"Did I Do That" - Un-Common-Sense

It was August 1988, four years since I received my honorable discharge from the United States Army. Before joining the Army, I worked as a Financial Aid Director and, coincidentally, upon leaving, continued that type of work for two years for a small university in the DMV – District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia region. It was an honest living, but my real goal was to obtain what was known in some circles as one of those “good government jobs.” Yeah, that’s right, I wanted to be a government bureaucrat.

On August 8^th, 1988, I began my government career as a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) budget analyst. This agency manages our nation’s foreign aid to other countries. I was hired along with two other applicants to form a team that split global operations for different regions. I was responsible for the Latin American & Caribbean regions. We were all hired at approximately the same time and tasked with forming a team that managed, analyzed, and brainstormed how to address fiscal procedures and challenges in our global portfolios.

They expected us to work collaboratively, which I had done successfully for years, whether as an athlete or in my experience working in the most team-oriented organization in our nation, the United States Army. We understood the mission and did our very best to fulfill it. There was one recurrent problem: whenever we did joint projects or brainstorming, one of the members of our team would run to our supervisor and present our work product and claim ownership of the ideas, and when I say claimed ownership, it was with a capital “I,” when in fact she contributed the least. Our supervisor fell for the ruse, and the die had been cast when we caught on to it. Efforts to correct this perception had little success.

You may wonder why I’m sharing this experience with you. As a former victim of workplace theft and deception, I felt compelled to share it as a cautionary tale about what we will experience as a nation.

Joseph R. Biden has arguably been the most accomplished and consequential U.S. President in the past 50 years. Although the word transformational is rarely applied to presidents, it is justifiable when discussing the accomplishments of the Biden administration.

Well, red alert, folks, because things are about to change. We have sent an individual into the White House who will take credit for things he had nothing to do with and misappropriate blame for everything he screws up.

It has already started. Trump and his acolytes, which include the media, have attempted to bestow credit on Trump for the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. That storyline is a bunch of malarkey. The agreement between the two parties existed for nine months, and any involvement with the incoming Trump administration was solely for operational briefings to prepare them for when they take office.

President Biden has been one of the most effective problem solvers in the history of the presidency. While many of his accomplishments have addressed immediate problems (repair of Key Bridge), he has created many programs that will involve extended implementation and benefits that will occur after he leaves office. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), The Chips and Science Act, and The Inflation Reduction Act are historic and foundational investments in America’s history.

Donald Trump will inherit an economy with record-breaking job recovery. Over 16 million jobs have been created, his average unemployment rate of 4.80 percent, according to Investpedia.com, is the lowest of all presidents on record. For 19 months, wages have been growing faster than inflation. Manufacturing jobs have increased by more than 700,000, and more than $910 billion in private manufacturing investments have been announced. The stock market grew by 58 percent. It won’t take long before Donald Trump proclaims it is due to his “brilliance” that our economy is “the greatest in history, unlike any we’ve ever seen before.”

Our country has seen a decline in manufacturing for more than thirty years. The Biden administration has enacted policies and initiatives that have reversed that trend and, through legislation, ensured that this positive trend will continue. These significant pieces of legislation ensure that U.S. companies manufacture many products Americans need and want on American soil with American materials. This has resulted in over 700,000 new manufacturing jobs and over $910 billion in private manufacturing investments.

ProPublica reported in 2019 that Trump had promised, at a minimum, that his policies would create 8.9 million jobs in the U.S., but, at the time of their report, two years into his presidency, only 154,000 of those jobs were created. Now, Trump promises to create 25 million new jobs in four years. He’ll probably add Biden’s 16 million jobs.

For the next four years, Trump will inundate us with a rehash of “Infrastructure Week” declarations while taking credit for Biden’s accomplishments. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will create over 10.5 million jobs over the next ten years and 1.62 million new jobs to support new construction and renovation of our highways, bridges, airports, electrical grids, water systems, and communication systems.

We often wonder why we can’t have nice things compared to other countries. Well, this bill will go a long way in changing that. Investments in buses and local, regional, and national railway systems include high-speed rail. Projects are already being implemented but will take 5-10 years to complete. Every state in the country will benefit from the legislation’s investments, and Biden hasn’t extorted anyone to receive those benefits. You do know what that means. Trump will start putting his name on everything like he inscribes his sneakers and Bibles.

The Biden administration acknowledged Americans’ difficulty with rising costs and did everything possible to mitigate them. One of the most impactful accomplishments was confronting the pharmaceutical industry and advancing the ability to negotiate the price of drugs. The intent was to have all Americans save on prescription costs, but Republicans would not allow it and restricted the savings to Seniors. Biden reduced the average monthly price of insulin from $1,000 to $35. The difference between accessibility and availability can be life and death.

More than 38 million Americans have diabetes (11 percent of Americans). The Trump administration will continue to talk about “a concept of a plan” and lie about saving the Affordable Care Act while we all saw him try to end it in broad daylight. What is sad is that it cannot even be considered deception. Deception implies certain cleverness or cunning; Trump bombards us with bald-faced lies.

