Forget the rhetoric and hysterical political ads! Host Hannah McCarthy did the research, and she runs down all of the *actual* campaign promises being made by President Joe Biden and Donald Trump as they both make a second run for the White House.
The economy. Healthcare. Gun violence. Policing. Education. And...firing lots of people. In this edition of Civics 101, find out what the two presumptive nominees for President of the United States are telling voters they will do if elected.
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Note: This transcript was AI-generated and may contain errors
Hannah McCarthy: All right. Hello, everyone.
Nick Capodice: Hey, Hannah.
Rebecca Lavoie: Hello.
Christina Phillips: Hi.
Hannah McCarthy: It's so good to have you all here. This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Christina Phillips: I'm Christina Phillips.
Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice,
Rebecca Lavoie: And I'm Rebecca Lavoie.
Hannah McCarthy: And today we're doing a little something different. We're doing a little round table here that I am calling promises, promises.
Archive: I promise you this. Give me a chance. I'll go to the white House and I'll fight for your family.
Archive: And I will address this issue. If you elect me president, I promise you, I will address this issue.
Archive: And as your president, I promise you'll have a champion for life in the Oval Office.
Archive: I make you this promise as your president, and nobody else can say it. I will restore peace through strength. And yes, I am the only one that will prevent World War three because we are very close to World War Three. But I promise you, I give you my word as a Biden. I'm going to bring everybody along this time.
Hannah McCarthy: We often hear at Civics 101 say, you know, it's really, really important that you do all this research before you vote, right? Because you want to know who and what you're actually voting for. But we can't do that research for you because there are hundreds of candidates across the country. And then I realized in the upcoming election, actually, we can do that research for you. And specifically, I wanted to know what the two candidates. Now, these are the presumptive nominees, but they have both secured enough delegates. So the nominees are promising for 2024.
Rebecca Lavoie: You mean the presidential candidates?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, we're talking about President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. One is the incumbent, and one would be going for a second term in the presidency. Actually, they're both going for a second term in the presidency. Right. And, you know, candidates do make hard promises that this is not to say that they keep those promises or that it even matters what those promises are, but they make them. And so I did that research for you today. So what we're going to do is I'm going to run through the major campaign promises for 2024 for Biden and Trump. And I just want to make a note here that Biden's action is going to take a little longer, because a lot of his 2024 promises are just continuations of the 2020 promises, right? It's like the stuff he campaigned on and where he's at in terms of actually fulfilling that or whether he failed. Totally.
Nick Capodice: Can I ask a quick.Question, please?
Hannah McCarthy: Nick?
Nick Capodice: It's not a given that these are going to be the two nominees right now. I had a friend of mine asked me that this morning. Like, is it possible that at the conventions, a completely new candidates will be proffered up? That is possible, but not possible, but not.
Rebecca Lavoie: Probable, right? Not probable. Or someone could drop out.
Nick Capodice: Some could drop...
Hannah McCarthy: Somebody could drop out. Somebody could.
Rebecca Lavoie: Anyway, I have another question, please. Rebecca, it occurs to me that recently in presidential elections, we actually aren't getting promises anymore. So much in ads. Right. We're getting vibes. Mhm. We're getting like this is how America should feel. Yeah. We're not getting this is what I am going to do. And that's because I think political culture is turning to a culture of winning more so than doing lately. Or at least that's how it seems.
Archive: Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There's nothing more important, nothing more sacred. That's been the work of my first term to fight for our democracy. This shouldn't be a red or blue issue.
Archive: We can all see Joe Biden's weakness. If Biden wins, can he even survive till 2029? The real question is, can we make America great again?
Rebecca Lavoie: So you're going to be giving us some stuff that like, we're not even going to get on TV yet.
Hannah McCarthy: Exactly. And I want to sort of check in on your vibes feel before I make it a little more solid. But the thing I want to make clear also is that Biden can go, you know, less on vibes like Biden's got a whole administration underneath him when he gets up and says, I'm going to keep doing this or I'm going to do this in the future, or this failed in the past, I need this to happen. Like that's got more solid ground underneath it. Trump can be super vibesy, and his promises can be a lot like buzzwords and stuff like that. So that's what you're going to hear. But Trump has said, like, I'm going to get this done. This is going to happen. I want to do this right. So that's what I'm putting into the promises bucket. So shall we jump in?
Rebecca Lavoie: Let's do it.
