"Meet The Press" is milking the interest in Donald Trump for all it's worth these summer Sunday mornings, there is no doubt. We would advise journalist Jeff Greenfield's analogy, drink some decaf and take it easy on the Trump show.
Frankly, we're tired of commenting on Donald Trump content on "Meet The Press," but we do have a few fresh thoughts given that his interview was followed by an interview with the Democratic Party 'outsider' candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT).
Mr. Trump's campaign slogan is 'Make America Great Again,' and Chuck Todd asked him when he thought the last time was when America was 'great.' Mr. Trump's response was when Ronald Reagan was president. He talked about other subjects like immigration, for which he would end automatic birthright citizens and deport families who have American-born kids, but undocumented foreign-born parents even if they've been here for decades. He stated that the Iranian Nuclear Deal would lead to a nuclear Holocaust and said the President Obama really let Israel down. And he commented that our national debt is so high that we're going to become Greece on steroids. Maybe we do need to make America 'Reagan' great again.
However, in thinking about it for a moment, during President Reagan's two terms, the United States became a debtor nation when his administration drastically lowered taxes ushering in the go-go '80s for many, but a new kind of financial pain for many many more. The Reagan Administration, as is well-documented, also traded arms with an embargoed Iran through Central American militia groups (the Contras) to free American hostages. On immigration, President Reagan brought 11 million people in from the shadows; or taken from the reverse perspective, he granted amnesty to them.
But Mr. Trump who has said that we "don't have time for tone," must certainly focused on it in citing the mood and tone of the Reagan era, because we don't thinking he's referring to the policies.
Conversely, what Senator Sanders, not a big fan of the Reagan Administration, proposes is to take the United States back to a reflection of pre-Reagan tax policies where the wealthiest pay the most, percentage-wise, to bring down the yearly deficits that grow the debt.
Where it looks like the two polar-opposite candidates agree is on campaign financing. Mr. Trump states that he's not influenced by lobbyists, special interests and big-money donors because he doesn't need the money. "I can't be bought," he said. People understandably like this because they see the rest of the Republican field beholden to a small cast of lesser known billionaires (Marco Rubio, for example, gets most of his campaign money from Norman Braman, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles.). Senator Sanders, for his part, gets his campaign money from 350,000 donors who have contributed an average of $31.20, not being beholden to the terrible consequences of a money-flooded campaign system created by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.
Both are adamant about not being influenced by big money donors, but where they are drastically different is that one is saying that we need to change the system where the other is saying you have to beat it.
Panel: Kimberley Strassel, The Wall Street Journal; Molly Ball, The Atlantic; Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post; Jeff Greenfield, Politico and The Daily Beast
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