Ron Liebman, former assistant U.S. attorney who served on the team that prosecuted former Vice President Spiro Agnew, talks with Rachel Maddow about parallels between the Agnew and Trump cases and why why the kind of plea deal that kept Agnew out of office and out of jail may not be available for someone facing as much legal heat as Donald Trump.
Site Navigation
Search
Latest Stories
Start your day right!
Get latest updates and insights delivered to your inbox.
Top Stories
Latest news
Read More
Former President Donald J. Trump answers question from Pastor Paula White-Cain at the National Faith Advisory Board summit in Powder Springs, Georgia, United States on October 28, 2024.
(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Presidential promises, promises, promises....
Jan 09, 2025
When Donald Trump made his first successful run for president in 2016, he made 663 promises to American voters. By the end of his 2021 term of office, he could only fulfill approximately 23 percent of his vows. Before we get too excited as to what will happen when Trump 2.0 takes effect on Jan. 20, let’s take a moment to reflect on covenants made by a couple of other presidents.
PolitiFact tracks the promises our presidents have made. PolitiFact is a non-partisan fact-checking website created in 2007 by the Florida-based Tampa Bay Times and acquired in 2018 by the Poynter Institute, a non-profit school for journalists. Here’s a report card on three presidents:
· Barack Obama kept 47 percent of his campaign assurances, 23 percent were broken, and 27 percent ended up as a compromise.
· During 2017-2021, Donald Trump kept 23 percent of his pre-election pledges, 55 percent were broken, and compromise occurred on 22 percent of his promises.
· Joe Biden has been able to keep 33 percent of his commitments, 35 percent were broken, 28 percent ended up in a compromise, and 3 percent of his promises are in the works.
Regardless of our past presidents’ political affiliation, evidence abounds that voters are gullible, easily persuaded, and shouldn’t pay too much attention to a candidate's campaign rhetoric. Unfortunately, candidate platitudes are often made to disinform, misinform, and hoodwink the voter.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
Back to our 45th and soon-to-be 47th president, Mr. Trump.
Ryan Koronowski, director at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reflected on Trump’s 2016 guarantees and felt “... many of the promises that he broke, he was insincere about them or didn’t care enough about them. They were political and meant to earn votes. They weren’t actual policy goals, or corporate backers and power brokers actually moved to shut them down …” (MTN, Nov. 7).
Ron Filipkowski of the pro-democracy MTN (MeidasTouch Network) documented Trump making 93 campaign promises while vying to be America’s 47th president. Filipkowski summarized, “After failing to deliver on his major pledges during the first administration, president-elect Trump resurrected many of the same promises in his 2024 campaign.”
Trump made a multitude of promises during the Sept. 5 economic policy debate and the Sept. 10 presidential debate. On July 8, the Republican National Committee published its 2024 party platform, which included 63 additional promises should Trump get elected (RNC platform.donaldtrump.com).
Mr. Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025 – created by the far-right extremist Heritage Foundation -- to be implemented in the first 180 days of his second presidency. However, CBS News identified at least 270 of the 700 policy proposals from Project 2025’s 922-page guide that matched Trump’s past policies and current campaign promises.
And, since the Nov. 5 election, where Trump received less than 50 percent of the votes – not a “mandate” as he claims – he has backed off his promise to bring down grocery costs, end the Ukraine-Russia war before he takes office, and use tariffs to bolster the US economy. Trump’s transition team admits Trump has shifted “from sweeping campaign rhetoric to the nuances and realities of governing” (The Hill, Dec. 29).
Trump made eight promises that would occur on Jan. 20, the day of his inauguration. On Jan. 21, note a `yes’ or `no’ next to each of these promises as to whether they occurred or not. The result may be a bellwether sign of what is yet to come during his 1,461 days as our 47th president:
_____ 1) close the US-Mexico border,
_____ 2) begin “the largest deportation program in American history,”
_____ 3) expedite permits for drilling and fracking,
_____ 4) roll back environmental regulations,
_____ 5) pardon 1,561people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection (contradiction to supporting law and order),
_____ 6) cut federal funding for any school “pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on the lives of our children,”
_____ 7) roll back President Biden’s electric vehicle policies and
_____ 8) enact tariffs on goods coming in from Mexico, Canada, and China.
Should Mr. Trump’s daily rhetoric, actions, and flip-flopping on promises get under your skin, three coping methods are offered. First, say to yourself, “I can’t help the way I feel right now, but I can help the way I think and act.” Secondly, recall what King Solomon, William Shakespeare, and Abraham Lincoln have said: “This too shall pass.” Third, promise – and fulfill the promise -- to do a better job of vetting future presidential candidates (regardless of their and your political party of preference) and heavily discount their promises.