Hannah McCarthy: Let's do it okay. Let's do it. So I'm thinking like Biden sort of in the catbird seat, right in the position of advantage, even though not really. Actually when you think about an election as a referendum. But the catbird seat is this idea that like, you've got the sweet spot, right? And then I'm typing this out and I'm like, what is catbird like my favorite jewelry brand? What is catbird? Nick, who is credited with having come up with the phrase in the catbird seat.
Nick Capodice: He's sitting in the catbird seat now, Red Barber and I would not be my father's son without knowing who Red Barber is. I believe Red Barber came up with the idea of the catbird seat. Red Barber was an announcer. I forget for what team, but a baseball announcer. And he was very famous for saying things like, it ain't over til it's over. I think that might have been Red Barber.
Hannah McCarthy: He had this phrase that I wrote down that's like the bases are FOB, which means full of Brooklyn's all right for the Dodgers. Right? Like it's like the murderer's row. He would also say, oh, doctor.
Nick Capodice: Oh that's it, that's the one. That's what I knew. Oh, doctor, we got an amazing game today.
Nick Capodice: He's parodied a lot in The Simpsons. Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Wow. Turns out the catbird thing might have actually been, like, something that a writer pretended that he said. And then he stole it from that writer. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah. He might not have come up with that.
Rebecca Lavoie: A cover of a cover.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, exactly. All right. I like wicked digress. We're going back. Okay. I'm starting with Biden. What are Biden's promises? He's in the white House when it comes to an incumbent campaign. The successes and failures of the past three years, some odd months, they do matter. And a lot of Biden's promises or priorities come from way back in 2020. So I'm gonna ask you all when we think about climate, Biden has a climate promise. What's your vibe? What's Biden's climate promise? Do you actually know what he has said?
Rebecca Lavoie: I don't know what he has said, but my vibe would be something along the lines of America and our industries will take steps toward becoming carbon neutral by some random date.
Nick Capodice: This is good.
Hannah McCarthy: Actually. This is really, really good. So Biden is considered to have been actually pretty successful on his climate promises. He's done a couple of things. So I will say in terms of the carbon neutral thing, Rebecca, he signed something called the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which is basically like the only really toothy climate policy that we have here in the United States. And it's going to help us meet global goals, including getting us on track for net zero emissions by 2050, 2050.
Rebecca Lavoie: That seems arbitrary.
Nick Capodice: Is this a nice round number?
Hannah McCarthy: If we're still around.
Nick Capodice: Would you have to say 50?
Rebecca Lavoie: 2054?
Hannah McCarthy: He also said no more drilling on federal lands, but he broke that promise. So last year in Alaska, the Drilling project was greenlit. The administration got a little bit of land back from that, but we're drilling in Alaska. However, Biden did prohibit drilling in some of the Alaskan National Petroleum Reserve, which I didn't know. We had a national petroleum reserve up in Alaska. And he was like, don't touch it. And then he canceled all drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is part of Alaska.
Nick Capodice: Was there drilling going on there?
Hannah McCarthy: There were drilling leases on that land. And he was like, no, that's done.
Christina Phillips: I think that the other thing was that he is really pushing that more sustainable climate solutions will create more jobs. There's like this real big emphasis on climate jobs, like we're going to do these new energy policies, but they're all going to create jobs, which I guess could also be part of the economy thing.
Hannah McCarthy: That's why I'm actually glad you brought that up, because that's part of the Inflation Reduction Act that I mentioned, right? That it was sort of like a way to get this through was to create jobs within this climate. All right, moving on. The economy. What does Biden have to say about the economy?
Christina Phillips: Okay, the big thing is taxes. The wealthy and corporations are going to pay their taxes, like recouping the loss in tax money, getting all that money back that corporations and the wealthiest Americans have not.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. So Biden, this is actually going forward. He wants a 25% billionaire tax. And he's got a slightly higher tax on corporate entities right on businesses. So that is a big part of the economy thing.
Rebecca Lavoie: Good luck with that one.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Good luck with that. Well I mean good luck truly because we'll see what someone else has to say about that. Yeah. But the big part of the economy for Biden was I'm going to make this bipartisan. That didn't go so hot. Right. So he passed the American Rescue Plan with zero votes from Republicans. This was a coronavirus and economic relief bill. He did get a super wide ranging many billions of dollars infrastructure bill through with bipartisan support. This is good for the economy because it means jobs. And it also means, you know, America's roads, bridges and tunnels are completely crumbling, and this many billions of dollars is supposed to infuse the economy and fix our ground, basically. Yeah. So that was successful ish. But neither Republicans nor Democrats made it easy and it hasn't been fully satisfied. So there are still you know, there's this tax idea on the billionaires. Good luck with that. And there's still waiting to see exactly how much Republicans are going to push back on future plans to infuse the economy with more jobs and more taxes. Next one here. Immigration. What is Biden's big priority? What is he putting at the top of his promises list?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, unless I'm wrong, Biden has done a bit of a 180 on immigration in terms of the new proposed bipartisan crisis at the border, immigration reform that he was trying to do before. He wasn't really about that. And now it seems like he's really like, uh, if you'll forgive me for saying so, a bit draconian about keeping people out of the United States. Hawkish. That's better than draconian, I think. Bit of a martinet about keeping people out of the United States is that was that is that what he's been doing.
