Good Now

... could get bad later - unless we elect the right woman.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that GDP has grown for 10 quarters in a row, and 14 out of the last 15 (since Biden took office in 2021).

U.S. economy grew at 2.8 percent pace, slowing slightly ahead of the elections

Solid consumer spending fueled GDP growth between July and September, new figures show.

The U.S. economy continued its expansion in the third quarter, growing at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent and reinforcing a rosy lens of the economy days before the elections.

The latest gross domestic product report offers a snapshot of an economy that has slowed slightly from a 3 percent reading in the previous quarter, according to data released Wednesday morning by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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The economy’s resilience ahead of a tightly contested presidential election was fueled by robust consumer spending that has outlasted even the most optimistic forecasts. Despite inflation, Americans have continued to shell out for a range of goods and services, including cars, dining out and travel.

However, there are pockets of softness. A dip in housing investments, a slowdown in inventory purchases and a rise in imports all dragged down the latest reading. Many economists expect growth to slow later this year and into 2025, as state and local governments dial back their spending.

- more -

Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans

Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.

Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.

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Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.

The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades and directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.

“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”

Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buy from foreign suppliers, he has said.

Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with Bloomberg’s John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago.

In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.

Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.

The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.

But the main costs fall on American buyers.

“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.

Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.

“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”

Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.

During his presidency, Trump imposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.

Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.

Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.

“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.

Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.

Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.

“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.

As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.

Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.

Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside of China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.

The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.

Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.

“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.

Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.

“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.

Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.

Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.

Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.

By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.

Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.

“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”

Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.

Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.

Lalo is growing fast, but not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.

Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so that it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.

“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”

That Song He Mentioned

At the end of his address last night, Biden told us about a tune called American Anthem.

I don't know how I missed this one.

A Short Recap

Today's Joe

"You might've heard about the Republicans' Project 2025. Well, lemme tell you about our Project 2025: Beat the hell out of 'em."

                                    --Joe Biden

Coming Down

And no, of course he didn't do it. But he was able to get things put in place that made a nice steep drop in inflation far more likely to happen than anything any Republican would've done - especially that jackass Trump.

Thanks, Joe. Ya done good.

Inflation hits lowest level since spring 2021, most likely teeing up rate cuts

Federal Reserve officials have said they won’t trim borrowing costs until they’re confident that prices are easing back to normal.

Updated August 14, 2024 at 10:15 a.m. EDT|Published August 14, 2024 at 7:39 a.m. EDT
Inflation dropped in July to its lowest level in three years on an annual basis, setting up the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates soon to take pressure off the economy.

The snapshot was the clearest indication yet that inflation is heading back to normal levels from 40-year highs — without a recession. Central bankers won’t be caught celebrating, scarred by years of unexpected twists that repeatedly upended the Fed’s inflation fight. But officials will close out the summer with the surest sense yet that it’s time to loosen up on the economic brakes, possibly starting next month.

That would mean some breathing room for households and businesses trying to get mortgages or auto loans, or grow their businesses. For two years, high interest rates have been an added strain for those also struggling under the weight of high prices, especially for basics like food and gas. Now, more relief is in sight — even though the run-up in inflation means prices are still significantly higher now than they were just a few years ago.

“This is pretty much in line with what the Fed expected, and hoped,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum. “I had always felt the [Fed’s] language had pretty much locked them into a rate cut in September. This essentially guarantees it, unless we get something really bizarre.”

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed July’s annual inflation rate hit 2.9 percent, dipping below 3 percent for the first time since March 2021, when price increases took off on the heels of the pandemic. A core measure that strips out volatile categories such as food and energy also saw the smallest 12-month increase since April 2021.

Markets rose slightly off the news, but were mixed by midmorning.

For months, Fed officials have said they won’t trim borrowing costs until they’re confident inflation is easing to normal levels. Now that they’ve come about as close as possible, officials are increasingly acknowledging the risks of keeping rates too high for too long. Already, hiring has slowed down, and global markets are jittery over whether the Fed might have put too much pressure on the economy overall.

Housing continued to dominate the inflation snapshot, with shelter costs accounting for nearly 90 percent of the monthly increase. Rent costs have been cooling for some time now, but economists are still puzzled about why that shift didn’t show up in official statistics until this summer. July saw a slight backpedal, with a key rent gauge rising a smidgen more than in previous months. (The widespread expectation is inflation won’t come down all the way to normal until there’s major headway on the housing component.)

Energy costs stayed level after a few months of declines. Indexes for car insurance and household furnishings were also up. Meanwhile, costs for used cars and trucks, medical care, airline fares and apparel dropped in July compared to June.

In the meantime, families and households are feeling long-awaited relief from price increases, especially on key budget items such as food and housing. Gas costs are down compared with last year.

In the backdrop, Republicans and Democrats are crisscrossing the country trying to attract voters to their economic agendas. Inflation routinely polls as a top reason many Americans don’t think the economy is working for them, even while other metrics such as the job market and consumer spending remain strong. GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump often slams Democrats for massive spending during the pandemic that helped supercharge inflation. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, argues that her proposals would help the middle class and that Trump’s plans for mass deportations and spiked tariffs would make inflation worse.

Jared Bernstein, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, hailed the “solid disinflation” as good news. But in an interview with The Washington Post, he said the administration is keeping its focus on ways to relieve everyday costs for rent, prescription drugs and more.

“We’re very happy to see lower inflation, to see it have some momentum,” Bernstein said. “But that’s not going to stop us from continuing to lower costs wherever we can.”

The Fed has made major progress on its inflation fight since prices took off in 2021. Since then, officials hoisted the benchmark interest rate to the highest level in more than two decades, in an aggressive attempt to slow the economy at any cost. The result has turned out better than just about anyone predicted, with robust growth, low unemployment and rising wages accompanying cooling inflation. (The Fed wants inflation to hit a 2 percent target each year, but that’s using a different inflation gauge from the one released Wednesday. That gauge rose 2.5 percent in June on an annual basis. Officials have said they won’t wait until inflation gets all the way down to 2 percent before they start cutting rates. Still, they routinely say 2 percent is the ultimate goal.)

The fear, though, is that the economy will begin to crack under the continued weight of high rates. A weaker-than-expected July jobs report stoked fears of a downturn, with that anxiety quickly rippling through the financial markets over a dicey day of trading last week. And even though the job market isn’t being gripped by widespread layoffs and the markets quickly stabilized, the recent panic has put a spotlight on the Fed, which decided to hold rates steady last month instead of starting to cut. With no meeting in August, some observers wondered if the Fed should have lowered rates in July.

