Questions For Trump -JD Vance

I had to laugh when I saw some Dope on Twitter laud JD Vance for taking tough interviews this past weekend

Watched a couple on You Tube. Ever notice how all their interviews lack tough questions and follow ups. Most are just questions giving them an excuse to preach whatever message that they feel helps their campaign

Here are Tough Question for Vance (or Trump).  Just for reference here are Trumps Core Promises which just came out. Note I made no attempt to link the questions to the promises as they just came out

Lets start with the Ukraine War . Trump approved the first lethal weapon sales in Ukraine , expanded CIA Presence in Ukraine and provided military training to Ukraine troops while Ukraine was in the middle of hostilities against the Donbas.  All of this leading to increasing tensions along the Russia-Ukraine Border.

Do you not feel any obligation to keep supporting Ukraine Militarily when there are allegedly 500,000 Russian Troops  within their borders due in part to our (Biden) provocations in threatening to include Ukraine in NATO and accelerated arming of Ukraine?

Wouldn’t calling for a halt to aid to Ukraine, or drastically reduce Aid weaken the negotiating position of Ukraine to end the War without significant concessions?

Support for Taiwan. If China invaded Taiwan or blockaded Taiwan would Trump intervene militarily?  If so, what would this intervention look like?

What would be the economic consequences of a total disruption in trade with China , possibly extending to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as they would be in the War Zone and shipping to and from those countries would be halted.

If we consider China an adversary why not deny their students visas and prevent them from being educated in US?

According to the Lancet almost 10% of the population of Gaza,  almost half of which are children have died.  You are  concerned about unborn infants in America but what about born children in Gaza. How do you end the killing in Gaza?

You talk about increased border security. Israel had the most secure border in the World in Gaza. A $ 1 billion high tech Fence along 50 miles with remote control machine guns, sensors, drones, adjacent military bases, military helicopters a 10 minute flight away. How on earth did 10/7 happen?

Reducing Debt/Deficit and Inflation. How does that get done with more tax cuts , more tarrifs (paid by the consumer ) and increased military spending?

Also Trump seems to believe the key to reducing inflation is lowering energy prices with more drilling.  But low oil prices discourage drilling.  How do you solve that paradox?

Also most oil used by US refineries is imported due to their need for heavy crude, and due to refinery closures beginning during Trumps administration, so there is limited refinery capacity which drives up prices during high demand. How does more drilling for light oil that must be exported help the price of gas at the pump?

What will you do about reducing student loan debt?. Will you provide a bankruptcy option like corporations have (used several times by Trump)?

Is the easy availability of student loans and rich foreign students, not to mention government payment of tuitions in full for veterans under the GI Bill contributing to the high cost of tuitions?

Whats this about waiving taxes on tips? Why not just require all tipped workers to receive full minimum wage and have them pay tax on income like all other Americans.  Only 4% of workers rely on tips and 37% dont make enough to owe

The origin of tipping in America came about as a way for employers to avoid paying former slaves a salary doing service jobs. Shouldn’t we be requiring employers to pay a full salary?

Also, if you waive the tax on one type of income whats next, eliminating the tax on interest? The rich will love that.

Immigrants within the US. There are almost 2 million immigrants permitted entry who have applied for asylum (legally entered or entered unauthorized at border) and waiting for a hearing/verdict. Most will be rejected and served a removal notice, a process taking years. In the meantime they get a work authorization. Isn’t the real problem the slow process, what will you do to speed up the process?   

Treaty obligations require we accept asylum applications but allow for a speedy removal process for those denied.

If illegal immigrants (got aways) could not find work they would not come.  What would Trump do to make sure they would not be able to work?.  Why not jail any employer caught hiring a worker who is not a citizen or had proof he is in country legally and has a work authorization and force him to pay the workers detention and removal costs. Wouldn’t this be a deterrent?

Trump says he will deport all illegal immigrants. He had 4 years to do so his first term but we had almost as many unauthorized immigrants when he left as when he started (11 million).  While that may well have increased since then, what will be the economic cost of rounding up and removing 11 million laborers/consumers , many of which are paying social security tax that they will never collect, and some of whom now have children whom are US citizens?

Trump recommended the Governors to Lock Down Americans over a Virus which was pretty hard on the elderly but fairly benign for younger and moderately healthy Americans. These Actions increased the debt by $4 trillion in one year and caused great suffering to those who would not have been in much danger. Would Trump do it again?

Trump said last night during his chat with Elon

you know, I never got the credit that we really deserved on what we did with COVID.

Seems he would do it again.  Do you agree?

Trump authorized Operation Warp Speed to rush novel Vaccines with less testing.  He gave Vaccine Manufacturers billions to do so. Why didn’t he spend a similar amount of money improving our ability to monitor safety by upgrading VAERS and incentivizing (carrot and stick) Doctors to fill out VAERS reports as required by law.  Many Doctors at the time of the roll out did not even know VAERS existed, and those that did were discouraged from filing reports. While filing a report was legally required , there was no enforcement.