Hannah McCarthy: That's pretty that's pretty good there, Nick. So really what happened was when Biden was campaigning back in 2020, he was like, my opponent, Trump is totally demonizing immigrants. He's anti-immigration. I am going to make the pathway to citizenship easier. I am going to make the pathway for refugees easier for asylum seekers easier. He did it with the refugees. Everything else? Not so much. So immigration at the US-Mexico border has been a big issue for Biden.
Nick Capodice: I just read the other day that the current waitlist for asylum seekers is an average of six years, and that kind of blew my mind.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. So I will tell you. So day one in office, Biden marches in and he signs the end of the national emergency declaration that Trump had used to get resources for the border wall. So remember the border wall?
Nick Capodice: Oh, yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: How's it doing, by the way? Yeah. Well, at first Biden was like, no more building the border wall. No more money for that. And then, as Nick mentioned, Biden, it sort of seems like essentially realized how much of a problem the flow of people attempting to come into the United States is for the government. They don't know how to deal with it. So sections of border barriers essentially have been constructed in Texas since. Right? Right. And, you know, he also promised a moratorium on deportations for a little while. He promised protection for sanctuary cities. He criticized Trump for his approach to asylum seekers and pathways to citizenship and all of this. However, what you're pointing out, Nick, the most recent border bill that has come across Congress, right? This is Biden's sort of new promise is to get stricter on what's happening at the border. So this border bill had stricter immigration and stricter asylum provisions in it, and Republicans canned it. It seems pretty likely that they did this because Trump said, don't let that pass right. We are not letting that through. Right. Policing. What did Biden have to say about policing when he was campaigning in 2020? Do we remember that? I mean.
Rebecca Lavoie: There was certainly a push toward police accountability in 2020, right? And he talked a lot about body cameras. He talked a lot about money for community policing programs. And he talked a lot about not defunding the police, but sort of reforming police culture. Right? Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: That he did. Yeah. Biden promised a national commission on policing that he was going to form, and he was going to bring in police officers and community leaders and all sorts of representatives who could swirl around the idea of policing in the United States. That totally stalled out, right?
Christina Phillips: Which I have to say is like the first step that every corporation, state, city, there were so many commissions in 2020 that it's like you lose track. I remember we were talking about a commission in New Hampshire.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah, there was a commission.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. The idea of a commission that's often just, you know, a meeting or maybe a group of people who gather around and maybe write a report. So if people want to know what that means, that's basically what it is.
Rebecca Lavoie: And then they come up with ideas the legislature says we can't fund that, right?
Christina Phillips: Exactly, exactly.
Hannah McCarthy: Exactly. Inexpedient. Yeah. Let's think about the fact that Biden can't get a lot of stuff done because the Congress he has cannot legislate, right? So what Biden did instead, he did sign an executive order limiting chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized, also limits no knock warrants, also requires body cameras to be worn during arrests and searches. And now this should be important. Creates a national database on police misconduct. But here's the deal an executive order, at least this one only applies to federal officers. Most of us are interacting with city and state and local officers every day. This doesn't apply to them. Only about a third of police precincts even bother to check the database when they're hiring officers. Wow. So misconduct doesn't really factor in. So federal legislation on police reform has thus far been unsuccessful. Biden has not abandoned it. But it's really it's not at the top of the list. So don't look around for that. Here comes student loan debt. Here it is. Biden was saying, what was his big promise that young people in particular salivated at?
Christina Phillips: He would cancel it. He would basically eliminate student loan debt. Importantly for me and you and everyone else. Basically, basically a life changing amount of debt would disappear for some of the people who are struggling the most to succeed and to have any sort of income.
Rebecca Lavoie: With a caveat for those who had never refinanced their student loans into private lenders.
