Note: I wrote the following essay yesterday before the Trump verdict. Will the verdict affect the campaign? I don't know, but I doubt it. All bets are off though if he goes to jail.

I was going to forgo publishing this piece in lieu of a trial verdict essay, but I'm going to post it anyway as the campaign promises are more than likely still valid.

Please use comments below if you wish to discuss the hush money trial.

It's that time again, folks.

Every four years our brains are subjected to massaged messages of mendacity and misinformation by those that would cast themselves as All Things to All Men.

I wont call them silver tongued devils, for that, they are not. I wont call them paragons of principle either, for that, they are certainly not. They will delude, dissemble, dissimulate, distort and dupe you with perjurious promises and prevarications. They'll twist words, obfuscate meanings and lie their butts off while they promise you the world, until elected anyway.

Like any good traveling salesman, they need to first get a foot in the door to sell their product. That's what campaigns are for.

Let's take a look at what snake oil they're selling this time around. But first, let me ask you, "Would you buy a used car from this man?

• Abortion rights
  

  Snip...

  “If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again,”
  Snip...

• Climate
  

  While seeking office in 2020, Biden made ambitious climate-related promises, warning that climate change presents an existential threat to humanity.

  Some of those promises panned out: Biden’s landmark legislative achievements, the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act, include hundreds of billions of dollars to encourage clean energy production and the manufacturing of electric vehicles. Pollution-falling emissions fell by 2% in the United States last year.

  Activists on Biden’s left flank still think the president has not done enough — they want Biden to declare a climate emergency that would free up federal resources to confront climate change.

  Biden will need more time to fulfill some of his other pledges, including cutting emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, and having a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

• Democracy and voting rights
  

  Snip...
  “Pass and send me the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,” Biden told Congress during his address, “and stop denying another core value of America — our diversity across American life.”

• Education
  

  Snip...

  "Banning books – it’s wrong.”

  He said he wants to continue making college more affordable by expanding access to Pell grants for working-class families, renewing a 2020 promise he made to double the grants’ value.

  “To remain the strongest economy in the world,” Biden said, “we need the best education system in the world.”

• Foreign policy
  

  Snip...
  “The rest of the world is wondering what in the hell is happening to us,” Biden said at a campaign event in New York last month. “And they’re relieved, not because I’m so special but that I’m not Trump.”
  Snip...

• Gun control
  

  Snip...
  “I’m demanding a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden said at his State of the Union address. “Pass universal background checks. None of this violates the Second Amendment or vilifies responsible gun owners.”
  Snip...

• Social Security and Medicare
  

  Snip...

  “I will protect and strengthen Social Security and make the wealthy pay their fair share”.

  “Many of my Republican friends want to put Social Security on the chopping block,” Biden said “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age I will stop them.”
  Snip...

• Unity agenda
  

  Other promises and platform ideas relayed by Biden fall under his expansive so-called “unity agenda” that he believes could garner bipartisan support.

  Biden said during his State of the Union that he wants to strengthen penalties for trafficking fentanyl and pass legislation limiting the use of artificial intelligence.

  He also heralded the passage of the PACT Act, a 2022 law that expands the access to health care for veterans exposed to toxins.

  He called for more action to bolster his “cancer moonshot” initiative aimed at halving cancer death rates by 2047.

Author's note: This list is not mine and is incomplete having been published on April 20, 2024.

• Immigration
  

  Snip...

  In a Des Moines Register op-ed published roughly a week before winning the Iowa caucuses in January, Trump vowed to use the “Alien Enemies Act to remove known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States.”

  “We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement — including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS,” he wrote.

  Snip...

• Drug cartels
  

  The former president has also made waging “war” on drug cartels a priority for his second term. If elected, Trump said in his November 2022 campaign announcement that he would ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and human traffickers can receive the death penalty for their “heinous acts.”

  Trump also vowed to “take down” drug cartels by imposing naval embargos on cartels, cutting off cartels’ access to global financial systems and using special forces within the Department of Defense to damage the cartels’ leadership.

• Education
  

  Trump announced plans in a September 2023 campaign video to close the Department of Education and send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.”

  “We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it,” he added.

  The former president has also promised to “put parents back in charge and give them the final say” in education. In a January 2023 campaign video, the former president said he would give funding preferences and “favorable treatment” to schools that allow parents to elect principals, abolish teacher tenure for K-12 teachers, use merit pay to incentivize quality teaching and cut the number of school administrators, such as those overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

  Trump also said in that campaign video that he would cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideology. In a later speech, Trump said he would bring back the 1776 Commission, which was launched in his previous administration to “teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children.”

  The former president said he would charge the Department of Justice and the Department of Education with investigating civil rights violations of race-based discrimination in schools while also removing “Marxists” from the Department of Education. A second Trump administration would pursue violations in schools of both the Constitution’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, which prohibit the government establishment of religion and protect a citizen’s right to practice their own religion, he said.

