Tag: Donald Trump

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defense & war international affairs

Trump & Taiwan

“China Issues Donald Trump a Warning Over Taiwan,” Newsweek headlined Billal Rahman’s recent article.

For the last five years, I havecounseled that the U.S. must either withdraw from Southeast Asia or convince the Chinese regime that we and our allies are willing to stand up to them, militarily.

How will President Trump respond in a second term?

Arguing that “the United States … is always America first,” a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office recently needled: “Taiwan at any time may turn from a pawn to a discarded child.” 

However, Lyle Goldstein with Defense Priorities notes that “During Trump’s last four years there was quite a robust stance in favor of defending Taiwan …” While Al Jazeera headlined a recent story, “Trump signals hard line on China with hawkish cabinet picks.”

Still, “I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” Trump said back in June.* 

“[T]hey want protection,” he told Joe Rogan last month. “The mob makes you pay money, right?  But with these countries that we protect, I got hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO countries that were never paying us.”

Mr. Trump did successfully prod NATO countries into putting more money into their militaries. That seems to be his gambit with Taiwan.

And maybe it’s working. 

“Taiwan is considering a massive $15 billion military package,” Fox News is reporting, “in a show to the incoming Trump administration that it is serious about defending itself against the threat posed by China.”

Plus, as The Epoch Times illuminates, “A coalition of the willing is already emerging.” Countries in Europe and Asia are increasingly coming together and standing up against Chinese bullying of Taiwan.

As we await the second Trump administration.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Trump also charged that Taiwan “stole” our computer chip business. True, in the same sense that Shohei Ohtani stole 57 bases for the LA Dodgers last season.

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inflation and inflationism national politics & policies

Quips & Stunts

Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, economy, inflation, democracy, government

The Epoch Times has produced a handy policy comparison between the two major-​party candidates for the presidency of the United States, former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Maybe issues don’t matter so much now, though: more talked-​about is Trump’s stunt scooping fries at McDonald’s, which got Democrats so upset (to their detriment), or Kamala Harris’s bizarre quip at a rally where two young men shouted “Jesus Is Lord!” and “Christ Is King!” as they were being thrown out. The Veep’s response that they were at the wrong rally was construed by many to suggest that her supporters aren’t Christians.

Nevertheless, The Epoch Times is right to emphasize policy. It’s a big subject, so let’s just compare the candidates on “The Economy.”

Donald Trump “Pledges to reduce inflation by increasing American energy production, cutting wasteful government spending, and preventing illegal immigration,” and “Seeks to lower commodity prices by ending global wars.” Are these “good for the economy”? Probably; mostly. But distant from the heart of inflation. 

Worse, Trump allegedly “‘Strongly’ feels presidents ‘should have at least a say’ in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions.” The Fed is indeed key, but the only way to reduce inflation immediately is through the kind of policies presidents tend to hate — for example, the deflation that Fed Chairman Paul Volcker performed on Jimmy Carter’s economy that helped get Reagan elected.

Kamala Harris sticks to progressive standards, proposing “a federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries to tackle inflation,” which would backfire into a major economic debacle, complete with shortages and calls for rationing and worse. It fits in nicely with another typical progressive plank, calling for “raising the minimum wage,” which would lead to less employment partly through increased robotization of businesses now employing the workers affected, the low-​skilled (the ones Trump calls “great”).

Looking over their substantive policies, it’s easy to see why “culture war” issues prevail.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law First Amendment rights

How Deep Is Your Fake?

deep fake, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, lizards

Monday last, a group of Democratic congressfolk “sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), asking the agency to adopt regulations prohibiting the creation of deepfakes of election candidates,” Emma Camp tells us in last Thursday’s Reason article, “These Democrats Want the FEC To Crack Down on Elon Musk’s Grok.”

Current law already “prohibits a candidate for federal office or an employee or agent of a candidate from fraudulently misrepresenting themselves, committee, or organization under their control,” the letter states, but candidates have already been caught using “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in campaign ads to depict themselves or another candidate engaged in an action that did not happen or saying something the depicted candidate did not say.”

OK. Regardless of the merit of current regulation, the apparent fact that some political actors have defied the rule (perhaps out of ignorance) doesn’t necessitate more legislation. Why not just let the wheels of justice, or what passes for it in the FEC realm, go on doing what they’re doing?

Because Elon Musk.

Specifically, his X (“Twitter”) platform recently launched “Grok‑2,” an AI for the creation of pictorial representations (not unlike those used here at ThisIsCommonSense​.org). And, shock of shocks, there are no rules in place for ordinary people to take artistic license at those politicians they hate and and for those politicians they don’t.

As Ms. Camp notes, but the legislators don’t, most of these efforts have been for comic effect.

The Democrats don’t like this.

They request expeditious consideration for the creation, by the FEC, of new rules to “regulate” (suppress) AI by ordinary users to maintain the ostensible integrity of “our democracy.”