Hannah McCarthy: But the idea was for, all right, all who fall under that provision, we might all remember the Supreme Court was like, you want $400 billion in loan forgiveness. No, that is not happening. So forget it. That's not happening. Move on. The Biden administration did get $139 billion worth of forgiveness through the administration. Set up a new payment plan. The Save plan means basically a lot of people don't have to pay interest on their loans, and a lot of people's monthly payment is $0 and made changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which matters for people who work in services like public radio or teaching.
Rebecca Lavoie: As long as they haven't refinanced their loans into private lending.
Hannah McCarthy: Thank you for that caveat, Rebecca.
Nick Capodice: And as long as they've been making payments for a period of time, right.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, exactly. But basically the student loan thing, it is still ongoing. There are still conversations about this. Biden will probably bring it up going into 2024. But, you know, we'll see if Christina and I are free of crushing student loan debt anytime soon.
Christina Phillips: Which I will say, this is like a perfect example of the difference between a promise and then the next step, which is actually doing it, and then the next step, which is it actually happening? I had been trying to transfer into the student loan program that, like the lender that allows forgiveness. I've been trying to do that since I was hired in 2016, and I just now was able to transfer into the right company, the Mola, which is now apparently changing. I have Mola again, so the Save program on the federal student loan website, there's always a little disclaimer at the top that says there's a backlog. And so the idea of student loans being forgiven, you may hear it and then you may not see a change, or you may just kind of sit around, make calls and wait. And that might not actually happen for a really long time. So it's like, and I think this is true of a lot of presidents is that they promise things and maybe those things come to fruition, but they may be far out of office by then. Right. Or there's always a chance that someone comes in and undoes it. Right?
Hannah McCarthy: Health care. What did Biden say? What did he promise he was going to do for health care in the United States?
Christina Phillips: Drug prices?
Hannah McCarthy: That is part of it. Drug prices. His big thing, though, was I am going to make Obamacare come back with a vengeance. Like it's going to be bigger and better and more wide reaching. It's going to be improved by me. I love Obamacare, let's just get it going. Affordable Care Act all the way right. And part of that is expanding subsidies and also, yes, reducing prescription drug prices, basically putting a limit on that. And this is something that Biden promised and he got done. This is actually considered to have been promise fulfilled. You did what you said you were going to do. The furthest reaching elements of this promise, though, have been blocked by Republican lawmakers. So like, once again, yes, you want health care to be this like stars in the eyes thing. But we're not going to let you have it all the way. But generally we can sort of say like job done accomplished, right? Gun violence.
Nick Capodice: I remember something about closing the loophole for gun sales from like, gun shows and like vendors. There was something about some loopholes he was closing involving unauthorized gun vendors. Was that a thing?
Hannah McCarthy: That was an attempted thing. So the big message from Biden, the selling point, the promise was Ar15s are going to be off the streets, right? AR15s are definitely still on the streets. Yes, they are very much available. Incidentally, Congress did pass the most sweeping gun legislation that we've had in three decades. It is not doing much, but it is the most sweeping that we have had in three decades. It beefed up background checks, makes it harder to get guns very easily, and it makes it easier for people providing gun licenses to prevent domestic abusers and people who may commit violence. You know, even that in and of itself is difficult to figure out. But past violent crimes or, you know, signifiers that they may commit a violent crime, it makes it easier to prevent those people from obtaining guns.
Nick Capodice: These are called red flag laws, if I'm not mistaken.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He also set up the first executive office to prevent gun violence. So there's now an office to prevent gun violence. But his big thing what Biden keeps saying is like, I'm still working on gun violence, but I can't do anything with Congress blocking me like the executive orders I'm going to write. Can't do much for you. All right, so we've just run down all of President Joe Biden's big campaign promises before I move on. Is there something any of you think I missed?
Nick Capodice: I think you're missing the junk, Hannah. Getting rid of the junk. How many? How often you open up a big bill, and you see at the end there's a bunch of junk.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, that extra piece of paper. With all this stuff. Oh, oh, the fees. So junk fees. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. It's not junk mail. It's. So he's getting rid of junk fees. He's been. I mean, that's like the only thing I've heard him promise.
Rebecca Lavoie: Across industries, right? Yeah.
Nick Capodice: Just getting rid of all the junk.
Archive: Look, one of the key things I've asked the council to tackle are the unfair fees, known as junk fees. Those hidden charges that companies sneak into your bill to make you pay more because they can. Just simply because they can.
Nick Capodice: Like, just service charges, service fees or convenience fees.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: I mean, that's an example of like the sort of promise that a president's like, you know, what would be good? All right. I'm gonna run quickly through some sort of, like, half baked sort of promises that he's sort of, kind of did equity. Biden promised investment in historically black colleges. He got a little less than half of the way there. So he sent a little less than half of what he promised to historically black colleges in terms of financial investment. Biden promised he promised to study. Does anyone here remember what study he promised in 2020? This has to do. You could say with equity, maybe.