And perhaps most importantly understand that not fulfilling promises is common amongst not only past Presidents but members of Congress as well, regardless of their political affiliation.
With a little research, you can determine if a member of Congress has fulfilled their promises:
- Track Their Voting Record: Websites like GovTrack.us and Congress.gov allow you to see how your representative or senator has voted on various bills and issues. This can give you insight into whether they are supporting the policies they promised to back.
- Use Fact-Checking Websites: Organizations like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org track politicians' promises and rate their progress. They provide detailed reports on whether promises have been kept, broken, or are still in progress.
- Review Legislation They Sponsored: Check if they have introduced or co-sponsored any bills related to their campaign promises. This can be a good indicator of their commitment to their pledges.
- Follow News and Reports: Stay informed through reputable news sources and watchdog organizations that cover congressional activities and hold politicians accountable.
- Engage with Constituents: Attend town hall meetings, read newsletters, and participate in community forums where you can hear directly from the member of Congress and ask questions about their promises.
- Look at Endorsements and Ratings: Organizations like the League of Conservation Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others often rate politicians based on their performance and alignment with specific issues.
Perhaps if more citizens take the time to become involved, our elected representatives will not just throw out promises to garner votes and instead focus on solving the serious problems facing our nation.
Steve Corbin is a professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
Keep ReadingShow less
Recommended
DEMOCRATIC PARTY FLAG
Getty Images//Stock Photo
A bold next step for the Democratic Party
Jan 09, 2025
In order to think about the next steps for the Democratic Party and the February 1, 2025, vote for a new Democratic National Committee Chair, it is useful to remember the context of three pairs of Democratic Presidents since the 1960s.
JFK and LBJ led the way for major progressive changes, ranging from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Affirmative Action and the War on Poverty. Johnson's Great Society was the most progressive agenda ever promoted by an American president.
President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton especially represented the centrist turn in the Democratic Party. Two Southern Democrats openly recognized the limits of the federal government even as they advanced a range of progressive policies, including Carter's renewable energy agenda and Clinton's signature on the Family and Medical Leave Act Bill. Carter encouraged self-sacrifice, and Clinton chanted, "The era of big government is over," and supported initiatives like welfare reform. Carter's centrism was complicated and particularly visible in his efforts to build up the military. Some recent commentators argue that with his human rights crusade, he, more than President Ronald Reagan, set things in motion to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden returned to a more progressive orientation in domestic affairs. Obama countered Reagan and President George W. Bush's trickle-down economic agenda with some old-fashioned Keynesian deficit spending during the 2009-10 financial crisis. Obamacare was his historic achievement. Biden followed suit by supporting investments in the child tax credit, green energy, semiconductor chips, and infrastructure. In foreign affairs, Biden asked Congress for substantial financial support for Ukraine against Russia and, to a lesser extent, for Israel against Hamas.
Democrats are trying to figure out the next steps after Vice President Harris's loss to President-elect Trump. Rather than move left, right, or center, a more fruitful but admittedly risky approach for the Democratic Party would be to break out of this pendulum cycle and take the very bold step of reinventing the Democratic Party in such a way that it is able to work effectively with the rising group of independents in the United States.
Ironically, Democrats could advance their cause if they recognized the importance of the over 40% of Americans, according to Gallup, who identify as independents, not in the sense of getting independents to vote for Democrats but getting independents in some select races to vote for independent politicians.
To many, this will sound counterintuitive if not self-destructive. But pursuing this path can help Democrats in the years ahead get 60 votes in the Senate regarding policy bills and 50 votes regarding budget bills and the reconciliation process.
How might this work? I have argued in the last year and a half in the "Fulcrum" and in over 50 US newspapers that our politics should gradually replace the value of bipartisanship with the value of tripartisanship. Independents need representation on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate, where five to six members, either elected or senators who switched to Independent, could have substantial leverage. Dartmouth economics professor Charles Wheelan illustrated how this "fulcrum strategy" for centrists might work in "The Centrist Manifesto." It would also work for independents.
Democrats in the years ahead might incentivize some Republicans to leave the Republican party and become Independents who would either caucus with them or establish their own Independent Caucus. For example, they might incentivize Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ak) away from the Republican Party by offering her a Chairmanship or Ranking Member position on an important Senate Committee. Likewise, in Senate races where chances of electing a Democrat seem slim, Democrats might support a candidate running as an Independent.
