Stocks Tumble While Measles Soar:

A Fact Check of the Trump 2024 Campaign Promises: Has the Trump Administration Delivered on Its Agenda to the American People So Far?

Feel free to check the past Biden Era archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era on Substack, Medium, and LinkedIn, including those on the 2024 Autopsy, Bench-Building, DOGE News, Project 2025 Authoritarianism, Progressive Populism, and more (First Come, First Serve!).

Via thetimes.com

As usual to counter the flood-the-zone strategy of Steve Bannon, here are the headlines for this week:

For new subscribers, check out my last posts on Congress and the issue of Immigration

$6 trillion loss in stock market value in the past 2 days. Trump repeatedly bragged about his stock market performance as President. How’s that going now? Can anyone say, “bear market?”

Major government layoffs of health workers from the Health & Human Services Department, to Center for Disease Control & Prevention, the National Institute of Health, and the Food & Drug Administration (nearly 500 measles cases in Texas alone)

Trump skips the honoring of soldiers killed in Lithuania to play more golf

Trump’s FCC chair is again taking down net neutrality (a.k.a., an equal Internet playing field for all) and eliminating protections for low-income broadband users

SpaceX stands to make even more money from the Pentagon Rocket Initiative contracts

A Trump Mining Executive Order resulted in a stock price jump in the company Susie Wiles represented as a lobbyist who wanted to expand the Alaska Pebble Mine project

Donald Trump Jr. & Eric Trump’s investments in the cryptocurrency sector continue in the form of energy-intense bitcoin mining enterprises

DOGE’s “Big Balls” (yes, an actual nickname for an actual person) provided tech support to a cybercrime ring via Reuters

DOGE is gutting the Securities & Exchange Commission according to Ted Siedle

While Democrats are embracing an economically patriotic & anti-oligarchical agenda and rejecting neoliberalism, its cultural identity issues remain with working class voters, especially on immigration, guns, and the expression of religious faith

And of course, the Trump Tariffs, the largest in nearly a century since Smoot-Hawley (not taking into consideration the uninhabited islands of the penguins), meant to get rid of the progressive income tax

Now that we covered all that, let’s go to recapping where Trump’s 2024 campaign promises currently stand.

Promise #1: Trump pledged to bring down inflation and lower prices on Day One (remember that word “groceries,” Donald?)

Donald Trump has not lowered prices more than 75 days into his administration. In fact, inflation has gone up as has the cost of living overall. Unemployment has actually ticked up to 4.2%.

Consumer confidence has reached its lowest point since 2022 while household debt is going up.

Policies like his tariffs and mass deportations will only worsen inflation and price hikes for consumers, workers, farmers, and small businesses.

Energy prices? Nothing there. Grocery prices? Forget about it. 30-year mortgage rates? Up. Credit card rate caps? No action there. We’re just getting started here. Watch this space.

Promise #2: Trump claimed he would bring peaceful ends to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on Day One (no wars would have started if he was in office, he said)

Donald Trump did not end either of the wars. In fact, a ceasefire in Gaza came into effect 5 days before Joe Biden left office. Israel recently broke that ceasefire, stalling hostage releases and aid to Gaza civilians.

As for Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin is rolling all over Trump despite the administration’s “best efforts” at achieving peace. But hey, Ukraine is still the problem to Don. I mean, why would Trump ever say a bad word about the Kremlin? What have they done wrong?

Promise #3: Trump committed to taking on “rampant” crime in office

Wrong again. But who expected the criminal to take on crime as President? Instead, we have a Department of Justice being run like Al Capone’s law firm. Trump pardoned 1,500+ “patriots” who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 of 2021 to assault police officers and kill members of Congress.

He also is letting dictators like Putin off the hook by disabling war crimes monitoring and pausing intelligence to Ukraine. Taking on crime? Nahh. Not at all.

Just look at the pardon list already.

Promise #4: Trump threatened to reign in the immigration crisis aggressively

The border is no less secure now than it was 70+ days ago. If anything, we are much less safe, Signalgate and all. But truthfully, Trump’s mass deportations plan is not going very well. In fact, Trump is only matching Biden’s deportation numbers, if that. All at the cost of trampling on the Constitution, and raiding the homes of American citizens and law-abiding immigrants who have visas (including some college students, one of whom fled to Canada to avoid arrest).

Promise #5: Trump vowed to “Drain the Swamp”

Like the 1st term, Trump’s 2nd term is no different in failing to reform Washington DC. His Cabinet is the richest in history. His administration is filled with lobbyists and ex-lobbyists from across the country.

The self-dealing and conflicts of interest of Musk are open and obvious. The head of the infamous DOGE team is gutting the civil service and our democratic institutions as we know it (including those who oversee his business’s activities) is the wealthiest man on Earth. Corruption is running rampant Hungarian and Russian-style. Great job Donald.

Promise #6: Trump pledged not to cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security

Basically a bald-faced lie, as the DOGE-cutting and congressional GOP budget shows. Not only is the Trump-Vance Administration gutting Social Security through DOGE as we have covered here, but Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, and many more government programs and social services are going to be cut by the congressional GOP budget resolution. For those who follow the recent blog posts since January, you know where all the government cuts are coming from.

Promise #7: Trump said he would leave abortion alone and make IVF treatments free and covered

Where did that campaign pledge go? I don’t even hear about it anymore. Maybe we’ll hear about him doing just the opposite soon…

Promise #8: Trump announced he would end taxes on tips, on overtime, and on Social Security benefits

Trump is gutting Social Security, not giving more aid and support to Americans (not that ending the tax on Social Security would do that either). Nothing in the Congressional GOP austerity, trickle-down budget mentions ending taxes on tips, overtime, or Social Security.

Promise #9: Trump pledged to end birthright citizenship

He tried to, but thank God he has not been able to achieve this. More on this in the courts, like on so many other issues.

Promise #10: Trump swore to stop the “weaponization of justice”

He has not. Instead, he has weaponized the Department of Justice against all of his political opponents, contrary to his past promises. We know this because he is targeting Big Law firms (such as those that bent the knee), Democratic elected officials (including Congressman Robert Garcia), and higher education institutions like Columbia University. All of which was done before in Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

Promise #11: We will “Make America Healthy Again”

Or rather the opposite. Now we have to worry about bird flu, measles, drug-resistant tuberculosis, MPox, polio, and other diseases that were once eradicated thanks to anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr.

As for taking on the food industry, I wouldn’t bank on a fight with junk food and seed oil lobbyists taking the helm in the Trump-Vance Administration. So much for letting RFK Jr. “running wild on food.” But HHS is cutting cancer research.

Promise #12: Trump pleaded to voters he had no affiliation with Project 2025

That is obviously a lie as we know today. Whether it is the personnel, the maneuvering over Congress, or the actual policies, Trump is either replicating or going beyond the Project 2025 authoritarian manifesto. We warned you.

The Summary:

Contrary to what some Trump 2024 voters imagined, what they might get from the 47th President instead are historic tariffs and trade wars, trickle-down tax cuts, budget austerity, corporate welfare, oligarchy-building, civil service-gutting, funding freezing, intelligence leaks, and corruption. More of the same failed economic policies that drove America to this point and less of the change we need away from the status quo.

Not to mention a major test for our very democracy.

3 months in, and Trump-Musk is off to a roaring start.