Ultimately, the answer will lie in the data.

“You can see inside the data it’s a good report,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “It’s just not where we would have wanted to see it to say, ‘all clear.’”

The overwhelming forecast is that the Fed will announce a rate cut at its next meeting in September, possibly by a larger half-point cut if policymakers think the economy is slowing too much. Analysts also expect that the Fed — playing a bit of catch-up — will cut at the year’s remaining meetings in November and December, too. (A November cut would be notable because that meeting falls the week of the presidential election, when the central bank would otherwise avoid anything that affects politics at all costs.)

Fed leaders have made clear that no decisions are set in stone, and depend entirely on the data. But it’s clear that leaders are more confident in their progress against inflation than at any time over the past few years.

Speaking at a news conference in late July, Powell said the recent string of encouraging reports was even better than how things looked in late 2023. Last year, much of the fall in inflation came from a rapid decline in goods prices, as people pulled back on all of the couches, treadmills and home office equipment they had bought during the pandemic. Now, Powell said, there’s a “broader disinflation” taking hold.

“This is so much better than where we were even a year ago,” Powell said. “It’s a lot better. The job is not done, I want to stress that, and we’re committed to getting inflation sustainably under 2 percent. But we need to take note of that progress.”

Still, that progress looks different across the economy. Speaking to The Post this month, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said that when he travels across his district — which includes Iowa and most of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin — businesses say supply chain issues from the pandemic have largely cleared. But many companies are still frustrated that they can’t pass their rising operating costs on to customers, because people are already so sensitive to more price increases.

Goolsbee also said there’s a disconnect between wages for low-income Americans rising faster than inflation — and the reality of high costs for the basics.

“Low-income people are getting squeezed in every way,” Goolsbee said.

Thank You, Joe

You brought us back.

You showed us how to be who we are.

You will be remembered.

Bless you, Joe Biden

Why Politics?

Because the people who decide what you pay in interest on your credit card, and your mortgage, and your car loan are involved in politics.

The people who set your rent and your base pay - they're involved in politics.

The people who tell you to shut up and live with it when your water looks like piss, and your air makes your kids gasp for a breath, and the food you eat is both too expensive, and too poisonous - they're involved in politics.

When you complain about having to choose

between the lesser of two evils,

and that means you stay home,

refusing to participate,

you're letting someone else choose

the greater of those evils for you.

It's Time

We have to step up and meet this moment.

Joe Biden's Wikipedia Page:

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who is the 46th and current president of the United States since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 under President Barack Obama and represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009.

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden moved with his family to Delaware in 1953. He graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965 before earning his law degree from Syracuse University in 1968. He was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and to the U.S. Senate in 1972. As a senator, Biden drafted and led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act. He also oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden ran unsuccessfully for the 1988 and 2008 Democratic presidential nominations. In 2008, Obama chose Biden as his running mate, and he was a close counselor to Obama during his two terms as vice president. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate and defeated incumbent Donald Trump. He is the oldest president in U.S. history and the first to have a female vice president.

As president, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recession. He signed bipartisan bills on infrastructure and manufacturing. He proposed the Build Back Better Act, which failed in Congress, but aspects of which were incorporated into the Inflation Reduction Act that he signed into law in 2022. Biden appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. He worked with congressional Republicans to resolve the 2023 debt-ceiling crisis by negotiating a deal to raise the debt ceiling. In foreign policy, Biden restored America's membership in the Paris Agreement. He oversaw the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan that ended the war in Afghanistan, leading to the collapse of the Afghan government and the Taliban seizing control. He responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia and authorizing civilian and military aid to Ukraine. During the Israel–Hamas war, Biden condemned the actions of Hamas as terrorism, announced military support for Israel and sent limited humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

I've said before that I've never been a Joe Biden fan.

I've also said I don't have to like the guy to agree with him, and to work with him.

And that's very much what politics has to be about.

I'm not looking to date the guy - we're not gonna take long soapy showers together, or pick out some nice matching furniture for the living room, or go for a walk on the beach in the moonlight holding hands.

• Does he wanna do some of the things I think government should do?
• Does he know enough about how you get those things done?
• Is he a good and decent guy?
• Will he tell me as much of the truth as possible without compromising security?
• Do I think I can trust him enough to have the honor and the integrity to put it all down and walk away when it's time to do that?

Biden was faced with his George Washington test, and he rose to the occasion.

We know there are still some Republicans who would do the same - who have done the same - but either they're already out of office, or they're on their way out. If there are any left in seats of power, but they're not willing to risk their own positions to do what's right, then they're worthy of nothing but scorn. Let 'em rot.

Joe Biden's a better man than any of them ever dreamed of being.

"Ideally Both"

I think I love this woman.

Cut The Crap

... and speak the truth.

Why am I being expected simply to go along with whatever the fuck the party elites tell me?

I reckon I'm still going to vote for Democrats - BLUE NO MATTER WHO and all that - but it's not a sure thing unless I'm satisfied that they're telling me what's actually going on here.

Because feeling like I'm stuck - that I have to vote their way - and that they're sittin' there all smug and shit, having maneuvered in a way that hems me in. That's about the the shittiest thing anybody can do. And if that's the case, I'm going to resent that for a right long time - and I'm really good at nursing a grudge.

So:

Why is my vote for Biden & Harris in the primary being dismissed and discarded?

What is it about Biden's work as POTUS that you don't like?

How is this not rerunning the kinda shit that cost Hillary the election in 2016?

Is anybody ever going to stand up and tell me the fucking truth?

Torpedoing Biden

Press Poodles love to stir the shit for the sake of stirring the shit - because calm, steady, and practical doesn't sell dick pills and panty liners as well as "Democrats In Disarray!"

I'm not saying Biden has absolutely no problems. I've never said that, and I never will, so this time, I'll say it this way: The guy dodders, and he goes on side trips to Grandpa Land on occasion. That's Biden - and that's always been Biden.

And this:

For me, it's Biden -

until Biden tells me it's not Biden

Take a listen to Tennessee Brando talking about ratings, and then tell me the WaPo piece that follows couldn't possibly have anything to do with keeping up the drama for the sake of clicks, and the revenue they get from pimping the show to drive that traffic, to peddle their advertisers' shit.