• Health care
  

  Last November, Trump promised to replace the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, in a series of posts on Truth Social. A Trump-backed effort to repeal and replace Obamacare failed in 2017 after three Republicans senators joined with Democrats to vote against the bill.

  “Getting much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people will be a priority of the Trump Administration,” he said.

  Snip...

• Gender care
  

  “I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference last March.

  Trump added in a campaign video that he would issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to cut programs that promote gender transitions, as well as asking Congress to stop the use of federal dollars to promote and pay for gender-affirming procedures. The former president added that his administration would not allow hospitals and health care providers to meet the federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare if they provide chemical or physical gender-affirming care to youth.

• Justice system
  

  Snip...
  "I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
  Snip...

• Crime
  

  Trump said in two February 2023 campaign videos that if “Marxist” prosecutors refuse to charge crimes and surrender “our cities to violent criminals,” he “will not hesitate to send in federal law enforcement to restore peace and public safety.”

  Trump added that he would instruct the Department of Justice to open civil rights investigations into “radical left” prosecutors’ offices that engaged in racial enforcement of the law, encourage Congress to use their legal authority over Washington, DC, to restore “law and order” and overhaul federal standards of disciplining minors to address rising crimes like carjackings.
  Snip...

• Foreign policy
  

  Trump has continued his attacks against member countries of NATO, a European and North American defense alliance. At a South Carolina rally last month, Trump said he would not abide by the alliance’s collective-defense clause and would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if a member country didn’t meet spending guidelines.

  “NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”

  The former president has also previously pledged to end the war in Ukraine, though he’s offered no details on how he would do so. “Shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign event last year, adding in another speech that it would take him “no longer than one day” to settle the war if elected.
  Snip...

• New cities and flying cars
  

  Trump said in multiple campaign videos that he would spearhead an effort to build so-called “Freedom Cities” to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”

  In his plan, the federal government would charter 10 new cities on federal land, awarding them to areas with the best development proposals. The former president said in a campaign video that the Freedom Cities would bring the return of US manufacturing, economic opportunity, new industries and affordable living.

  In the March 2023 video, Trump added that the US under a second Trump administration would lead in efforts to “develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals,” not letting China lead “this revolution in air mobility.” The former president said these airborne vehicles would change commerce and bring wealth into rural communities.

• Electric vehicles
  

  Trump has promised to roll back new car pollution rules at the Environmental Protection Agency that could require electric vehicles to account for up to two-thirds of new cars sold in the US by 2032. Biden’s electrical vehicle-related policies, Trump claimed at a Michigan rally last September, “spell the death of the US auto industry.”

  “On day one, I will terminate Joe Biden’s electrical vehicle mandate, and I will cancel every job-killing regulation that is crushing American autoworkers,” Trump added.

• Energy
  

  Snip...
  “We’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill’ right away,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, during a victory speech after winning the state’s Republican caucuses in January.

  At a South Carolina rally in February, he pledged to remove limits on American natural gas exports.

• Trade
  

  Snip...

  “It’s called you screw us, and we screw you,” Trump said.

  Under his proposed “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” the former president said if other countries impose tariffs on the US, the country would impose “a reciprocal, identical” tariff right back.

  It was the same pledge Trump made in a campaign video in 2023: to impose the same tariffs that other countries may impose on the US on those countries. The goal, the former president said then, is to get other countries to drop their tariffs.
  Snip...

• Economy
  

  Trump has promised to extend the cuts from his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, notably the TCJA’s individual income tax breaks. The former president has also talked about reducing the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 15%.

  “I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest tax cut in history,” the former president said last month at the Black Conservative Federation’s Honors Gala in South Carolina. “We’ll make it permanent and give you a new economic boom.”
  Snip...

• Second Amendment
  

  “I will take Biden’s executive order directing the federal government to target the firearms industry, and I will rip it up and throw it out on day one,” Trump said at the 2023 National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum last April.

  The former president also promised in the speech that the government would not infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights and that he would push Congress to pass a concealed carry reciprocity.

• Equity
  

  “I will create a special team to rapidly review every action taken by federal agencies under Biden’s ‘equity’ agenda that will need to be reversed. We will reverse almost all of them,” Trump said in a campaign video.

  Trump added in multiple campaign videos that he would revoke Biden’s equity executive order that required federal agencies to deliver equitable outcomes in policy and conduct equity training. If elected, Trump said he would also fire staffers hired to implement Biden’s policy, and then reinstate his 2020 executive order banning racial and sexual stereotyping in the federal government.

Author's note: This list is not mine and is incomplete having been published on April 20, 2024.

They have sold their souls and they're looking to buy yours.

I suspect that no matter who wins, not much will change. Joe Biden, if he makes it that long, will likely continue as the puppet he always has been. Donald Trump, if elected, will likely accomplish little, if any, of his promises, much like his first term.