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The biggest disappointments from U.S. president Donald Trump‘s first term in office involved his habitual refusal to fulfill campaign promises related to cutting middle class taxes and eliminating deficit spending.
Trump’s fiscal betrayals began almost immediately… and continued right up until the moment he left office.
Unlike many reflexively sycophantic, fawningly obsequious “conservative” media outlets, FITSNews consistently chided Trump on fiscal issues during his first term… and over the last four years I’ve repeatedly pointed out how ‘Bidenflation‘ (i.e. soaring inflation linked to Trump’s successor/predecessor, Joe Biden) was partially Trump’s fault.
The point in calling balls and strikes on such issues is simple: credibility dictates it. More importantly, fairness dictates it. Good is good, bad is bad. It doesn’t matter what party label, ideological affiliation or cult of personality is involved.
If you put one person or party on blast for something – only to turn around and ignore it when another person or party does it – you are being definitionally unfair.
All of this leads us to Trump’s recent condemnation of U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) over his opposition to a wasteful stopgap spending bill pushed by the president and the “Republican” majority in Washington, D.C. Massie has opposed the legislation because it includes no spending reductions and fails to make permanent the cuts identified by Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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According to Trump, Massie “is an automatic ‘NO’ vote on just about everything.”
Wait… that’s a bad thing in the Washington Swamp?
Perhaps if Republicans had been more willing to say “NO” over the past few years (decades), our nation wouldn’t be in such a catastrophic financial position.
Trump went on to say Massey should face primary opposition in 2026 and that he would personally “lead the charge against him,” calling him a “grandstander” who was “too much trouble.” He even had the audacity to compare him to fiscally liberal warmonger Liz Cheney.
Trump claimed the stopgap resolution would “buy (him) some time” in order to accomplish his MAGA agenda. Seriously? Isn’t “buying some time” another term for government trying to kick the can further down a road that’s rapidly disappearing under our feet? And isn’t doing so only going to add explosive power to the coming fiscal calamity?
Massie, who has beaten back prior Trump-backed challengers, was having none of the president’s bluster.
“Someone thinks they can control my voting card by threatening my re-election,” he wrote on X. “Guess what? Doesn’t work on me. Three times I’ve had a challenger who tried to be more MAGA than me. None busted 25% because my constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance.”
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RELATED | RED INK RECKONING
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Unsustainable debt has always been a distant problem for America. It was something for future generations to worry about, which is why during the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s generations of politicians of both parties simply refused to worry about it. Republican and Democrat alike, they continued to spend with reckless abandon – and are continuing to do so in this decade.
As I’ve previously reported, the federal government’s debt stood at $5.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2000 – shortly before former president George W. Bush and a GOP Congress took control in Washington, D.C. By the time the GOP lost control of Congress in 2006, the debt was $8.5 trillion – and by the time Barack Obama was elected president it had climbed to more than $10.6 trillion.
That debt has nearly quadrupled since then … with the GOP (and Trump) playing a starring role in its mindless, cancerous escalation.
“Democrats, Republicans … Republicans, Democrats,” I noted when Trump took office. “It hasn’t mattered.”
FITSNews has been sounding the alarm on this clear and present danger for more than a decade.
“Within a decade, America will be staring down between $800 billion and $1 trillion in annual interest payments on its debt,” I noted in a column addressing this issue published back in June … of 2013.
Guess what… it’s happening. Not tomorrow, now.
In the fight to restore fiscal some semblance of fiscal sanity to our government, politicians are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Massie is part of the solution, and the fact Trump is attacking him for that – threatening to oust him from office, in fact – is depressingly telling.
BANNER VIA: GAGE SKIDMORE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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2 comments
I stand with Thomas Massie
The idea that Trump and his merry bunch will actually cut spending and fire the real “useless eaters” inside the government is a sign of a mental problem. If Trump was actually serious he and his merry band would not be trying to kick the can down the road and instead would have had the master plan already in place the day his dumbass was sworn in.
Trump is there to sell hopium to the dumbed down masses who are being robbed each and everyday by the devaluation of the dollar by the banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve. Trump will lead the middle class right to the slaughterhouse.