In the end, it won't be an asshole fascist like Trump that blows it all up. It's going to be some schmuck in the Marketing Dept who's convinced the boss that simply getting eyeballs on a website is more valuable than providing voters a little boring truth about what's at stake in the election, and how mailing in one ballot can make enough of a difference that maybe we change things enough that we don't have to feel like we're at the broken end of the bottle every fucking minute of every fucking day.

And now it's time for WaPo to shit on Biden's head in a piece that spills a gallon of ink on a story that boils down to He Said / She Said.

They name names when there's something to say about how the old guy is sharp and involved, and asking pointed tough questions in (eg) a foreign policy meeting that was scheduled for 90 minutes and then goes for 3 hours, but all the shit-talk is from anonymous sources.

Biden’s aging is seen as accelerating; lapses described as more common

Aides, foreign officials, members of Congress and donors say President Biden has seemed slower and more often loses his train of thought in recent months, though close aides insist he remains mentally sharp.

President Biden, who at 81 is the oldest person ever to hold the office, has displayed signs of accelerated aging in recent months, said numerous aides, foreign officials, members of Congress, donors and others who have interacted with Biden over the last 3½ years, noting that he moves more slowly, speaks more softly and has moments when he loses his train of thought more often than even just a year ago.

None of those who spoke to The Washington Post said they had seen Biden appear as lost and confused as he did at the presidential debate against Donald Trump on June 27, where his halting performance sent panic through the Democratic Party. They largely did not question his mental acuity, and several senior White House aides who interact with Biden regularly said that he continues to ask probing, detailed questions about complicated policy matters and can recall facts from previous briefings in minute detail.

Nevertheless, Biden has slowed considerably over the last several months, according to 21 people, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic and share candid assessments.

No names - cuz we wouldn't want any verifiable sources now would we.

And 21 people - now there's a big time cohort. I guess we can't possibly get any kind of skewed results form a sample so huge.

They said Biden’s physical signs of aging have become more apparent — the stiff gait; the need at times for assistance in moving from place to place; a raspy, softened speaking voice that can make the lifelong politician known for impassioned and at times seemingly unending speeches now difficult to hear and understand. In addition to these traits, he has exhibited occasional lapses in which he has appeared to briefly freeze up or suddenly veer off topic, instances some said they easily dismissed before the debate but have now caused them to question his ability to do the job for another four years.

During the Group of Seven nations summit in Italy last month, several European leaders came away stunned at how much older the president seemed from when they had last interacted with him only a year, or in some cases, mere months earlier, several officials familiar with their reactions said. “People were worried about it,” said one person familiar with leaders’ reactions.

At an immigration event at the White House less than two weeks before the debate, some participants worried about the president’s frailty and how his energy ebbed and waned, wondering how he would be able to debate Trump. One person who attended termed Biden’s performance “terrifying.” Others said they thought the president seemed physically diminished but otherwise fine. At an internal meeting at the White House this spring, an official recalled struggling to hear Biden speak even though he sat just a few feet away and noticed that the president answered some questions with puzzling non sequiturs.

“There’s been a decline over the last year. He was much more vigorous in 2023,” one former administration official said. “His age is progressing, and I’m pretty sure that’s normal. … The question is how long can he do this job for, and I don’t know the answer to that.”

Biden has said he had a cold on the night of the debate. There is no indication he is more seriously ill, and a White House doctor declared him “fit for duty” after an examination in February 2024.

The White House has pointed to Biden’s long record of legislative successes and his management of complex foreign policy matters in numerous countries as evidence of his ability to continue for another four-year term.

“As he has proved by earning the strongest record of any modern President, Joe Biden is unflinchingly capable and fighting for American families, with sharpness and resolve, every moment of every day — whether it’s managing rapidly-evolving national security events in the Situation Room or working with members of Congress late to pass the biggest climate investments in history,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Several White House aides who work with the president regularly and accompany him on foreign trips said that while he may move slower and look older, they do not see signs that he is mentally diminished and say his physical aging has no bearing on his ability to continue the job of president. And many Democrats and White House aides who interact with Biden regularly said they were stunned by his debate performance because he had appeared far sharper and more energetic in private meetings.

But during the Group of Seven nations summit in Italy last month, a number of European leaders were struck by Biden’s appearance and demeanor, according to four people who spoke directly with multiple leaders. The general impression among leaders, the people said, was that while Biden appeared capable of carrying out his duties today, they were concerned about how he would be able to serve another four-year term.

The leaders noted that Biden seemed more tired, frail and less lucid at certain moments. Several said he was hard to hear, prompting meeting participants to ask him to speak up at times, according to a summit participant. The president also sometimes lost his train of thought, though he would return to the point quickly, three of the people said.

Biden’s appearance at the G-7, coupled with his debate performance, has further heightened anxiety among European leaders about a possible second Trump term. European capitals have long been preparing for another Trump presidency, but Biden’s halting debate performance has put those efforts into sharp focus and made the stakes “more real,” one person familiar with the conversations said.

“The impression was, we don’t see him being able to run the country for four more years. How are you running this guy for four more years? How are you going to win this election?” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, who was familiar with several leaders’ reactions. “It’s very, very rare in a democracy that the person you run for an election is someone that you all know can’t lead the country for four more years.”

One person familiar with the conversations among leaders said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni observed that Biden was “mentally on top of his game” but physically weak, leaving her worried. The person said those concerns became more pronounced after the debate. A spokesman for the Italian Embassy did not provide a comment.

“What has changed the discourse here in Europe is not the G-7. It’s the debate,” the person said. “Leaders were dismayed by Biden’s performance — they told themselves they should have realized at the G-7 … and came to the conclusion that he cannot win in November.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was with Biden at the G-7, and Amos Hochstein, a senior national security official also on the trip, said all the leaders at the G-7 looked to Biden for leadership on complex matters including Israel’s war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and China. Blinken said Biden held at least a half-dozen working sessions with other leaders, and Biden often came back to offer additional thoughts on various matters.

“What I saw and experienced at the G-7 is a president who was plunged into the work,” said Blinken, who like several others was made available by the White House to vouch for Biden’s fitness. “The question — and it’s a fair one — is ‘Does he have command of the job and is he getting results?’ And the answer to that is yes.”

But others who have interacted with Biden in recent months said they have been struck by changes in his demeanor.

One White House official said he noticed Biden had aged significantly over the past year during a meeting this spring when he found it difficult to hear and understand the president. In another meeting, a senior aide was telling Biden the order in which to call on people in an upcoming event. Biden was alert and engaged but jotted the names down slowly, the official recalled. “That took longer than one would expect,” the official said. “It wasn’t that his mind was trailing off. He was slowing down.”