Nick Capodice: Is this a DEI study?
Hannah McCarthy: No.
Rebecca Lavoie: What's the study?
Hannah McCarthy: A study on reparations. Oh, no, did not happen. Here's a stall. Biden promised expanded child care for children and the elderly. It's stalled in Congress, so he supplemented it with an executive order to make care a little more accessible. So like when you actually attempt to get care for your kid or for anyone in your home who needs additional care, this executive order makes it a little bit easier. Biden really wanted to codify Roe v Wade. Yeah, and that doesn't mean it's not going to happen. He's still saying he's saying to the American people, if you give me the Congress I need, I will give you Roe v Wade codified. Now, of course, like it would mean something completely different. It would actually mean the codification of the right to abortion access for women. Right. Like there's what the Supreme Court says there was what they ruled, constitutional or not. And then there's codification of a law. Right? Right. Those are two completely different things.
Rebecca Lavoie: But, Hannah, whenever I hear this kind of promise, you give me the Congress I need, that to me, absolutely rings empty because the President is not the constituency of my congressman. Right. And if I, say, elect a Democratic congressman from a traditionally conservative place, they're still going to lean toward what's going to win them the seat the next time and not toward necessarily what the president wants them to do. So it's an interesting way of framing that promise.
Hannah McCarthy: A few more quickie quick things. This is new promise to codify in vitro fertilization access for all people. Biden is trying to get tax credits for families under a certain income, through child tax credits at a higher level, mortgage credits for first time buyers. He's saying he's going to give public school teachers a raise. That got him a big cheer during the state of the Union.
Archive: I want the public school teachers a raise.
Hannah McCarthy: He's calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act. Oh, yeah, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And he wants that 25% billionaire tax. And of course, he's really hoping for that two state solution in the Middle East. And also says that he will keep working with Israel and find ways to get humanitarian help into Gaza. And he called on Congress to support Ukraine's efforts to defend itself. That's Biden in a nutshell. Right. I'm trying to give our listeners a sense of like, what's the balance ball he's sitting on as he's campaigning? I'm overall like, what do you think.
Nick Capodice: It's about how different it is if you're running for reelection, if you're an incumbent versus you're the person coming who's not the incumbent, you have to defend what you've just been doing versus being able to just come in and say, all I'm going to do is blow everything up. Watch me. Right.
Hannah McCarthy: And that is a perfect transition to what we're going to get into right after the break. Welcome back to Civics 101. We're talking about campaign promises. And right before the break, Nick mentioned the fact that when you're the incumbent, there's a lot of stuff you're defending. A lot of stuff has sort of gotten stuck in the sludge. And then there's the other candidate who just sort of like rolls in with the blunt kind of, I'm just gonna do this right.
Rebecca Lavoie: The Kool-Aid man through that wall.
Hannah McCarthy: Is it just bursting through the wall? Which is why, when it comes to Trump's promises. And by this, I mean the stuff that Trump has just sort of said he's going to do, be it in like a speech or in an interview or wherever he might be. Right. These are the things that he has said to his constituency he's going to do for them. All right. I'm gonna go in the same order as I did with Biden. Same basic subjects, right? Because I wanted to see where each person stands on each of these. Climate. Where does Trump stand on the climate?
Rebecca Lavoie: We are going to open everything for drilling and make the United States like the leader in the exportation and providing our own United States, going to be the leader in the production of fossil fuels, right?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. So Trump's catchphrase is drill, baby, drill.
Nick Capodice: Still, that's been around a while. Drill. Who was the first person who did? Wasn't that like John McCain or something?
Rebecca Lavoie: I think I heard Sarah Palin say Sarah Palin during the during that campaign. Yes.
Archive: Yeah, we will drill here and drill now. And now is when you chant drill, baby, drill.
Hannah McCarthy: And if you juxtapose that against Biden's policies, which have been about really, you know, pulling drilling back, Trump is saying drill all the way, he is trying to get the lowest cost energy of any nation in the world for the United States. Right. We are going to have so much of our own energy that it will be the cheapest. So he's going to ramp up drilling. He's going to offer tax breaks to oil, gas and coal producers. He's going to squash pollution limits. Don't worry about those pollution limits. Just keep producing that energy. He's going to discourage electric cars. Biden I didn't mention this, but Biden has been encouraging legislation and other infrastructure to support electric cars, like having places to plug them in all over the country. Trump says none of that. And Trump says he's going to exit the Paris Accords again. Well, you might remember Trump exited them and then Biden went right back in. Right? Right. Taxes.
