GOP convention plays montage of Trump's many broken promises

The opening night of the Republican National Convention included a video montage of Donald Trump’s various 2016 campaign promises, claiming he had kept his word on each and listing the ways in which he had followed through.

The segment began with footage of Trump falsely stating, “I didn’t back down from my promises and I have kept every single one.” Several supporters spoke to those “kept” promises, which included job creation, protecting veterans, and implementing new trade deals.

Trump, however, has failed to keep the majority of those promises.

The Wall

A clip showing construction on the southern border wall, one of Trump’s most fervent campaign promises, appeared to suggest that Trump had kept his word. As a candidate in 2016, Trump repeatedly claimed the wall would both be built quickly and that Mexico would pay for it.

In reality, Mexico has not contributed a dime to the effort. And despite taking billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars from military families to pay for it, Trump has built only a few new miles of border wall as of June — nowhere near the 450 miles he promised by the end of his term. The majority of the construction so far has been more substantial replacement barrier where fencing already stood.

Trade deals

At one point in the montage, Trump is shown promising, “We will never ever sign bad trade deals. America first again!”

Trump vowed in 2016 to “negotiate fair trade deals that create American jobs, increase American wages, and reduce America’s trade deficit.” While his NAFTA 2.0 deal (the U.S-Mexico-Canada Agreement) received bipartisan support, his Phase 1 agreement with China, signed in January, hurt American farmers and their bottom lines.

Additionally, the trade deficit, which Trump pledged to eliminate as a candidate, has in fact increased since Trump took office.

Employment

In the video, Trump is heard pledging to create “millions of new jobs.”

While job growth was steady for the first three years of the Trump administration, he created fewer jobs in any year than were added in each of the last three years of the Obama administration.

Since the coronavirus crisis hit, the nation has also lost tens of millions of jobs, in large part due to Trump’s botched response to the pandemic. The nation has now lost more than 10 million net jobs since Trump took office.

Trump, meanwhile, continues to boast of his job creating prowess, tweeting as recently as last week, “My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, turned it off, saved millions of lives, and now am building an even greater economy than it was before. Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back & watch!”

Education

Elsewhere in the video, Trump can be heard pledging, “We will rescue kids from failing schools, by helping their parents send them to a safe school of their choice.”

Though Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have repeatedly pushed to funnel tax dollars to private and parochial schools, no such legislation has passed.

Veterans

The video also featured audio of Trump saying, “We will take care of our great veterans like they have never been taken care of before.”

Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, rental assistance, and other programs have done just the opposite, experts say. And his 2017 freeze on federal pay was estimated to impact nearly 623,000 veterans working in government jobs.

The words “promise kept” appeared over each segment.

Notably absent from the video was any mention of the promise Trump has made at least 68 times: to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to replace it with “something terrific” that covers everybody.

Despite his repeated assurances, and a futile House GOP attempt to repeal the ACA in 2017, Trump has yet to offer any such replacement.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.