While campaigning in 2020, Biden said he viewed himself as a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders. But after a string of legislative victories and a better-than-expected showing by Democrats in the 2022 midterms, Biden announced his intent to seek a second term.

Trump, who is 78 and prone to non sequiturs of his own, has also faced questions about his acuity, particularly as he has rambled incoherently at several recent public events. Still, polls show voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s. In a post-debate CBS News-YouGov poll, 72 percent of voters said they did not believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, compared with 49 percent who said the same about Trump.

Biden’s age has been a frequent target of Republican attacks. They frequently take videos from public events — often with critical context missing — that make Biden appear confused and inept. White House aides have fiercely pushed back on any suggestion that Biden is too old to do the job, saying he aggressively asks questions in briefings and speech preps. They also point to his continued ability to work a rope line and talk about complicated policy matters on the fly.

Emmy Ruiz, the White House political director, recalled a meeting with Latino leaders that Biden held this spring that covered policy issues including housing, immigration and the border. She said Biden walked in with one card of notes, initially intending to simply drop by and say hello, and instead held a 45-minute unscripted policy meeting.

“He’s constantly pushing us,” Ruiz said in an interview. During speech preparation, she said, Biden often asks what people are expecting to hear from him and requests to speak with local politicians to better understand their constituents.

After a group of senators returned from the Middle East after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, they went to the White House one evening to brief the president for a meeting they expected to last 30 minutes, said Jonathan Kott, an adviser to Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a key ally of the president.

“They had a detailed conversation about foreign policy for over two hours and thought he was sharp, alert and in command,” Kott said.

Neera Tanden, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said she attended a recent meeting where she briefed Biden on the minutia of the administration’s health-care policy, a plan to lower the cost of inhalers and talked through how the Medicaid rebate program works. Biden asked detailed questions about the policy and its real-world impact, she said.

“My experience with the president is that he is demanding on facts and policy and wants to deliver for the American people so he asks tough questions,” Tanden said.

Mark Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family who spent a day with Biden at the White House in March, said he “doesn’t move around like an athletic 55- or 60-year-old.”

“But he had a lot of energy. He was telling jokes and showing off the White House and was completely fine,” Shriver said.

Those who do not interact with Biden regularly, such as Democratic donors and foreign leaders, are often the ones who notice the change most acutely. Senior aides who interact with Biden regularly said they have not noticed stark changes.

And some of Biden’s lapses have taken place in public.

While addressing a crowd on the White House lawn during a commemoration of Juneteenth last month, Biden briefly became unintelligible, as he slurred his words before regaining his footing and completing his speech. At a White House meeting on reproductive health in January, Biden directed the crowd’s attention to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who the president said was “sitting” in the room — but it was actually Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The two Cabinet secretaries do not look alike; Mayorkas is bald, while Becerra has a full head of hair and wears glasses.

During an impromptu news conference in February, Biden referred to Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, the president of Egypt, as the president of Mexico. Biden had called the conference to try to allay concerns about his age and memory after special counsel Robert K. Hur determined that he should not be prosecuted for careless handling of classified documents, in part because a jury might conclude that he was a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Biden had a childhood stutter that aides say sometimes resurfaces. Experts say lifelong speaking challenges are separate from lapses of memory.

Since the debate, Democrats have expressed frustration that Biden has been slow to forcefully come out and show to voters he is up to the job. He held a rally in Raleigh, N.C., the day after the debate, reading scripted remarks from a teleprompter, where he was energetic and impassioned, briefly allaying some concerns. But many Democrats and White House allies were befuddled as to why Biden and his team had not quickly scheduled a television interview that would demonstrate that Biden could handle unscripted settings and added more events to his schedule this week.

Biden is now set to record an interview with ABC News on Friday and has a series of campaign events in Wisconsin on Friday and Philadelphia over the weekend. Next week, the president is expected to hold a solo news conference during the NATO summit being hosted in Washington. Biden and his senior team have said they understand that the president must demonstrate his fitness for office to salvage his candidacy.

Much of the anger inside the White House and on Capitol Hill has been directed at Biden’s closest aides, who have largely kept the president away from spontaneous and unscripted events, sparking suspicion among those who interact with him less often that his condition may be worse than aides have acknowledged.

Bates, the White House spokesman, noted that Biden has done interviews with major networks and speaks in more informal settings with reporters, such as when he is boarding Marine One at the White House.

Biden has traveled the country over the last couple months campaigning, but the vast majority of his events are carefully choreographed, with the president reading from a teleprompter — even for intimate fundraisers or brief remarks. He does few media interviews, and even when the president does hold news conferences, they are often with foreign leaders and limited to a small number of questions. (White House aides counter that the president holds plenty of unscripted interactions in photo lines and in impromptu meetings and drop-bys, and that teleprompters are standard for presidential events.)

Donors have complained that Biden’s team has barred them from asking questions even at small group events, unusual at high-dollar political fundraisers.

Biden’s aides also adjust his schedule to avoid overly taxing him. During a private meeting with Democratic governors at the White House on Wednesday evening, Biden said that he needs to get more sleep and had instructed staff to avoid scheduling events for him after 8 p.m., a person familiar with his comments said.

Two former and one current White House official said most high-priority meetings and key events are scheduled midday, when aides believe Biden is at his best. They also said that White House schedulers keep meetings with the president as small as possible, particularly compared with prior administrations — a sharp departure from Biden’s earlier White House stint as vice president, when the garrulous politician loved to be at the center of large gatherings. Biden also sometimes wears tennis shoes and uses a shorter series of steps to Air Force One, to reduce the chances he might trip.

One veteran leader who has met Biden several times over the years said they were surprised by how much older Biden appeared when they saw him on May 27 for a Memorial Day breakfast in the East Room of the White House that was attended by a few hundred grieving military family members, veterans service organizations and administration officials.

While there were no “red flags” in Biden’s brief remarks at the event, the veteran leader said, the president had “noticeably aged a lot” since the previous Memorial Day weekend, noting his gait and physical demeanor, when he also greeted guests and took photographs.

At the White House nine days before the debate, four people who were present said they worried about the president’s fitness after observing him at a celebratory gathering to announce a new policy to help immigrants.

