Let’s start with the obvious:

1.  Trump’s campaign promises were absurd.  He said he’d pay of the national debt in 8 years.  When asked how, he replied “trade”.  Just two days ago, he again claimed that tariffs were helping to pay off the national debt.  The truth is that Trump is conducting the most irresponsible fiscal policy in all of American history.  Because neither the Dems or the GOP are willing to cut spending, Trump’s deficit spending will lead to much higher taxes and slower growth in the future.  But that’s not Trump’s problem.

2.  Trump’s claim that he reduced the unemployment rate from somewhere around 20% or 40% to 4%, almost overnight, doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

3.  Trump is making the trade deficit “worse”, the exact opposite of his promise.

4.  Job growth is no better than under Obama.

5.  He promised 4% RGDP growth, we have 2.7% so far.

So if the economy was as awful under Obama as he claimed during the campaign, then it’s still very bad. However, if we look past Trump’s silly promises, there is some evidence of economic improvement:

The growth rate of 2.7% over the past 6 quarters exceeds the 2.1% average during the Obama recovery.  On the other hand, growth averaged 3.0% during 8 quarters from 2013:Q2 to 2015:Q2, and GOP supply-siders were not lauding that achievement at the time.  Thus the recent surge is clearly not statistically significant.

On the other, other hand, I do think the recent tax changes have boosted growth.  I had expected growth to slow as we approached full employment.  It was slowing in 2016.  We don’t have RGDP futures markets, but I’m pretty sure that growth has been higher than was expected 2 years ago.  Stocks responded as if the tax bill was pro-growth.  The unemployment rate fell by more than expected.  And I’d expect above trend growth to continue for a few more quarters, before slowing sharply during 2019.  So on balance, there is some evidence of an improved economy.

To summarize:

The hyperbolic claims of the Trumpistas are laughable.  We are still recovering in much the same way as under Obama, just a bit faster.  Claims that the U-3 unemployment rate were meaningless and that the true unemployment rate was anywhere from 20% to 40%, have been quietly shelved.  Like everything else with Trump, his economic claims are deeply dishonest, even by the standards of American political discourse.  (Commenters occasionally tell me that other politicians say things like, “I’ll pay off the entire national debt in 8 years through trade.” False, other politicians don’t say things like that.)

It’s far too soon to make any overall judgments about the effects of Trump policies.  Throughout history, governments tend not to end well when led by demagogues that rely on continual, non-stop lying, fake news, demonizing foreigners and minorities, seeking “enemies” in the media and anyone else who dares to disagree, and no respect for the rule of law.  Indeed I know of no such government in all of human history that ended well.  Maybe Trump will be an exception, but let’s wait and see before making that judgment.

PS.  Off topic, the decision to remove Trump’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame was a mistake.  Trump is even more famous than when his star was first placed on the sidewalk.  Yes, he’s a bad person, but so are lots of other famous people with stars on the pavement.  More importantly, this decision is a win for the vandals, and will encourage more vandalism in the future.  Incentives matter.

One of the interesting things about Trump is that his statements are so often the exact opposite of reality.  When he says he’s really smart, or no one respects women more than him, or that press criticism is fake news, the truth is almost always the precise opposite.  Now we find out that not only is Trump not a great negotiator, he might be the single worst negotiator ever to serve as President of the United States.

We’ve seen his inability to get a Republican House and Senate to replace Obamacare.  His inability to get them to put up money for a border wall, even though in other areas Congress has been spending money like a drunken sailor. (Nor has he been able to get Mexico to pay for the wall, as he promised.)  Now this:

When he emerged from his summit with Kim Jong Un last month, President Trump tri­umphantly declared that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat and that one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical crises had been “largely solved.”

But in the days and weeks since then, U.S. negotiators have faced stiff resistance from a North Korean team practiced in the art of delay and obfuscation.

Diplomats say the North Koreans have canceled follow-up meetings, demanded more money and failed to maintain basic communications, even as the once-isolated regime’s engagements with China and South Korea flourish. . . .

The lack of immediate progress, though predicted by many analysts, has frustrated the president, who has fumed at his aides in private even as he publicly hails the success of the negotiations.

N. Korea is toying with us, because they knows that Trump’s eager for an agreement. Any agreement.

When Trump showed an almost pathetic eagerness to meet with Kim, he put the US in a very weak negotiating position.  The North Koreans are not dumb; they know that Trump’s only goal is personal success—ideology is secondary.  If Obama had done a nuclear agreement with North Korea and put sanctions on Iran, then Trump would have torn up the Korea agreement and started cozying up to the mullahs.  Trump’s only goal is to do the opposite of Obama, to one up him.  But that makes it hard for people in the Trump administration, some of whom (like Mike Pompeo) actually do have ideological beliefs.