Immigration policy has been the issue that Donald Trump, Republicans, and Right-Wingers have planted their racist and hateful flag on. Unlike Trump supporters, I refuse to lie or accept lies because they are for or from my “team.” Yes, the number of migrants attempting to cross the southern border peaked in December 2023. Still, any efforts made by the Biden administration to manage the situation were stonewalled by Congress or rejected by the Supreme Court. The Republicans in the House and Senate refused to vote for the bilateral immigration and border security bill at the order of Donald Trump.

One thing that is not acknowledged about Joe Biden is that he has what we sports fans like to say, “he’s got that dawg in him.” For non-sports fans, that means he is determined, relentless, and resourceful. Through policy choices, President Biden significantly decreased the number of immigrants crossing the border. Migrant encounters are down to their lowest levels since July 2020, and contrary to the propaganda dehumanizing immigrants and hailing Donald Trump as a savior from these “intruders,” the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) states that undocumented population growth was 1,000,000 in 2000-2001 (Trump) and 800,000 in 2022-2023 Biden).

The formula here for Trump is simple: lie about the existential threat of immigration and then slay a beast that doesn’t exist.

Most political analysts stated the nation’s economy was a significant reason for Vice President Harris’ defeat. To shorthand these economic woes, they adopted the price of eggs and gasoline as avatars for the financial struggles of Americans. Well, let’s look at this.

Donald Trump’s most significant work-product theft involved the state of the economy at the beginning of his first and second presidential terms. He has portrayed the economy he inherited as apocalyptic, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The first time around, Trump inherited an economy that created 75 straight months of a job growth period that streak ended at 113 in October 2020 under Trump. The unemployment rate in January 2017 was 4.7 percent, down from a high of 10.0 percent in October 2009. Obama’s presidency created 11.7 million jobs. Regardless of how Trump tried to paint the picture of a failing economy, he inherited and benefitted from a strengthening economy. A valid argument can be made that he rode the coattails of Obama’s economy until the COVID-19 pandemic.

The only significant financial legislation he introduced was a tax cut bill that rewarded the wealthiest five percent of Americans and big corporations. The primary economic stimulus generated from that went into the pockets of multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Conversely, when Biden took over, Trump’s economy lost 4.7 million jobs, the worst in American history. In January 2025, when Trump entered the White House for his second term, he inherited an economy that created more than 15.7 million jobs in four years.

Visual presentation of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

I examined Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which indicates how much a country has produced in goods and services. Under Trump, our GDP decreased by 2.2 percent in 2020, the most significant decline on record. Trump’s final GDP numbers were $21.3 trillion. In contrast, in 2025, Biden handed Trump an economy with a GDP of $29.1 trillion. Another indicator of economic health is the federal deficit. In 2020, Trump handed over a federal deficit of $3.1 trillion to Biden. This was the most significant deficit as a percentage of GDP since 1945. When Biden left in January 2025, the federal deficit decreased by $1.27 trillion ($1.83 trillion).

The Biden administration created 775,000 manufacturing jobs, and the CHIPS and Science Act is estimated to create 336,000 manufacturing jobs a year until 2035. During his presidency, the Trump administration lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs. By September 2024, the answer to whether you were doing better economically was a resounding yes for over 80 percent of Americans. Some states climbed faster than others; for example, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan showed higher real wages for the past 12 months.

Productivity has also increased significantly in the past two years. The Biden administration has also been a boon for Wall Street. The Standard & Poor’s 500 had a total return of 63.77 percent and its first back-to-back annual gains of over 20 percent since the late 1990s.

After all of the accomplishments of the Biden administration—too many to list (COVID-19 recovery, PACT Act—veteran health benefits, strengthened global alliances)—the conditions for the Trump administration’s misappropriation of credit exist.

We have placed a man in the presidency who has a messianic complex combined with being a habitual liar. There is nothing in Trump’s history or performance that disproves that. He lies about any and everything that he thinks elevates him. He is just as likely to launch mendacious attacks at rivals and perceived enemies for vengeance and cover.

Our media is complicit in and compliant with the Republican Party’s storylines. They do this in several ways. The main media outlets have employed a double standard in reporting the two parties. The Democratic Party is the older sibling who is always judged by higher standards, often arbitrarily. In comparison, the Republicans are the younger siblings for whom excuses are made regardless of their actions. They have also gone out of their way to legitimize ideas and actions founded in racism, sexism, xenophobia, and idiocy to the American public.

Ultimately, most of the blame is on the American public, who don’t want to be informed; they want to be validated. In the market of ideas, there is no legitimate exchange of ideas. Positions are founded primarily on who I hate or fear. This phenomenon is predominantly Republican and Right-Wing. Many of these people have succumbed to a barrage of information that is not legitimate or based on the truth. These people, the people who create and choose “conspiracy theories,” are Trump’s audience if you have a critical mass of the public and the media willing to promote and accept Trump’s claims.

Of course, this situation is much more serious than the one my colleague and I had to deal with because we could move on. But that raises two fundamental questions: will America be able to move on, and will Trump leave anything to move on from?

P.S. Keep this in your back pocket