Under the sparkling chandeliers in the East Room on June 18, the president seemed off. He appeared frail as he navigated to the stage before the packed crowd of more than 100 people. He sometimes mumbled. In one jarring moment, he appeared to freeze while introducing Mayorkas, and then waved it off as a joke. A White House aide said the difficulty with Mayorkas’s name in that moment stemmed from Biden’s stutter.

Aides reportedly said it was Biden being Biden.

But others at the event said lawmakers and other attendees whispered concerns about Biden’s fitness over iced tea at the White House afterward, as a mariachi band played.

“Everyone talked about it with each other,” said a former Biden administration official who attended the event. “We were all like ‘That was horrible. We’re going to lose the election.’”

An advocate who was in the room recalled saying to others after the event, “he’s not going to make it four more years,” adding “he’s walking like an old man.”

“I was in shock,” the person said. “It was like I was seeing something nobody else was seeing. … It was so obvious to me.”

Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who also attended the event, came away with a different impression. She said Biden seemed sharp, empathetic and capable of leading at the June 18 event.

Barragan said Biden at previous events has sometimes asked for her hand to help him descend from a stage. But she said she had confidence in his ability to be president.

“Joe may not walk the same. He might be stiffer,” she said. “I don’t think that goes to his inability to be president of the United States.”

But the former Biden official was struck by the moments the president seemed less like himself and worried about what it would mean about his ability to take on Trump.

The former official came away from the event thinking to themselves: “I don’t know how that man’s going to debate next week.”

Again, I'm not saying there are no problems. I am saying I'm pretty fuckin' sick and tired of Press Poodles taking the word of anonymous sources, and then reporting it as if it was Gospel, and keeping me blind with no way to check it for myself.

If it's real, then show me. And as far as the observers making comments that border on diagnostics - let's look at where those folks took their clinical training.

Finally: Biden has always gotten himself off onto tangents. Maybe what we're seeing now as "glitches" are just Biden trying to self-discipline.

The big problem with going toe-to-toe with Trump is that the lies are so thick that you have to resist the natural reflex of trying to rebut everything in the Standard Trump Gish Gallop, and stay focused on the main point.

For a guy having to deal with that stutter, if his handlers aren't prepping him properly, he's going to come off as confused - and that perceived confusion is almost sure to be interpreted as "old and fuzzy-headed and not up to it" by Press Poodles looking to drive clicks and revenue from as wide an audience as possible, with no regard for reality-based consequences.

A Quick Note

Lots of people - I'll hold off calling them 'lots of gutless, jelly-legged Democrats' - are panicked because Biden keeps stumbling.

On numerous occasions, I've said straight out that I'm not crazy about the old fart either, but I'll put his brain up against Trump's all day every day.

Paraphrasing Jasmine Crockett:

If Democrats put half as much energy into attacking MAGA (the real threat) that they do in sniping at each other - and especially at Joe Biden - then we'd be good.

For all you geniuses out there who think someone else would be better ...

• who is it?
• how do they get on the ballot in all 50 states?
• how do they get the money they need? (over $100M in Biden's war chest doesn't transfer)
• how do they rebuild the infrastructure in 4 months - some of which will be flat-out lost?
• how do they explain that somebody's been picked more or less at random in spite of millions of votes cast for Biden in the primaries - because of some bad polling?

Dems spend all their time looking for the perfect fit for every voter, instead of pounding away on the people-centric policies - you know, the stuff that actually works.

Republicans focus on their people-hostile agenda, designed to strip Americans of their rights, while pimping a malevolent candidate as a living breathing god in human form.

Use your energy addressing the horrors of Project 2025, and the fact that SCOTUS has plowed the road to the full destruction of our democracy.

BTW, panic pushers, guess what.

Biden pulls even with Trump, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows

WASHINGTON, July 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden pulled even with his Republican challenger Donald Trump this week in the race to win the November election, a sign the contest remains close even after a widely panned debate performance by the Democrat, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Biden and Trump each had 40% support among registered voters in the two-day poll that concluded on Tuesday. A prior Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted June 11-12 showed Trump with a marginal 2 percentage point lead, 41% to 39%.

The two faced off in a televised debate last Thursday, where Biden stammered throughout and failed to challenge Trump's attacks. The new Reuters/Ipsos poll also showed that, following the debate, about one-in-three Democrats think Biden should drop out of the race, something he has pledged not to do.

The poll, which gathered responses online and nationwide from 1,070 U.S. adults, had a 3.5 percentage point margin of error for registered voters, many of whom remain on the fence with about four months left before the Nov. 5 election. One in five registered voters said that they weren't sure for whom to vote, that they would pick a different candidate or that they would not vote at all.

The latest poll did not include a question on support for independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. The June poll found that 10% of registered voters would back him if he appeared on the ballot.

While nationwide surveys give important signals on American support for political candidates, just a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the U.S. Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.

Both candidates carry significant liabilities. For Biden, these include concerns about his age - 81 - that were magnified by his debate performance.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 83% of Democrats and 97% of Republicans agreed with a statement that in the debate, "Biden stumbled and appeared to show his age." Only 58% of Democrats and 11% of Republicans had the same assessment of Trump's debate performance.

Trump, 78, in May became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, whether in office or after leaving the White House. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September and faces potential prison time after a jury found him guilty of 34 charges stemming from a hush money payment to an adult film actress before the 2016 presidential election.

Today's PG

Best explainer I've heard in a while.

The Dems have a good bench, guys. Stop worrying about what happens if Joe stumbles.

• He's good.
• She's good.
• We're good.
• It's all good.

As good as it ever is anyway.

Everybody take a deep breath and let's get to work.

King Joe the 1st

You get the idea

Find The Bad Guys

... and punch 'em in the face.

Fact Check

Remember now - low score wins.

For Trump:

“The only jobs he created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back jobs that bounce back from the covid.”
—Trump
This is false. Biden’s jobs record in his first three years certainly tops Trump’s performance. In the first three years of Trump’s term, about 6.5 million jobs were created — less than half the number created under Biden in the same time period. The number of jobs is now 6.2 million higher than the peak under Trump in February 2020, before the pandemic struck the economy.

Meanwhile, employment for the native-born population has increased by almost 6.8 million under Biden, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (We start from February 2021, the first full month that reflects employment under Biden.) Employment of foreign-born workers increased about 5 million from February 2021 though May, the bureau says. The agency says this figure includes more than just undocumented immigrants; it also includes legally admitted immigrants, including refugees, and temporary residents such as students and short-term workers.