In fact, in the case of one of the two races for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, the Nebraska Democratic Party offered its endorsement to an independent, Dan Osborn. But he turned it down because he was not accepting party endorsements. Still, many Democratic PACS supported Osborn, as did many Democratic voters, and it was a surprisingly close race even though incumbent Senator Deb Fischer ultimately won.
Republicans could use the same strategy, but they are currently feeling confident about their power in the Senate, the House, and the White House and are less likely to reinvent themselves. Getting a new DNC Chair to start a war with the Republicans is a 20th-century strategy. Being bold involves doing something new, not just picking up missiles and bombs that have not been used for a while and using them again.
Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
Keep ReadingShow less
Vice President Kamala Harris presides over the electoral college vote count during a joint session of Congress in the House chamber on Monday, January 6, 2025.
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The 119th Congress: Some history makers, but fewer women overall
Jan 09, 2025
When the 119th U.S. Congress was sworn in, some newly elected women members made history.
Emily Randall, from Washington’s 6th Congressional District, is the first out LGBTQ+ Latina. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks are the first Black senators to represent Delaware and Maryland, respectively — and the first two Black women to ever serve concurrently in the upper chamber. Sarah McBride, from Delaware’s at-large House district, is the first transgender member of Congress. All are Democrats.
But for the first time since 2011, the number of women serving in the Senate and House of Representatives declined.
While Democrats sent a record 110 women lawmakers to Congress, Republicans elected just 40 women across both chambers. (On Election Day, 151 women were serving.) In addition, at least one Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who was also the only woman serving in GOP House leadership, is expected to resign if she is confirmed as ambassador to the United Nations in the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.Kelly Dittmar, director of research at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, said that while the drop in the number of women in Congress is small, “any decline when we’re talking about women’s representation is effectively slowed or stalled progress because women are already so underrepresented in Congress.”
It’s also a reminder, Dittmar said, “that we cannot assume that women are just going to continually increase their representation past parity, that we have to keep a focus not only on women’s success but women’s candidacies, recruitment, and candidate emergence.”
150 women were sworn into the 119th Congress, representing 28 percent of the total number of lawmakers across both chambers. Twenty-five of these women — 16 Democrats and nine Republicans — serve in the Senate, holding one in four seats of the 100-seat upper chamber. The House of Representatives has 125 women — 94 Democrats and 31 Republicans — who make up about 29 percent of the 435-seat lower chamber, according to a CAWP analysis.
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
Among the non-incumbent women in Congress, only two are Republicans; Dittmar called it a “clear tell” about the status of women in the legislative body.
“It’s always going to be harder to get there [to parity] if Republican women’s representation remains so low. We saw the issue at the start of this campaign … in terms of the drop in candidacies for Republican women that persisted,” Dittmar said. “And then we’re going to see it really starkly as it pertains to their power, both in the percentage of the caucus, as well as the percentage of committee chairs, which is going to be zero in the House for Republican women.”
Republicans control both the Senate and House and, therefore, hold all committee gavels. Some Democratic women in the House serve as ranking members, the top spot for the minority party on each panel.
GOP Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan replaced Stefanik as the House Republican Conference Chair and is expected to be the only woman serving in a party leadership role. In the Senate, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia leads the Republican Policy Committee, the only woman in the top role since Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa lost her race for Republican conference chair.
Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILYs List, a group that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, said the organization backed all 19 of the new Democratic women joining Congress. These include women who are a “first” of some sort, like Arizona’s Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian-American Democrat in Congress; Janelle Bynum, the first Black member of Congress to represent Oregon; and Nellie Pou, the first Latina to represent New Jersey.
“The perspectives that women bring, whether that’s their professional perspectives, their personal perspectives, their background, they bring that into the halls of power, and that allows them to put a face and a voice to the way in which these policies are going to impact people across the country. Our government can’t work at its best if it doesn’t reflect the American people as a whole,” Mackler said.
Mackler also anticipates that Democratic women will play prominent roles opposing Trump administration policies, many of which could have gendered impacts on women and LGBTQ+ people.
“The perspectives that they are bringing are going to be critically important to the fights that we have ahead of us,” Mackler added.
The 119th Congress: Some history makers, but fewer women overall was first published by The 19th, and republished with permission.
Amanda Becker is The 19th's Washington Correspondent.
Keep ReadingShow less
Two groups of protesters, one blue and one red, marching with placards across an abstract American flag background.
Getty Images//Stock Photo
What can we learn in 2025 from the 100-year-old Scopes Trial?
