Letters from an American - August 5, 2024

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

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August 5th, 2024. Christy Karras of the Los Angeles Times reported today that the reality TV industry has collapsed. From April to June, reality TV production in the Los Angeles region fell by 57 percent compared to the same period in 2023. That's a 50 percent drop over the five-year average, excluding the COVID-induced production shutdown. The immediate reasons for the dropping production are systemic to the business, Karras reports, but the change seems to represent Americans souring on the blurring of reality and entertainment that gave us the Trump era. Trump rose to political power thanks to his appearances on reality TV, which claimed to be unscripted, but was actually edited to emphasize ruthless competition among people striving for

ultimate victory in a closed system. The Apprentice launched in 2004, and its highly edited episodes portrayed its star, Trump, as a brilliant and very wealthy businessman, despite his past failures. Since 2015, Trump has offered a simple narrative of American life that did not reflect reality. Using the sort of language rising authoritarians use to attract a disaffected population, he promised those left behind economically by 40 years of supply-side economics that he would bring back manufacturing, close tax loopholes, promote infrastructure, and make health care cheaper and better. He also promised sexists and racists who wanted to roll back the gains women and racial and gender minorities had made since the 1950s that he would, once again, center white heteronormative

men. He never delivered on his economic promises. Manufacturing continued to decline. He cut taxes for the wealthy and for corporations. Infrastructure Week became a national joke. And rather than expand the Affordable Care Act, Republicans repeatedly tried to kill it. But Trump and his followers did center those who had gravitated toward the MAGA movement for its cultural promises. Now, in 2024, that gravitation means that the Republican Party has become an anti-democratic vehicle for Christian nationalism. In the 2024 contest, Trump has continued to push a fake narrative, but his ability to dominate the political conversation is slipping. Last Wednesday, his interview before the National Association of Black Journalists began more than an hour late.

Trump publicly blamed the delay on the association's technology, and there was, in fact, a brief issue with the audio. But it turns out that the delay was due primarily to Trump's not wanting to be fact-checked during the interview. He was not willing to go on stage without a promise that the journalists would permit him to say whatever he wanted. They declined. Trump's determination to have a friendly audience to promote his narrative was behind the dust-up over planned presidential debates. Trump has not sat down for an interview with any but friendly right-wing interviewers. with any but friendly right-wing interviewers.

He agreed to a September 10th debate on ABC News back when he assumed the Democratic presidential nominee would be President Joe Biden. As soon as Biden said he would not accept the nomination, Trump suggested he would not be willing to follow through with the ABC News event if Vice President Kamala Harris was his opponent. Over the weekend, he announced that he would be willing to debate Harris on September 4th, but only on his terms. He wants the Fox News

channel, which had to pay a $787 million settlement for lying that Trump won the 2020 election, to host such an event, and he wants the arena full of people. Essentially, he wants to set up the conditions for one of his rallies and then debate Harris in that right-wing bubble. But Harris has stood firm on the previous agreement, condemning Trump's trash talk about her and daring Trump instead to say it to my face. She is taunting him for chickening out of the arranged debate and says she will follow through with the September 10th event to which both campaigns agreed. Trump's new plan doubles as a way to get out of debating altogether. He's saying that if she doesn't show up at his event, he won't debate her at all. At the same time, Americans have seen the Biden-Harris administration

actually do the hard work of governing, completing the promises Trump made but didn't deliver. Manufacturing has surged under Biden, with factories under construction and about 800,000 manufacturing jobs created. The Biden-Harris administration more fully funded the IRS to go after tax cheats, passing the mark of recovering more than $1 billion from high-income, high-wealth individuals earlier this month and scoring a $6 billion judgment against Coca-Cola Company for back taxes just last week. The bipartisan infrastructure law is rebuilding the nation's roads and bridges, and a record high number of people have enrolled in affordable health coverage plans since January 2021. The difference between soundbites and the hard work of governance was illustrated last week

when Biden and Harris were the ones who pulled off a complicated multi-country swap that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom Trump had repeatedly boasted that he alone could get Russian President Vladimir Putin to release, along with 15 other Russian-held prisoners. That focus on complicated governance rather than soundbites has paid off in the Indo-Pacific region as well. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in the Washington Post today that enhanced U.S. power in the Indo-Pacific region is one of the most important legacies of this administration. They note that no place on earth is more critical to Americans' livelihoods and

futures than the Indo-Pacific. It generates nearly 60% of global gross domestic product, and its commerce supports more than 3 million U.S. jobs, while the area's security challenges, North Korea's nuclear ambitions, and China's provocationsations at sea have far-reaching effects. As the U.S. turned inward during the Trump administration, China's power grew. And when Biden and Harris took office, America's standing in the Indo-Pacific was at its lowest point in decades. Biden's transformation of the nation's Indo-Pacific policy is one of the most important and least told stories of the administration's foreign policy strategy, the authors write. Biden's team replaced one-to-one relationships in the region with wider partnerships. AUKUS, a new security partnership comprising Australia, the UK, and the US.

A trilateral summit with Japan and South Korea, and a summit with Japan and the Philippines. It elevated the Quad, Australia, India, Japan, and the US, and hosted both the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum. With 13 other countries, it created the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. These partnerships do not translate to easy slogans, but they have strengthened defense and supply chains and helped address climate change. Our security partnerships across the Indo-Pacific make us and and the S&P 500 all sliding. measures 30 of the nation's older prominent companies, and the S&P 500, which measures 500 of the largest companies on the U.S. stock exchanges, took their biggest daily losses

since September 2022, although they still remain up about 60 percent from the time of Biden's election. In June, Moody's analytics assessed that the economy would grow less under Trump's policies than under a continuation of Biden's. But today, Trump promptly wrote, His running mate, J.D. Vance, followed that up by blaming Vice President Kamala Harris. The stock market is crashing because of weak and failed Kamala Harris's policies and the world is on the brink of World War III, he said. But what is really at stake here is the complicated business of balancing the economy as it has come out of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. The Biden-Harris administration made the decision to invest money in ordinary Americans, and it worked. The U.S.

came out of the pandemic with a stronger economy than any other nation. That economic strength came with inflation, both because people had more money to spend thanks to higher wages, and because that cash meant that corporations could continue to charge higher prices. The net profits of food companies, for example, are up by a median of 51% since just before the pandemic, according to Tom Perkins of The Guardian. And one egg producer's profits went up by around 950%. I'm not misspeaking. To get inflation under control, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, by the way, kept interest rates high. He has been under pressure to cut interest rates in order to keep

the economy humming, but has not. And on Friday, a jobs report showed that U.S. employers had added fewer jobs than economists had expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up. This hiccup in the booming economy prompted investors to sell. Fine-tuning the economy through interest rates is like catching an egg on a plate. Economist Robert Reich notes that the economy will continue to need the antitrust regulations the administration has put in place to bring down costs. And just today, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly for internet searches, a decision likely to influence other antitrust lawsuits the government has undertaken. Voters seem increasingly aware of the difference between image and reality.

Today, the hospitality workers union, Unite Here, which plays a big role in Nevada politics, endorsed Vice President Harris for president. Trump had tried to court the union with a promise to end taxes on tips, a plan Americans for Tax Fairness says avoids increasing the low minimum wage for waitstaff and instead opens the door to tax abuse by high-income professionals who reclassify their compensation as tips. Union President Gwen Mills told Josh Boak of the Associated Press that Trump was just making a play for votes. The union says its members will knock on more than 3.3 million doors for Harris in swing states. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.