“A lot of credit for the military and no wars.”
—Trump
This is not true. Trump often says he was the first president in 72 years not to have any wars, which takes us back to 1948, when Truman was elected in his own right after stepping up to finish Franklin D. Roosevelt’s final term months before the end of World War II. This is a more broad-based claim than a statement Trump made in his farewell address as president — that he had started no new wars.

Jimmy Carter, president from 1977 to 1981, not only never formally declared war or sought authorization to use force from Congress during his presidency, but military records show not a single soldier died in hostile action during his presidency. Eight military personnel died during the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue mission, but the military deems those as nonhostile deaths. (A helicopter collided with another aircraft.) A Marine and an Army soldier were also killed when a mob burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.
At least 65 active-duty troops died in hostile action in Trump’s presidency, the records show, as he ramped up commitments in Iraq and Syria to fight the ISIS terrorist group while also launching airstrikes on Syria as punishment for a chemical weapons attack. Trump also escalated hostilities with Iran, including the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Trump said at the time the strike was carried out in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of 2001.

“The only thing he was right about is I gave you the largest tax cut in history.”
—Trump
This is false. Trump’s tax cut amounted to nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it was far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP. Trump’s tax cut is the eighth-largest in the past century — and smaller than two tax cuts passed under Barack Obama. Trump’s tax cut was heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations.

“Remember, more people died under his administration, even though we had largely fixed it. More people died under his administration than our administration, and we were right in the middle of it, something which a lot of people don’t like to talk about.”
—Trump
This statement lacks context. Of the 1.2 million Americans who died of covid, about 60 percent died under Biden compared to 40 percent for Trump. But Trump was president during the pandemic for a much shorter time — about 10 months, compared with more than three years under Biden. So the monthly death toll under Trump is higher. A vaccine was created in record time, but it was left to the Biden administration to distribute it in an efficient manner.
Under Trump - Dead Per Month, 1st 11 months of COVID: 37,423
Under Biden - Dead Per Month, 1st 11 months of his term: 33,364

“We’re like a Third World nation between weaponization of his election, trying to go after his political opponent, all of the things he’s done, we’ve become like a Third World nation.”
—Trump
Trump refers to “weaponization,” code for Biden’s supposedly using the resources of the U.S. government to target his political opponent. There is no evidence that Biden directed the Justice Department or local prosecutors to pursue prosecutions of Trump.

“I’d love to ask him why he allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.”
—Trump
This is poppycock. Immigration experts know of no effort by other countries to empty their prisons and mental institutions. As someone who came to prominence in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Trump appears to be channeling Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s 1980 Mariel boatlift. About 125,000 Cubans were allowed to flee to the United States in 1,700 boats — but there was a backlash when it was discovered that hundreds of refugees had been released from jails and mental health facilities.
Helen Fair, research associate at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research in Britain, which tracks the world prison population (except for a handful of countries), says the numbers keep growing. In 2013, 10.2 million people were in prison globally — and that had grown to 10.77 million in 2021. A preliminary estimate for February 2024, not ready to be published, indicates the population has grown even more. “In short, I would disagree with Donald Trump’s assertion,” she said.

“He’s destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in. They’re putting them on Medicare. They’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security.”
—Trump
Undocumented immigrants improve the health of Social Security and Medicare by paying payroll taxes without receiving benefits.
In a fact check, we calculated the figure for Social Security payments made by undocumented immigrants is now about $27 billion. For Medicare, it should be at least $6 billion, as the Medicare tax is about 23 percent of the Social Security tax.

“Fifty-one years ago, you had Roe v. Wade and everybody wanted to get it [the power to legislate on abortion] back to the states. Everybody without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders. … Every legal scholar throughout the world, the most respected, wanted it brought back to the States.”
—Trump
This is absurd. The docket for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case in which the right to abortion was overturned, is filled with briefs from legal scholars saying it would be a mistake to overturn decades of legal precedent.

“The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth, after birth. If you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, we’ll put the baby aside and we’ll determine what we do with the baby, meaning we’ll kill the baby.”
—Trump
This is a common Republican talking point — that Democrats support nationwide abortion on demand up until the moment of birth. The implication is that late-term abortions are common — and that they are routinely accepted by Democrats.

The reality, according to federal and state data, is that abortions past the point of viability are extremely rare. When they do happen, they often involve painful emotional and even moral decisions.

About two-thirds of abortions occur at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and nearly 90 percent take place in the first 12 weeks, or within most definitions of the first trimester, according to estimates by the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights. About 5.5 percent of abortions take place after 15 weeks, with just 1.3 percent at 21 weeks or longer.
Meanwhile, Trump once again grossly mischaracterizes remarks by former Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D), a physician.

Northam told a radio show in 2019 that late-term abortion procedures are “done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s not viable. So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Critics suggested the governor was endorsing infanticide. His office later said Northam was referring to medical treatment, not ending the life of a baby.

“We had the safest border in history in that final couple of months of my presidency.”
—Trump
This is false. Trump’s efforts to completely shut the border did not bear fruit until the coronavirus pandemic emerged in 2020 and he was able to turn away migrants by citing a public health emergency — but even then apprehensions at the southern border were lower than April 2017, shortly after he took office. Then the numbers began to spike again. Apprehensions in Trump’s final two months in office were much higher than in President Barack Obama’s last two months in office. Apprehensions were 43,251 in December 2016 and 31,576 in January 2017, the last two months of the Obama presidency, compared with 71,141 and 75,316 in Trump’s last two months. The highest number of apprehensions under Obama was 67,342, in March 2009.

“I had the highest approval rating for veterans taking care of the V.A. [Veterans Affairs]. He is the worst.”
—Trump
This is a favorite falsehood of Trump’s. The approval rating — he usually cites the number of 91 percent — is based on an independent survey conducted in 2013, when Obama was in office. “Veterans strongly endorsed VA health care, with 91 percent offering positive assessments of inpatient care and 92 percent for outpatient care,” according to a news release from the Department of Veterans Affairs announcing the survey results in 2014, when Obama was still in office. A quarterly survey of veterans, obtained by Wisconsin Watch, found that trust in the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department reached a high of about 80 percent under both Trump and Biden. (The range was 55 percent to 80.2 percent under Trump and 75.8 percent to 80.4 percent under Biden.)