Jan 08, 2025
Based on popular demand, the American Schism series will renew in 2025 with a look at science-based public policy caught in the crossfires of today’s culture wars.
Readers often send me comments on how this series effectively sheds light on our contemporary political divisions through careful examination and analysis of our own American history, since so many of our present issues are derivative of conflicts long brewing in our past. As I wrote last year on these pages, history can act as a salve for our present-day wounds if we apply it.
As the new year begins, one of the most salient features of our contemporary schism is the one at the intersection of science and policy. With Robert Kennedy Jr. incoming as head of Health and Human Services (pending Senate confirmation), speculation abounds regarding his plans: will he proceed with the halting of vaccine mandates and removing drinking water fluoride, despite rock-solid evidence of those same policies’ salutary results? Or, by contrast, will Kennedy take on the food lobby by advocating stricter regulations on food additives that pose potential health risks, certainly worthy of consideration?
As Kennedy begins his campaign tour among US Senators, despite his previous comments, both Fox News and CNN report that the status quo looks safe, at least as far as the polio vaccine is concerned. Nonetheless, many questions remain, given Donald Trump’s previously demonstrated antipathy toward scientific expertise. So, considering science and public policy, what lessons can we learn from our history?
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter
One hundred years ago, John Scopes was accused of violating a Tennessee state law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution in schools. The 1925 Scopes trial pitted the great defense attorney of the time, Clarence Darrow, against the three-time presidential candidate Williams Jennings Bryan, labeled “the Great Commoner.” A present-day version of this trial seems entirely plausible and even likely in the next few years when, predictably, a doctor provides an abortion in a state that has outlawed such.
In 1925, nearly 160 reporters covered the trial, thereby providing ample records of the events. During the Scopes trial, all copies of the biology textbook in question were sold out. In an unnerving parallel, the NYT recently cited a Guttmacher Institute study indicating that “in nearly every state that has banned abortion, the number of women receiving abortions increased between 2020 and the end of 2023.”
During the Scopes trial, despite the high level of drama and conflict, the mood on the ground was reportedly jubilant and even circus-like. Vendors sold food and drinks and, for penny change, street performers photographed willing citizens with Chimpanzees. According to Keeping the Faith, a new book by award-winning historian Brenda Wineapple, everyone seemed to join in the fun: university students petitioned the legislature to “amend the law of gravity and do something about the excessive speed of light.” One of the journalists covering the proceedings, George Schuyler, interviewed a gorilla at the Bronx Zoo who expressed outrage at the appalling idea of being related to people. The primate was quoted: Nobody had ever seen us carry on, lynching each other, filling up jails, or overworking our little ones …Did you ever hear of monkeys allowing one of their race to appropriate all the trees in the jungle and then force others to pay him rent?
The similarities between 1925 and 2025 are truly remarkable, revealing the continuity in our culture wars vis-à-vis conflicts between science and religion. Just as in 1925, the city-dwelling “cultured crowd” and the rest of the country took opposite sides. During the Scopes trial, there was considerable evidence of contempt on both sides as scientists searching for truth clashed with white fundamentalists threatened by an assault on their religion. Like today, there were also aspects of the split related to race and the acute perception among Christian men of the 1920s that they were losing ground to the millions of Catholic and Jewish immigrants who had flooded the country decades prior. Further, the recent enfranchisement of women added to men’s concerns.
The underlying tension throughout the proceedings (radio broadcast to the entire nation) positioned “educated” city residents as resolute opposition to the local townspeople. In the present-day parallel, we see today’s fiercest cultural warriors emerging from nonurban parts of America that missed out on the tech boom enriching coastal cities.
But here is one crucial contrasting element: while the America of 1925 certainly had its share of violence, the political divisions around the epoch’s culture wars evinced scant animosity. Before the trial, local Tennessee businessmen put up Scopes's bail money as they didn’t want to see their kids’ teacher jailed. Not only were Darrow and Bryan friendly, but once Scopes had lost the case, Bryan volunteered to pay the associated fines.
The environment could not be more different today, where candidates at every level of government make a continual practice of weaponizing culture war disputes. The stoking of divisiveness, rage, and acrimony to win elections has become standard play in this century. In Scopes day, both sides of the debate respected each other, sharing many meals together and managing to co-exist without hatred. Perhaps that lesson can form the basis of a collective New Year’s resolution in 2025.
If only.
Seth David Radwell is the author of “American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation” and serves on the Advisory Councils at Business for America, RepresentUs, and The Grand Bargain Project. This is the first entry in a 10-part series on the American Schism in 2025.
Keep ReadingShow less
Load More