It’s actually good that Trump is so bad at negotiating.  Because he has such bad instincts on policy questions, it’s better if he gets nothing done.  That’s not to say he won’t occasionally luck into a successful policy, like the recent corporate tax cut (something all our competitors did years ago—Obama’s biggest failure was to not see the need.) But Trump will usually be wrong.

In his recent negotiation with Juncker, the EU leader took him to the cleaners.  The Independent explains how:

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker reportedly used brightly coloured flash cards to explain international trade to US president Donald Trump.

The pair met at the White House earlier this week for trade negotiations and Mr Juncker used cards with simple language and easy-to-understand explanations, according to a senior EU official who was at the meeting and spoke to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump agreed to back off on a trade war with the EU in exchange for meaningless promises.  But that’s really good news.

Trump has lots of bad qualities; stupidity, extreme egotism, corruption, dishonesty, cruelty, incompetence, bad taste, bigotry, no sense of humor, cowardice, I could go on and on.  He has no good qualities, unless one views a talent for conning voters to be a positive attribute.  But his complete lack of negotiating skills turns out to be a plus for America, even if it’s just one more of his seemingly endless bad qualities.

PS.  Brightly colored flash cards?  How can you not love that story?

No need to even comment on this:

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. . . .

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

When that failed, they turned to threats, according to diplomats and government officials who took part in the discussions. Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced. . . .

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them. . . .

In talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Americans have been pushing for language that would limit the ability of Canada, Mexico and the United States to put warning labels on junk food and sugary beverages, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times.

I wonder why we didn’t threaten the Russians?

Read the whole thing.

Quillette has an interesting piece on the 2016 election.  The article includes a lot of discussion of Hillary Clinton’s rather disappointing performance among women voters, especially white women.  Then there’s this:

If the election were a referendum on Obama, as a politician or a symbol, one would expect his popularity to have declined over the course of the race — especially given how it ultimately turned out. Instead, Obama grew more popular throughout 2016, even as favorability for Trump and Hillary tanked. Two years into the Trump administration, Barack’s ratings continue to climb, with 66% of Americans offering a favorable opinion of him.

The “whitelash” theory also suggests a surge [in] white voting. Instead, participation among non-Hispanic whites was stagnant relative to 2012, and down from 2008. In fact, whites made up a smaller share of the electorate in 2016, while Hispanics and Asians made up a larger percentage of overall voters.

More damning: Trump actually won a smaller share of the white vote than Mitt Romney. He was nonetheless able to win because he won more Hispanics and Asians than his predecessors, and more black votes than any Republican since 2004.

Trump did win a number of less well-educated whites who had previously voted for Obama, but he also lost some better educated whites who had previously voted for Romney.  Overall, He did not do especially well among whites, and could not have won without holding his own among the various minorities, despite all his bigoted statements.  He was also helped by a lower turnout among black voters.

PS.  Let’s have a vote.  Which statement is more nuts:

LaVar Ball Claims Lonzo Ball Is Lakers Leader Even With LeBron James

or:

Trump says the US would be at war with North Korea by now if it weren’t for him

Decisions, decisions . . .

Trump is not a particularly interesting person.  The Trump cult, however, is very interesting.  I’ve been following American politics pretty closely since 1968, and I’ve never seen anything remotely like this.  (Although obviously this sort of political cult is common in other countries.)

What differentiates a cult from a normal religion?  It’s not really about the theology.  Cult beliefs may seem bizarre, but even ordinary religions hold beliefs that seem strange to an outsider.  Rather it’s about the behavior of the cult members, the blind adherence to the cult leader, the willingness to do or say or believe anything they are told.  Nothing less than 100% devotion is acceptable.

A congresswoman from Alabama named Martha Roby has been a strong supporter of Trump’s policies since he was elected in 2016.  And yet she faces a stiff primary challenge from a Trumpista candidate (and will face a runoff election).  Her sin was strongly criticizing Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” remark during the 2016 campaign.  In the Trump cult, there is simply no place for a conservative pro-life Christian woman who doesn’t believe that rich and powerful alpha males should be allowed sexually harass women.

In South Carolina, Mark Sanford’s sins were far worse.  He actually stood up for traditional GOP small government ideas, and was soundly rejected in a recent primary.  He seems confused by what’s happening:

“We’re at an interesting inflection point in American politics,” he said in an interview. “If somehow dissent from your own party becomes viewed as a bad thing, then we’re not really vetting and challenging ideas in the way the founding fathers intended.”