“There was a made-up quote, suckers and losers. They made it up. It was in a third-rate magazine that’s failing like many of these magazines. He made that up. He put it in commercials. We’ve notified him. We had 19 people that said, I didn’t say it.”
—Trump
Trump strongly disputes this, but elements have been corroborated.
The original source for this story was a 2020 article in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg titled: “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers.’” Goldberg, citing “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day,” reported that Trump canceled a visit to Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he did not believe it was important to honor American war dead.
“In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, ‘Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers,’” Goldberg wrote. “In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood [during World War I] as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.”

“Fifty-one intelligence agents said that the laptop was Russia disinformation. It wasn’t. That came from his son Hunter.”
—Trump
After the New York Post in 2020 said it had obtained emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, more than 50 former senior intelligence officials, including five CIA chiefs, signed a letter saying the release of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The letter itself artfully did not say the laptop was Russian disinformation — but in the presidential debates Biden used the letter to falsely claim the laptop story was a “Russian plan,” “a bunch of garbage,” “disinformation from the Russians” and “a smear campaign.”
The emails in question have since been confirmed to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“I got them [NATO] to put up hundreds of billions of dollars.”
—Trump
Throughout the 2016 campaign, his presidency and now this election, Trump has demonstrated that he has little notion of how NATO is funded and operates. He repeatedly claimed that other members of the alliance “owed” money to the United States and that they were delinquent in their payments. Then he claimed credit for the money “pouring in” as a result of his jawboning, even though much of the increase in those countries’ contributions had been set under guidelines arranged during the Obama administration.
Since 2006, NATO guidelines have asked each member country to spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. In 2014, NATO decided to increase its spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, with the goal of reaching 2 percent in each country by 2024. This money does not end up in NATO’s coffers, as Trump often asserts. (Direct funding, for military-related operations, maintenance and headquarters activity, is based on gross national income — the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country — and is adjusted regularly.)
NATO figures show that the defense expenditures for NATO countries other than the United States have been going up — in a consistent slope — since 2014. As we noted, that’s when NATO decided to boost spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea.

“The secretary general of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I’ve ever seen.”
—Trump
When he was president, Trump often attributed quotes to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that could not be confirmed, such as: “Secretary Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump’s biggest fan, to be honest with you. He goes around telling — he made a speech the other day. He said, ‘Without Donald Trump, maybe there would be no NATO.’ ” Stoltenberg said no such thing.

“I offered her [then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.”
—Trump
Trump and his allies have invented the claim that he requested 10,000 troops before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, twisting an offhand comment into a supposed order to the Pentagon. A Colorado judge in November considered testimony on this point and dismissed a Trump aide’s account as “incredible” and “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”
In 2021, we explored this claim twice and debunked it, each time awarding Four Pinocchios. Then, in late 2022, the Jan. 6 committee released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provided new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.

That report underscored how Trump has little basis to make this claim, saying that he brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order.

“The Unselect Committee, which is basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now and out of office, and Democrats, all Democrats, they destroyed and deleted all of the information they found because they found out we were right.”
—Trump
This is false. Trump is seizing on House GOP claims that the Jan. 6 committee archive is missing some records. Not only is that claim rejected by the chair of the Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), but not even Republicans have claimed “all” of the documents are missing. Instead, we are talking about videos and some sensitive materials — and there is no indication any of these materials concerned the alleged troop order.
First, the committee did not include raw videos as part of the permanent records, but instead provided official transcripts of the video interviews. Thompson also said that some materials gathered by the committee contained “law enforcement sensitive operational details and private, personal information that, if released, could endanger the safety of witnesses.” That material was sent to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for archival purposes because the Jan. 6 committee dissolved before a full review of the sensitivity of this material was completed, Thompson wrote.

However, according to special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump, those sensitive materials from the White House and the Secret Service were provided to Trump months ago as part of pretrial discovery.

“Telling the Ukrainian people that … you change the prosecutor, otherwise you’re not getting $1 billion. … That’s quid pro quo.”
—Trump
Biden’s role as vice president in Ukraine, and his son’s involvement there, make for a complex story that we have examined many times. Trump has seized on kernels of truth to build an appearance of scandal that resonated with his supporters. Trump argued that Biden had demanded a quid pro quo from the Ukrainians, but at its core, Trump’s tale was a fiction: There had been no prosecution or investigation of Biden’s son Hunter in this matter, and Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine were coordinated with the State Department and America’s European allies.

Here’s what really happened: During Obama’s second term, Biden was in charge of the Ukraine portfolio, keeping in close touch with the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko. Biden’s brief was to sweet-talk and pressure Poroshenko into making reforms that Ukraine’s Western benefactors wanted to see as part of Ukraine’s escape from Russia’s orbit. But the Americans saw an obstacle to reform in Viktor Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor whom the United States viewed as ineffective and beholden to Poroshenko and Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs.

During a 2015 visit to Ukraine, Biden privately told Poroshenko that loan guarantees would be withheld unless Shokin was replaced. After repeated calls and meetings between the two men over several months, Shokin was removed and the loan guarantees were provided. Trump had it completely backward. Biden was thwarting corruption, not abetting it.
Meanwhile, in 2014, Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company that was owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky. Hunter Biden showed questionable judgment in taking such a position while his father had a high-profile role in U.S.-Ukraine relations, and the possible conflict of interest was well-documented in news reports at the time.

Years after Biden forced the ouster of Shokin, the former prosecutor cried foul, falsely claiming he was removed because he had had Burisma in his sights — a story he peddled to Trump’s allies.

“They moved a high-ranking official, a DOJ, into the Manhattan DA’s office to start that case.”
—Trump
False. There is no evidence that Biden has anything to do with this case, which was brought by Alvin Bragg, a local Democratic prosecutor. Bragg inherited the file from a previous prosecutor, Cyrus Vance Jr. The tenuous connection cited by Trump supporters is that Matthew Colangelo, one of the prosecutors working for Bragg, served as acting associate attorney general, the third-ranking position at the Justice Department, before joining Bragg’s office in late 2022. But prosecutors change jobs all the time — and Bragg’s office had already been working on the case.

“He caused this inflation. I gave him a country with no essentially no inflation.”
—Trump
Higher prices for goods and services would have happened no matter who was elected president in 2020. Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply-chain issues, as companies had reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe.

“I got them [NATO] to put up hundreds of billions of dollars.”
—Trump
Throughout the 2016 campaign, his presidency and now this election, Trump has demonstrated that he has little notion of how NATO is funded and operates. He repeatedly claimed that other members of the alliance “owed” money to the United States and that they were delinquent in their payments. Then he claimed credit for the money “pouring in” as a result of his jawboning, even though much of the increase in those countries’ contributions had been set under guidelines arranged during the Obama administration.

