Rebutting Trump’s Ridiculous Arguments on Immigration, Crime and Jobs

This essay was originally published on the website Medium.

For the last few months Donald Trump has continually attacked his political opponents as being weak on the border/immigration and crime, and bad for the economy. He did so again today in this intemperate tweet about “Chuck and Nancy.” The problem with these attacks, of course, is that during the Presidency of the last Democrat, Barack Obama, crime and the flow of undocumented immigrants into the country plummeted, and the economy grew — tens of millions of jobs were created, incomes went up, the stock market boomed and the annual deficit came way down. Today the President repeated a new version of his attack on Democrats — that they want to raise taxes. Not only have the Democrats not embraced a plan that would do so, that the GOP plan will raise taxes on tens of millions of Americans is the central Democratic critique of the awful GOP proposal stumbling through the Senate this week. The level of dishonesty being exhibited by our President is literally jaw-dropping, and deserves a forceful rebuttal.

Let’s look a few graphs which tell a very different story about what happens on these matters when Democrats are in power:

Flow of undocumented immigrants slowed way down after many years of rapid growth, and was actually net negative under Obama:

In 2016 there were almost a million fewer undocumented immigrants in the US than in 2007.

Dramatic drop in crime America has experienced over the past generation continued under Obama:

In this new age of globalization the US economy has done far better under Democratic Presidents than their GOP counterparts. Let’s look at the job creation record (not even a close call):

Incomes grew under Clinton and Obama, fell under both Bushes:

Stock market has performed far better under Democratic Presidents, including Trump:

And while Republicans have caused the annual deficit to rise, Democrats have brought it down:

So spare us the desperate attacks Mr. President. The Democratic Party you describe is one that exists only in your mind. The one you are facing everyday and will face next year in the elections is one that has governed responsibly when in power, and left the country far better than they found it. It is impossible for us to imagine saying the same thing about your time in office, as short as it may be.