Nick Capodice: Well, this is interesting to me because when Trump first ran for president in 2016, he did promise, if I'm not mistaken, to raise taxes on wealthy. And then he didn't do that. He did the opposite. He lowered taxes for the uber wealthy. I actually don't know what he is saying he's going to do right now.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So my understanding is that Trump really pushed this idea that like people's tax situations will improve. And there was a perception that people's tax situations did improve. I've heard that anecdotally from people.
Rebecca Lavoie: You don't hear it anecdotally from people who have a lot of deductions on their tax return, because those have become severely limited. You can no longer deduct your mortgage interest. You can no longer deduct all these things that we used to deduct. Yeah. So he promising to expand his tax policy.
Hannah McCarthy: He is focusing mostly on big tax cuts like promising his constituents the quote biggest ones under what he's calling the Trump economic boom. But he's not being specific about that. So the thing on the line right now is the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump signed. Part of that expires in 2025. This law was a permanent corporate tax cut and a temporary individual tax cut. So it lowered taxes overall for everybody. But it also increased national debt. So like the corporate tax cuts add about $1 billion of debt a year. So it's a really expensive plan. Also the idea was lower taxes for corporations and their investments are going to pay for the tax plan and benefit the middle class. The middle class did get like an average bump of 750 bucks in income. But the administration had promised, you know, 4 to $6000. That did not happen. So the question is, you know, is this temporary individual tax cut going to be extended? What other provisions might Trump actually get through? Like he wants to lower the corporate tax rate even further. And a lot of experts say that, you know, lowering the corporate rate is not the way to benefit the economy overall because of our debt. So that really remains to be seen. But yeah, the big messaging is he's going to cut taxes. He's just going to cut taxes. That's, you know, that's messaging that people like and raise taxes on imported goods.
Archive: We're going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you're not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected.
Hannah McCarthy: Now, pretty much every economist agrees that this is going to raise the prices of goods in the United States. If you have a tax on goods. The idea behind it is that if we raise the tax on goods coming in, we'll just make our own.
Rebecca Lavoie: How?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, how I.
Christina Phillips: I Mean, this is like..
Hannah McCarthy: I'm not the candidate.
Christina Phillips: The American exceptionalism that I think is very in line with the climate policy is that we make it all here. We do it all here. And that will boost the economy. It will also, you know, it'll make us really desirable to other countries. They want our stuff. We will make money off of giving them our stuff, but also we will basically do it all and succeed. Right? That it feels very in line with the climate policy too.
Hannah McCarthy: All right. Moving on. Immigration. What is Trump saying he'll do?
Rebecca Lavoie: Finish the wall.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Finish the wall. And like I think it's not just stopping more people from coming in. It is deporting every single undocumented immigrant in the United States. And that is all that anybody is talking about on the radio.
Hannah McCarthy: Yes, Trump is promising the single largest deportation effort in American history, period. And what is he going to do with the border right now? The thing that he's touting is moving troops who are stationed overseas to the border and redirecting DEA, FBI, and a number of other federal agents to the border. And he plans to reinstate his travel ban on people from Muslim majority countries. So the idea here is to get some people out and then keep some people out, right? Right. That is the goal overall for immigration and Trump. All right. Policing. Trump has actually said the little bit about keeping the nation safer, like the domestic issue here with policing. So what has he said?
Rebecca Lavoie: There is right now a very big media campaign around, quote, increasing crime rates in American urban areas. Right. And there are very cherry-picked news stories used to demonstrate that in political rhetoric.
Archive: Following some breaking news out of Athens, Georgia.
Archive: Two colleges have canceled classes today as police look for a murderer.
Archive: Lincoln Riley was described as a shining light.
Archive: The Dean's List nursing student police.
Archive: Arrested 26 year old Jose Antonio.
Archive: Ibarra. Ibarra crossed into Texas illegally.
Rebecca Lavoie: So isn't it about refunding and equipping police to tamp down the alleged insurgent fear that people have of now being attacked in their homes and in their communities?