Since 2006, NATO guidelines have asked each member country to spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. In 2014, NATO decided to increase its spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, with the goal of reaching 2 percent in each country by 2024. This money does not end up in NATO’s coffers, as Trump often asserts. (Direct funding, for military-related operations, maintenance and headquarters activity, is based on gross national income — the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country — and is adjusted regularly.)

NATO figures show that the defense expenditures for NATO countries other than the United States have been going up — in a consistent slope — since 2014. As we noted, that’s when NATO decided to boost spending in response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea.

“The secretary general of NATO said Trump did the most incredible job I’ve ever seen.”
—Trump
When he was president, Trump often attributed quotes to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that could not be confirmed, such as: “Secretary Stoltenberg has been maybe Trump’s biggest fan, to be honest with you. He goes around telling — he made a speech the other day. He said, ‘Without Donald Trump, maybe there would be no NATO.’ ” Stoltenberg said no such thing.

“It could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people.”
—Trump
Trump never met a number that he could not double, triple or quadruple. Here, he manages to take a real number — about 5 million migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency — and increase it fourfold. Then he offers a prediction to make it sound even larger.
Here’s the reality: Customs and Border Protection recorded about 9.5 million “encounters” between February 2021, after Biden took office, through April. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.

CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways”— which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million.

That’s a big number, but apparently not big enough for Trump.

“What he’s done to the Black population is horrible, including the fact that for 10 years he called them superpredators … in the 1990s. We can’t forget that superpredators was his name, and he called it to them for 10.”
—Trump
This is false. Biden sponsored the 1994 crime bill, now seen as a source of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. But Biden never used the term “superpredators” to describe African Americans.

That was Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent in 2016.

“I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air. And we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever.”
—Trump
This is false. As president, Trump cut funding to the Environmental Protection Agency and got rid of more than 70 environmental regulations, weakening climate protections. The United States in 2020 ranked 24th in the world, according to the authoritative Environmental Performance Index, a project of Yale and Columbia universities. It ranked 16th for air quality and 26th for water and sanitation. An analysis of EPA data released in 2020 found that after improving for the better part of a decade, air quality in the United States is worsening again — and could be associated with nearly 10,000 premature deaths. Fine particulate matter in the air that Americans breathe fell by 24 percent between 2009 and 2016. But concentrations increased by 5.5 percent in 2017 and 2018, and premature deaths associated with exposure to the dangerous particles spiked by 9,700 in 2018, the study said.

“The Paris [environmental] accord was going to cost us $1 trillion. And China, nothing, and Russia nothing, and India nothing. It was a rip-off of the United States.”
—Trump
Each country set its own commitments under the Paris accord, so Trump’s comment makes little sense. He could have unilaterally changed the commitments offered by Obama, which is technically allowed under the accord. Indeed, the agreement is nonbinding, so there was nothing in the agreement that stops the United States from building, say, coal plants or gives permission to China or India to build coal plants. Trump’s estimates of the costs came from industry-funded studies that did not consider possible benefits from reducing climate change.

“He wants to raise everybody's taxes by four times.”
—Trump
This is false. For five years, Biden has been consistent in saying he will not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year, which leaves about the top 2 percent of taxpayers. Biden reiterated this pledge in the budget plan he released earlier this year.

“He gets paid by China. He’s a Manchurian candidate. He gets money from China.”
—Trump
There is no evidence that Biden — who unlike Trump has released decades of tax returns — gets money from China and thus is somehow compromised in his dealings with Beijing.

“I took two tests, cognitive tests. I aced them, both of them.”
—Trump
Trump has frequently mischaracterized the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a test aimed at detecting dementia or cognitive decline. He has sometimes suggested that the test included identifying drawings of three animals such as a whale or a tiger. The creator of the test told The Washington Post it has never included the specific combination of animals described by Trump in any of its versions over the years.

“Well, I shouldn’t have to say that [political violence in any form is unacceptable]. But of course I believe that it’s totally unacceptable. And if you would see my statements that I made on Twitter at the time, and also my statement that I made in the Rose Garden, you would say it’s one of the strongest statements you’ve ever seen.”
—Trump
This is revisionist history. In reality, as documented in the House select committee report on the Jan. 6 attack and other reporting, Trump was reluctant to take action to calm the situation, even as his staff pleaded with him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol. Trump’s tweets were so inadequate, in the view of staff members, that many resolved to resign. Even his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. found the tweets to be inappropriate. Nearly three hours passed before Trump finally told the rioters to “go home.”
As for the video, it had its intended effect — the riot ended — but it came nearly three hours after Trump learned of the attack. The committee’s report suggests Trump issued the video only once it was clear the riot would fail to end the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Then, after a video, Trump issued one more tweet that left many aides aghast and prompted many to resign: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

And for Biden:

“All he said was is [it’s] not that serious, to inject a little bleach in your arm.”
—Biden
Trump did not say people should inject bleach in their arm. Instead, at a pandemic briefing in 2020 he spoke confusingly of an “injection inside” of lungs with a disinfectant. He made the remarks after an aide presented a study showing how bleach could kill the virus when it remained on surfaces. Trump later claimed he was speaking “sarcastically,” though he seemed serious at the time.

“We brought on in a position where we have 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.”
—Biden
The number of manufacturing jobs has rebounded since the pandemic, but growth in these jobs has essentially stalled. Only about 25,000 of the nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs were created since January 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and there has been virtually no increase at all this year.

“I changed it in a way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally. That’s better than when he left office.”
—Biden

Biden’s framing is misleading. He is referring to a Department of Homeland Security estimate that the seven-day average of migrant apprehensions dropped more than 40 percent to less than 2,400 encounters per day since he issued an executive action barring asylum at the southern border. But the numbers are still higher than when Trump was president.

“We have a thousand millionaires in America, I mean billionaires. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent taxes.”
—Biden

We’ve given the president two Pinocchios for this claim. He’s referring to a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. But that estimate included unrealized gains in the income calculation. That’s not how the tax laws work. People are taxed on capital gains when they sell their stocks or other assets. So this is only a figure for a hypothetical tax system.

According to IRS data on the top 0.001 percent — 1,475 taxpayers with at least $77 million in adjusted gross income in 2020 — the average tax rate was 23.7 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers (income of at least $548,000) paid nearly 26 percent.

Biden  4

Trump 30