Broadening his argument, Mr. Sanford said America was meant to be “a nation of laws, not men” and that “we weren’t a cult of personality.”

Yes, “we weren’t”.  And this:

The stalled efforts to rein in a protectionist president have led to cries of frustration from Republican free traders bemused by what they see as a growing fealty in the party to Mr Trump at the cost of longstanding party ideals.  “We are in a strange place . . . It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican behind the effort to impose congressional oversight on Mr Trump’s national security tariffs, told reporters after his measure failed.

There’s that word again.  Paul Ryan and a bunch of his colleagues (including Corker) saw the writing on the wall and decided to exit politics.

From an American perspective, this does all seem quite bewildering.  But remember, this is the norm throughout most of the world, throughout most of human history.  Cults are normal; classical liberalism and the enlightenment are unusual.  It’s the period before 2016 in advanced countries that is the outlier.

Trump’s cult is now so securely established that he is increasingly emboldened to push the envelope.  He can now joke about the fact that he lies all the time, without budging the unshakable conviction of his supporters

“Honestly, I think he’s going to do these things. I may be wrong; I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, ‘Hey, I was wrong,’” he said during a press conference, adding, “I don’t know that I’ll ever admit that, but I’ll find some kind of an excuse.”

 [I fantasize about an episode of Fox News where Trump says “Let’s face it Sean, I lie all the time”, and Hannity replies “No you don’t, Mr. President”]

Interestingly, there was one Fox News contributor who did escape from the cult.  Ralph Peters is a war hero who was much loved by conservatives as long as his fire was directed at Obama.  But after resigning from Fox he sent this letter:

I would have expected conservative intellectuals to be immune to this sort of cult, but just the opposite is true.  Hardly a week goes by when I don’t receive an envelope from some conservative think tank saying something to the effect; “Please help us support our great President, who is being unfairly attacked by the biased liberal media.”  That’s funny, when I watch CNN or read the NYT I mostly see a media that is correctly pointing out that Trump is a pathological liar. (Obviously with an occasional inaccuracy.)

It would be interesting to do a google search of all the cases of “increasingly cult-like behavior” and then find the correlation with “ends well”.  I’d guess a Venn diagram of those two concepts does not show a lot of overlap, but heh, there’s always a first time.

PS.  I hope it’s clear that when I talk about the Trump cult, I’m not talking about Trump voters.  There are plenty of Trump voters who admit that Trump is a highly flawed individual, but hold their nose and vote for someone who will deliver corporate tax cuts and conservative Supreme Court members.  I’m talking about the people who believe that Republicans who are not blindly obedient to Trump must be excommunicated from the party.  Even many alt-right people are not in the Trump cult, as they actually care about certain issues.

PPS.  And please don’t engage in “whataboutism”.  I’m fully aware that even normal politics has some cult-like tendencies, just as even normal religions do.  Thus the GOP tends to kick out pro-choice people and the Dem’s kick out pro-life people.  That’s normal politics, as long as its based on issues.  As with almost everything of interest in the social sciences it’s a matter of degree.  What pushes the Trump cult into new territory is the almost cavalier disregard for Trump’s actual policy positions.  Tough on Iran, appeasement for North Korea, massive spending increases, tax cuts, and whatever else he decides on a given day—it doesn’t even matter to the Trump cult. All that matters is whether you are with Trump or against him.  Like any totally random individual, Trump will guess right on some issues and wrong on others.  If you think this is about the issues, you are completely missing the point.  As Sam Harris pointed out in a recent interview (see below) we shouldn’t support Trump in 2020 even if his first term ends with nothing but one brilliant success after another.

PPPS.  Speaking of Trump, I stumbled across a long interview with Sam Harris (by Dave Rubin), someone I’d heard a lot about but have not actually got around to reading.  I found it pretty interesting.  The first (least interesting) part involved Harris bashing the liberal media for excessive political correctness.  The second part involved Harris bashing Trump.  By that point I realized his views weren’t too far from mine; against excessive liberal PCism, against dishonesty among intellectuals, fed up with Twitter shaming, and strongly against Trump, although I also sensed that there are probably some areas where I would disagree. In the third part Harris discussed consciousness from a Buddhist perspective, which makes sense to me.  And in the fourth part he discussed atheism and his views on Jordan Peterson.  He mentioned that he will soon have several long conversations with Peterson (someone else I’ve heard a lot about but haven’t gotten around to reading) so I’ll have to try to catch that.  These two seem to have just the right amount of overlap and differences to make the conversation interesting.  Harris reminds me a bit of Peterson in the sense that both have a certain charisma in the way they speak, which you’d miss if you just read the transcript.