Hannah McCarthy: Right. So a big thing in terms of these very violent places in America, as so deemed by at least Trump in this case. Right. So Trump says Chicago is dangerous. What's Trump going to do? He's going to send the National Guard to Chicago to enforce the law to keep it safe. Um, he plans to invest, like you said, Rebecca, more money in hiring police officers, strengthen protections for those officers. Officers have something called qualified immunity, which means that they are essentially not held accountable for violating constitutional rights. So Trump wants to really shore that up, and then he wants to require law enforcement agencies that receive Justice Department funding to use measures like stop and frisk. You want government money, you better use stop and frisk. He has also stated that shoplifters should be shot as they're leaving a store. You should be expected to be shot as you're walking out. In terms of student loan debt, I'm just going to say Trump's thing is like, good for the Supreme Court for preventing Biden from forgiving student loan debt. Think of all those people who did the right thing and paid them off. That wouldn't be fair to them. Uh, healthcare. What's his big healthcare thing?
Rebecca Lavoie: Are we gonna say abolish Obamacare again? Because that didn't work last time. And it seems like the longer we get away from the passage of Obamacare, the less likely it is to be abolished. Because at the time, I remember very clearly people saying, even on the right side of the aisle, that if we pass this, we won't be able to repeal it because people will like it. And that does seem to be exactly what has transpired.
Hannah McCarthy: Correct. He is promising to repeal Obamacare. Okay, he's back on it. Trump says that America has the worst health care in the world, and that he's going to fix it. And he promises to reinstate an executive order that would mandate that the US pay the same for drugs as other developed nations. So Biden's actually done a lot of work on the cost of prescription drugs. This is just what Trump thinks is the way to cover the cost of prescription drugs. Gun violence.
Nick Capodice: Isn't it? We need more people to have more guns to prevent violence. That every person with a gun is stopped by a better person with a better gun.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Trump vows to undo Biden's gun ownership restrictions. He promises supporters that nobody will lay a hand on their guns. And in terms of preventing gun violence in schools, Trump is saying that he wants to allow trained teachers to carry concealed firearms and hire armed school guards from the Pool of America's veterans and retired police officers.
Rebecca Lavoie: This is fascinating. This has always been fascinating to me. And this is, I think, a, you know, widely known party difference, right? Is the basic, effective messaging of Trump's platform really echoes a trend that we've seen. You know, no one is going to take your guns. None of the Biden promises on guns say, we're going to take your guns. That has not been on the table for a long time. You know, there hasn't been a gun buyback program. There hasn't been a gun confiscation program. The simple, clear language of taking your guns, coming for your guns. It's very effective as a writer. You know, these promises are written very clearly, and I see why they resonate, I really do, yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: I mean, honestly, just like saying it out loud and doing the research on it. The Biden promises felt more convoluted, harder to wrap your mind around. Wonky, yes. And the Trump promises are just like an aphorism, 1 or 2 lines, just like this is the truth, and I'm just going to stand by the truth and that's it. And that, like, that is solid, strong, compelling messaging. Now I'm just going to quickly run through Trump's the rest. Right. So here's the other stuff that he's promising. And the Department of Education give additional funds to grade schools.
Rebecca Lavoie: That's under your the rest...
Hannah McCarthy: I know.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay.
Rebecca Lavoie: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you there.
Hannah McCarthy: No, it's totally fine, but yes. And the Department of Education. What is the idea here? The idea here is give the education power to the states. Take the federal government out of it and to the parents...
Nick Capodice: You know, this is a big thing. It's give it to the parents. Parents should be able to tell the kids what to read.
Rebecca Lavoie: Give it to some of the parents..
Nick Capodice: Some of the parents. Right. Give it to the. Yeah. Thank you. Rebecca.
Hannah McCarthy: Yes, yes. Speaking of power to the parents. Uh, more funding for schools who elect their principals.
Nick Capodice: Oh, interesting.
Rebecca Lavoie: Hello.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. Didn't know.
Hannah McCarthy: That. Also, more funding to schools who cut certain administrators, like administrators working on Dei efforts and elimination of tenure for teachers. If you do that, you'll get more funding. Trump also plans to cut funding for schools that teaches what he calls critical race theory, which we've talked about before on the show. Public schools do not teach that right. High-level law schools teach that. And what he calls gender ideology, which is just the way that Trump is putting it, gender ideology, which roles really naturally into the gender front. I don't know if any of you have heard about what Trump pretty clearly said he's going to do about gender.
Rebecca Lavoie: What has he clearly said he's going to do about gender?
