While Trump lies, even conservatives want him gone

Former President Donald Trump released a lengthy statement full of false claims about NATO while praising himself for bolstering the alliance. That, my friend, is called a delusion.

Trump has repeatedly gotten basic facts of NATO wrong or been willfully lying about the alliance he’s said was “obsolete” only to correct himself later because he did not know “much about NATO.” Most of Trump’s new statement repeated previous false claims he’s made about the NATO alliance, including that several member countries were “delinquent” and that he was the one who got them to “pay up” in exchange for the US’s protection.

Contrary to Trump’s claims, European members of NATO and Canada had increased their defense spending in 2015 and 2016, before Trump took office. Also, NATO countries don’t pay up. They have pledged to spend a certain amount of their gross domestic product on their militaries and pay a small stipend to fund NATO headquarters.

How bad is Trump fading? Even conservatives don’t want him talking anymore.

According to the National Review, “Donald Trump? In 2024? Why on earth would conservatives choose that guy? I’m serious: Why? Why would we do that when we have a choice? The idea should be absurd, risible, farcical, outré. It should be a punchline, a mania, the preserve of the demented fringe. Politics matters. And because politics matters, it is a bad idea to allow politics to be held hostage by someone who, in his heart of hearts, doesn’t care. Donald Trump is an extraordinarily selfish man, and he is only too happy to subordinate your interests to his own. Why let him? It is one thing to say, “Well, he may have been a fickle boor, but I liked some of what he did once he was in office”; it’s quite another to put yourself through four more years of the man when you don’t have to. Whatever justification there may have been for picking the “lesser of two evils” in the 2016 or 2020 general election — a justification that was a great deal stronger before Trump refused to accept, and then tried to overturn, the results of the latter — it cannot obtain in 2022".

“None of the other potential candidates have lost an election to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and then disgracefully lied about it for a year; that none of the other candidates have inspired a riot in the service of that lie; that none of the other candidates have sat in their country club for the last two years issuing unhinged press releases.”

That’s pretty harsh, but it’s right on target.

By the way, thanks to Biden’s economic plan, the states are reporting record revenue. A review of state fiscal offices conducted by the National Conference of State Legislatures found that half the states now expect to exceed revenue projections this fiscal year, which were already far higher than in previous years. Another 17 conditions are on pace to meet their expectations.

The good news comes two years after the coronavirus pandemic when state budget officers looked into an abyss of red ink amid business shutdowns and mass layoffs that appeared to be the brink of the next Great Depression.

Almost half the states project personal income taxes will exceed expectations this year, as wages rise and people earn more money. Five more states expect to meet projections that have already been revised upwards.

Sales tax revenues are likely to beat expectations in more than half the states. In recent months, about half the states had already raised their sales tax revenue projections.

But that story doesn't get as many clicks as a good Trump lie story or how the Republicans are on track to gain seats in the next election while they shit on women’s rights and gerrymander elections.