Its not like Trump was unaware Vaccines could cause problems. He campaigned in 2016 on improving Vaccine Safety and hinted at appointing RFK Jr as Vaccine Czar.  Why did he not follow through? Will he do anything differently next time

What will Trump do to improve Vaccine Safety and track the safety of Vaccines that have been Approved or Authorized?

Trump early on during COVID pointed out that HCQ was a promising drug yet allowed his FDA to withdraw its availability in June.   Before this it was only made available to hospital’s despite the fact its value lie when taken early, and not after symptoms became severe enough to be hospitalized.  As such it never became available to those it would have helped the most.

Furthermore, Doctors who tried to prescribe it had prescriptions rejected by leading pharmacies because Trumps NIH Guidelines recommended against it.  When Trump came down with COVID he said nothing about taking HCQ and instead opted for EUA drugs Remdesivir and Regeneron .

Would he do anything differently regarding making off label drugs, especially safe drugs like Ivermectin and HCQ more readily available?  Will he add both drugs to the stockpile?

Both Trump and Musk talked about accelerating drug approvals like he did with Vaccines, again, what about safety monitoring?

Trump say he wants to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. What are the incentives for doing so? Tax rates for profits made outside the US after Trumps Tax Cuts were 1/2 those levied if the product or was Made in US.   Why didn’t he just require companies to pay tax on their global profits like individuals, instead of only taxing the profits returned to US (which almost never happened), and keeping the tax rate the same?

What will he do to create incentives to bring back manufacturing and pay workers a living wage?

What is Trump going to do about Social Security? We have 10 years to boost the Trust Fund Reserves (~$2.8 trillion) before it is depleted. Waiting until 2034 will require higher tax increases and/or social security cuts. Acting now minimizes tax increases and eliminates cuts.  Why not increase the threshold for social security tax withholding from $160,000 to $1,000,000 together with a modest 1% increase on all.

Alternatively would you consider a small transaction tax of 0.1% on all transactions ($4 quadrillion). That will bring in $4 trillion, enough to scrap the income and social security tax?

While the courts ruling against Googles Monopoly of Search Engines is welcome, there is a much bigger problem with Googles Monopoly over Android Phones. Will Trump tackle that?

What about Amazon?

Drug Pricing.  What will Trump do to reign in high Drug Prices?

Will Trump Investigate COVID Origins and look closely at the role of American Labs in the development of the Virus to be used for Bioterrorism?  If not, explain how Bioterrorism was ruled out. Who investigated that possibility?

During Trumps talk with Musk he expressed an exaggerated fear of nuclear power safety, saying this

When you see what happened in Japan, where they say you won't be able to go on the land for about 3,000 years. Did you ever see that?  And in Russia…they say that in 2,000 years, people will start to occupy the land again.

Obviously,  Trump was referring to Chernobyl and Fukushima.  Musk who was obviously a promoter of nuclear power corrected him.  I found it disturbing Trump was parroting Left Wing Environmentalist Fear Mongering, especially as he is promoting Bitcoin which requires a lot of Electricity and wants to lower energy prices (nuclear power is the cheapest energy).

But what about you JD, are you a fan of nuclear power?

Trump mentioned his concern about Nuclear Warming (did he mean War?).

nuclear warming. And for me, that's an immediate problem because you have, as I said, five countries where you have major nuclear and, you know, probably some others are getting there and that's very dangerous.

That's where you need a strong American president because you just, you don't want to have this proliferation.

During Trumps Administration he withdrew from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force Treaty with Russia. What will be do to reduce the threat of Nuclear War with adversaries?. Wouldn’t trade wars and sanctions increase that threat?

Trump also referred to wanting to build an Iron Dome Shield Defense over the US.  However,  this is primarily designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells. It is not effective against longer-range ballistic missiles. It also has an effectiveness rate of 75-95%, useful given Israels situation but seemingly unnecessary for the US.  Why do we need it?

What do you think about the Heritage Foundations Project 2025? Trump claims he doesn’t know who is behind that.

Here is Trump in 2022 with the head of the Heritage Foundation leading Project 2025

What Role if any will Jared Kushner play in a new administration. Are his financial ties with Saudi Arabia not a conflict of interest

Kushner’s investment fund, valued at $3 billion, “is financed almost entirely from overseas investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House.

Some two-thirds of that money has come from Saudi Arabia’s state-run Public Investment Fund. The other third? Much of it reportedly comes from other sovereign wealth funds run by the likes of Qatar and the United Arab

Emirates.  Kushner’s firm charges a 2% fee to manage the states’ assets, generating at least $80 million from the Saudis alone

SCOTUS recently gave the President and his Executive Agencies the Green Light to influence Media and Social Media Content. Another word for it is Censoring. Will you use these new powers to censor news that you dislike?

Well , thats enough for now.