On Thanksgiving Day, the people who deserve the most appreciation are the brave men and women who work around the clock to keep us safe. But rather than focus on our military, President Donald Trump spent a good portion of his speech to the troops on Thursday bragging about himself.
Trump made a surprise trip to Afghanistan to visit active-duty troops who are separated from their families this Thanksgiving.
He could have left his narcissism at home, but he brought it with him and couldn’t help but make the holiday all about himself, focusing on the economy in particular. He said:
“We flew 8,331 miles to be here tonight for one simple reason, to tell you in person that this Thanksgiving is a special Thanksgiving, We’re doing so well. Our country is the strongest economically it has ever been. We’ve never done so well. We have the greatest economy anywhere in the world. So it is nice to know that you are fighting for something that is doing well as opposed to something that was not doing well just a number of years ago.”
Yeah, that’s an outright lie. Trump has been benefiting from the economic recovery under former President Barack Obama. In fact, a Moody’s economist just slammed Trump’s economic policies for killing the economy for all but the wealthiest Americans and corporations, with little or nothing trickling down to everyone else after he signed his disastrous tax cuts into law.
Trump didn’t stop there, however. He continued patting himself on the back for something he didn’t do. He said:
“Our stock market has reached the highest level ever in the history of the exchanges, all three. If you look, all three. It is incredible. It is incredible what is happening. Just broke a record. I think it is close to 130 days. So we’re less than three years and 130 times we’ve broken the all-time record. And to me that didn’t mean an all-time record, it means something different. It means jobs. It means 401(k)s. People come up to me with their 401(k)s and they say, ‘You’ve made me look like a genius. Thank you very much.’ They are up 78 percent. They feel good.”
Here’s the video via YouTube:
Trump is pretending that the stock market never improved during Obama’s tenure, but it broke record after record for years up to and after Obama left office in 2017. In fact, the stock market actually did better under Obama than it has been doing under Trump. Again, Trump is taking credit for something that he is not responsible for as his own economic policies threaten to reverse Obama’s success.
But that’s not what is most important on Thanksgiving. This speech should have been solely about the troops. They are not fighting for him or the economy. They are fighting for freedom, their families and the Constitution, which Trump violates every day. Bragging about himself is an insult to our troops and their families.
Featured Image: Screenshot via YouTube Video
