completed. This is something every president since Richard M. Nixon has done to show they aren’t heavily in debt, or beholden to some foreign power. He has claimed that he cannot release his returns while they are under audit, something the IRS has repeatedly debunked.
Despite this, and even a lawful demand by Congress, he has continued to refuse to allow anyone to see them. He has even threatened a lawsuit against his own accounting firm should they allow his returns to be released.
Soon after his inauguration, and several times thereafter, he has stated that no one wants to see his tax returns. His acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney has vowed that Democrats will never see them and his base continues to support this stance.
“Lock Her Up!”
Nothing riles up his rally supporters than the mere mention of Hillary Clinton. Despite the election being over for more than two years, the “Lock Her Up!” chant continues on cue. During the 2016 campaign, his base used smears, conspiracy theories and out and out lies to claim that Hillary should be imprisoned for acts real or imaginary. During the debates, he even stated that she should be in jail when she accused him of being a Russian puppet.
He claimed that, if Hillary were elected, we would have “unending investigations".
While there have, indeed, been investigations, it is the alleged misdeeds of Trump and his cronies that are the subject of these investigations.
Despite this, he and his base continue to use Hillary as a deflection mechanism to take the focus away from his own issues, and now he is using his attorney general to investigate the other investigators as his 2020 campaign ramps up.
Other “Promises”
There are so many more promises he made that he did not fulfill. His middle class tax reform, standing up against the NRA and of course his ultimate promise, to “Make America Great Again” are all indicative of his failure as a leader.
True, all politicians make promises they don’t keep, but Trump has done so in such epic fashion as to defy all political sensibility. He has told more lies, made so many misrepresentations and called factual reporting “Fake News”.
Why does his base continue to believe him? Sad to say, they are mesmerized by him, and will continue to believe his “promises”. Like I said in Part 1, like lemmings, they will follow him off the cliff, no questions asked.