The IRS, a foundation of the U.S. pension system since 1941, will end once President Trump is re-elected, he promised last weekend.
A new nuclear deal from Iran will come a month later, he said Monday, about the same time as a new national health care plan, a middle-class tax bracket and a string of trade agreements around the world.
“If we win the election, we will deal with a lot of countries very quickly,” Trump promised.
Trump had planned this year for campaign with the slogan “Promises Kept.” While his prospects for re-election are damned in the midst of a devastating pandemic and a deep recession, Trump has kept the message short: one promise.
This is not the type of ambitious government agenda most presidents implement when seeking a second term. There are no white papers explaining the math, policy teams building legislative coalitions as national security experts imposing the geopolitical circumstances and the compromises.
Instead, it is Trump, who has repeatedly made requests to set his second-term agenda, making grandiose and, in some cases, pie-in-the-air promises that even surprise fellow Republicans. often catch.
Trump has clearly fulfilled some of his duty for 2016 campaign, including a collapse of both legal and illegal immigration, more conservative federal judges and a rollback of environmental regulations. But his record does not show much evidence that he is likely to succeed where he has failed in the past.
The president spent part of his first year in office trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. He failed, even with Republican control of both houses of Congress.
Since then, he has repeatedly promised to release a replacement plan ‘in two weeks’. He has not done so yet, and there is not much public support for dismantling America’s health care system as millions fight a virus that has claimed more than 164,000 American lives.
Trump withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018 and has not announced negotiations with Tehran on a possible replacement. Other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, who were signatories to the deal, have largely supported Iran.
His long attempts to make a trade pact with China produced a nominal “Phase 1” deal and have since been thwarted. Relations between Washington and Beijing have also reached a host of other economic and security conflicts.
Trump’s commitment to eliminate the tax burden is a nonstarter on Capitol Hill, where the tax has two-fold support because it supports Social Security, Medicare and other popular programs. Republican lawmakers have even reversed Trump’s efforts to temporarily eliminate the tax while the coronavirus crisis continues, as the president sought to do on Saturday.
“It’s like a bad imitation of Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres as a host show of the game, because they at least have real things to give away,” said former rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.). “With him, it’s just a bunch of empty promises and I think people have realized that.”
None of this has mattered to Trump, who believes in his capabilities as a salesman. Making bombastic promises helped him win in 2016, when he repeatedly promised to pay Mexico for a border wall, eliminate national debt and build the nation’s infrastructure. He did none of these things.
The tactic failed in the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats won control of the House despite Trump’s promise of the latest slate of a post-election cut.
Now, the president’s quirky pink display of the virus that has infected more than 5 million Americans and put 30 million out of work has shattered his once-strong re-election bid. Trump promised this week that Americans will soon have hundreds of millions of vaccine doses, although the prospects for a safe, reliable vaccine are not yet certain.
“The turning point was when he effectively left the ship on COVID,” said David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents. “I can not remember what president has made so many bad, stupid decisions in a row as this president has made in recent weeks. It’s almost every time something comes up, he goes the wrong way from what his party wants. “
Although he had never held public office, many voters gave the flamboyant former New York businessman in 2016 the benefit of the doubt.
This year, polls show that many voters believe Trump is incompetent, a view reinforced by multiple failures by his administration to curb the pandemic – and his attempts to blame others, at one point saying “I do not take at all responsibility. ”
“He came up with the idea in Washington that you, as president, could just pick up a stick and, by sheer willpower, people would just do what you needed them to do,” said Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer. worked for Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign in the Democratic primary.
O’Brien claims that fewer voters will believe Trump’s promises this time around. ‘Four years ago he just had a TV show. Now he has a record, ”he said.
Even some of Trump’s media allies have begun to press against his latest promises.
Geraldo Rivera pressed Trump in a radio interview last week several times on his promise to help so-called Dreamers. Trump has unequivocally fought to block the Obama program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, allowing migrants who were brought to the United States illegally as minors to stay in the country.
“DACA will work out, Geraldo,” Trump said, using the acronym for the program.
“So when? When? You’ve been telling me that for a while,” Rivera asked.
After telling Rivera ‘just to tell people to relax’, Trump turned to many other promises that would bear fruit – he insisted – once his opponents, at home and abroad, realized that he had four more years to go. surrounded.
“That first week will be very good if I win,” Trump said.
The tactic is not new to Trump. His 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, preached “sincere hyperbole,” an “innocent form of exaggeration” that sold condos by playing on people’s fantasies.
Trump’s promise to withdraw the tax bill fits into that. His order on Saturday allows employers to temporarily stop collecting taxes. But the order does not eliminate the tax – workers would have to pay everything they owe in 2021 – and it caused immediate confusion for companies and businesses across the country.
Faced with that reality, Trump said he would work to completely eliminate the tax if he wins reelection, and Republicans open up to prosecutors that they are endangering Social Security.
Democrats saw an obvious opening. Joe Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee, quickly unleashed ads and an op-ed in Florida attacking Trump’s “reckless war on social security,” which is critical of millions of seniors in the state.
Many Republicans would rather avoid that fight. But some of Trump’s loyal supporters trust his political instincts.
“When people are hurting economically, I think it makes sense for politicians to find ways to help them,” said Matt Schlapp, a lobbyist who chairs the American Conservative Union.
He states that social security is already on a weak footing, and Trump’s proposal would force an account of the Democrats, who have rejected previous Republican efforts to restore the system.
“I think there are better ways to tax people than on their jobs,” he said.
But if Trump’s first term is any indication, there is little certainty he will release a plan to Congress to reform social security if he wins a second term. And as even Trump acknowledged in his book, his lack of follow-up could make a difference on election day.
“You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperball,” he wrote. “But if you do not deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