We have, Ms. Camp not unreasonably concludes, been pretty good at detecting “deep fakes” so far.

Besides, the big problem in politics is shallow fakes.

They’re everywhere. They’re called politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies partisanship

Repeal Obamacare

Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, MAGA, socialism, debt, lizard

Oy vey! Given the alternative of Donald Trump on the one hand and — now that Biden has bailed — a bad-​as-​Biden Biden-​substitute on the other, Americans must re-​level their look at the lesser of two evils.

It may be difficult to resist hoping that Trump gets elected this November to allow many of the Democrats’ worst initiatives be left to die on a withering vine. (Examples of the worst: Congress-​bypassing regulations designed to penalize production of gas-​powered cars and outlaw certain freelance or contract work.)

Still, the candidate and his party have many flaws.

We cannot forget that. Indeed, with their abandonment of the tiniest desire to reduce the size of the federal leviathan, remembrance should be easy. 

Shrink government? Radically reduce spending? Reduce debt? No such goal was seriously pursued in the first Trump administration, and no such goal is mentioned in the twenty-​point Trump-​Republican Party platform.

There’s talk of tax cuts, ending inflation (somehow), diverting spending from Democratic projects. Sure. But the platform insists that Social Security and Medicare programs not be modified in any way. 

In any way!

And about Obamacare — the biggest expansion of the medical state in recent years, which Republicans had once pledged to repeal — the platform is mute.

The 2016 platform said that improving healthcare “must start with repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare,” a declaration retained in 2020. Now it’s gone. Republicans seem to have succumbed to the strategy of turning Obamacare into yet another supposedly unassailable, supposedly inextirpable entitlement program.

Unfortunately, you don’t recover or expand liberty by accepting every expansion of serfdom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment election law national politics & policies

Serious Times

Donald Trump, shooting, assassination, media

Former President Donald Trump came a half-​inch from being assassinated on Saturday. Thank goodness he’s alive. 

Let’s reflect for a moment on what would have happened to our country had Mr. Trump not turned his head slightly just before the bullet hit his right ear. 

Potentially serious violence and unrest? Even if the sorrow, despair, and anger millions would feel at having their presidential candidate murdered in cold blood were to be completely peacefully received, what is the takeaway? 

It is destructive. We are less free if political power is dictated by the barrel of a gun. And it is the government’s job to prevent that from happening. 

Political talking heads are calling for a different tone and I’m all for that, so far as it goes. But it is a vague concept that no one agrees upon. And the answer certainly isn’t less freedom of speech. 

“You know the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated,” President Biden told the nation last night. “It’s time to cool it down.” 

I think, instead, it is time for Mr. Biden to turn up the heat: on the Secret Service. 

This weekend’s deadly* shooting represents an epic failure. To allow a would-​be assassin to climb onto the roof of a building 140 yards away, a rifle in hand and in line of sight of a former president giving a speech, demonstrates an incredible level of incompetence. 

Heads must roll at Secret Service. (Figuratively.) A new and beefed-​up detail should be protecting Trump. And it is past time for RFK, Jr., to be granted Secret Service protection as well.

I don’t say this often but … spend the money! 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Corey Comperatore, a father sheltering his family with his body, was struck by a bullet and killed. Two others were seriously injured by the gunfire. Also, the shooter was killed by Secret Service snipers. 

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crime and punishment election law partisanship

Threshold Crossed

Donald Trump, indictments, convictions, law, court, judge

We’ve seen many sad days for our republic. But now the country has crossed a certain horrible threshold of banana-republic-hood.

Guided by a corrupt judge, a New York City jury has found former President Trump guilty of all 34 of the District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s bogus charges. Something or other to do with Stormy Daniels, an alleged affair, paying off an extortionist, federal election laws, and bookkeeping.

With Trump targeted by so many show trials launched solely to punish his ascendancy and prevent his reelection, chances were that at least one of these elephantine efforts would extract a conviction. Even people lousy at darts hit the dartboard sooner or later if they throw a thousand darts.

As Katie Pavlich notes, during the trial prosecutors didn’t “focus on proving the fraud charges” but on “hush-​money payments” and “irrelevant salacious details of an alleged affair.” Who needs a definable crime when Being Trump is crime enough?

The verdict made one reader at Instapundit “realize just how dependent the Democrats have become on appearing legitimate. Where there is no substance, form must take precedence. [So we’re] offered oppression as ‘democracy’ and Stalinist show trials as ‘justice.’”

There are so many irregularities in the charges and the conduct of the trial that the verdict is bound to be overturned on appeal.

By some court. Somewhere. No?

But the damage has been done. The worst politicos and operators are now high-​fiving each other, little caring about implications and long-​range effects. As if they cannot see the next step. 

As if they cannot see they are behaving like the caciques of a banana dictatorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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