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Sunday, May 15, 2016

Disinformation From the Mainstream Media

There's an anonymous AP article this morning that is so filled with incorrect information that I wonder if that has been done intentionally.  According to the AP, there are two key issues on which Donald Trump "sounds like a Democrat".  The two issues are trade and social security.  The problem, of course, is that the article is completely wrong.

Let's start with international trade.  Trump says that he is in favor of free trade but he also wants to rip up trade agreements like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP (which has yet to pass Congress) which Trump says were negotiated by "stupid" leaders.  In short, Trump wants free trade but only on good terms for the USA.  He wants to get rid of all those special side deals that give benefits to other countries at American expense.  According to the AP, that's a Democrat position, but that's a lie.  Hillary Clinton supported the TPP as the "gold standard" of trade deals and Bill Clinton is the "stupid" leader who signed NAFTA (which Hillary supported too).  Hillary now says that she is studying the final TPP to see if she will support it, but she will most likely do so.  After all, even in the midst of a campaign she is taking many months to decide about TPP just to keep the issue off the table.  So we have two trade agreements negotiated by "stupid" Democrats (Clinton and Obama) and supported by the likely Democrat nominee this year, but the AP says that ripping up those agreements is a Democrat position.  What complete nonsense.

Then there's social security.  Trump's position is that he wants to achieve strong economic growth which will put billions more into the coffers of social security and keep the system funded into the future.  Trump also wants to end the illegal employment of millions of illegal aliens for whom no social security payments are made, and to replace them with legal on-the-books employees.  The payments for all these millions of additional employees will go far also towards fully funding the social security system.  For the AP, that's a Democrat position.  Again, the claim is totally wrong.  Who are the Democrats who want to enforce our immigration laws and stop illegal aliens from working off the books thereby depriving the social security system of billions each year?  And as for strong economic growth, the Democrats have given us the worst eight year period since the Depression and Hillary now tells us that very slow growth is the new normal.  There's no way that Trump's position is a Democrat position.

What is actually happening is that the AP is trying to convince gullible readers that Trump is just offering the same as Hillary on two key issues:  the economy and trade.  It's just not so.

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