Hannah McCarthy: Pass a law that recognizes only two genders as assigned at birth. In the United States, you are one gender or the other that is assigned at birth, and that, by law, is what you are. Under the same umbrella. Trump plans to stop funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care and label those hospitals as not meeting federal health and safety standards. And he intends to get a law passed that prohibits hormonal and surgical interventions for minors in the US. Trump promises to, quote, take back our city streets from the homeless, the drug addicted and the mentally ill. He's going to do this by banning urban camping. First of all, violators have a choice. One of the choices - there are two - is jail and the other one Trump is calling treatment. So where will these people actually go? They will be sent to tent cities established on inexpensive land outside of the city where this unhoused person is. And supposedly these tent cities will be staffed with doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and drug rehab specialists.
Christina Phillips: Which is another example of something that's already happened in cities and states. I mean, there have been policies where cities and states have banned homelessness. I think mostly cities and towns have banned homelessness. Oftentimes this looks like enforced busing outside of city limits. So this would be a more national scale effort or funding or support towards cities and states that are adopting these kinds of policies. Right.
Hannah McCarthy: So when I say that Trump promises to obliterate the deep state.
Nick Capodice: Oh, this is the big one.
Hannah McCarthy: We know how he's going to obliterate the deep.
Rebecca Lavoie: What is the deep state in this case?
Nick Capodice: It's you, rebecca.
Rebecca Lavoie: I bet know something about this. Considering your media habits.
Nick Capodice: There's a name to obliterate the deep state. He is going to fire everybody on day one. Now, when I say everybody, I don't mean like the professional everybody. But I mean a lot of people.
Hannah McCarthy: So has anyone heard of schedule F before? Because we have seen it before. I'm not sure what the F stands for. I would assume...
Nick Capodice: Fire firing.
Hannah McCarthy: But schedule F was an executive order that Trump signed at the end of his presidency. It did not go into full effect. What this does is it reclassifies government employees. It removes their civil service protections. It essentially makes them at-will employees and an at-will employee can just be fired, full stop. Trump has promised that he will remove, quote, rogue bureaucrats and use that power, quote, very aggressively. So all of this will be done under schedule F, essentially a massive firing to obliterate the deep state. This is pretty much interpreted to mean anyone who Trump doesn't feel as a supporter of his ideals, his measures, needs to leave.
Christina Phillips: Which the federal government is a massive employer, and many of these people serve as employees of the government over many, many administrations. So they have different sort of protections and contracts and rights. Then somebody who maybe is only going to be there while the president is in office is maybe coming with the candidate or the elected president. So this would sort of eliminate some of the protections for people who have jobs that extend across administrations. Is that what you're saying?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I mean, the civil service protection is there to protect these employees from the shifts of political wills. Right. And Trump is essentially saying, I'm going to get rid of those civil service protections, which, you know, we can take that a step further to allow for the force of my political will.
Rebecca Lavoie: That's right. So this could go as far as I will fire any IRS agent who audits anybody that I don't think should be audited. I will fire anybody who has ever sent an email with a political cartoon featuring me in it. I will fire, you know, it's like it really is sweeping. I mean, this is like we're talking some dark stuff here.
Nick Capodice: So the name of this and I was trying to remember it earlier is project 2025. You know, and that's a big umbrella term for all the things that Trump promises to do. But that big part, Rebecca, that you were saying, this is some dark, scary stuff where anybody can be fired for political thoughts that they had had and they were protected from that previously.
Hannah McCarthy: One last little thing. Um, Trump says that he's going to solve the Ukraine-Russia war conflict, maybe even before his inauguration. Just solve it.
Archive: If I were president and I say this, I will end that war in one day. It'll take 24 hours and.
Hannah McCarthy: Then plans to stand with Israel against Hamas. You know, these are major conflicts. We have to know where each candidate stands. Trump has used fairly blunt language to talk about where he stands there.
Hannah McCarthy: That's it.
Hannah McCarthy: Those are the promises, the platforms, the beliefs, the things that these candidates are saying they're going to do or have failed to do or will try to do. That is the playing field. There's a lot more, but if you want to learn about that, you should just listen to your candidates and see what they're telling you. But this should give you a sense of who you're voting for when you vote.
Nick Capodice: What I'm really interested in is to hear how these promises become sort of amalgamated into planks, because, you know, the platform, the planks of the platform, because the conventions are where the planks of the platform are revealed dramatically to everybody. Right.
Hannah McCarthy: I fail to say this earlier, I did not mention the platforms, and I didn't do that on purpose. I'm basically saying, like, there are the promises, there's what a candidate says they're going to do, and then there's the platform. Basically, like candidates and presidents have long ignored the platform entirely. Nick, you're correct. This is something that is voted on during the national conventions. It's what the party believes. But often politicians, representatives, presidents do not adhere to, quote, what the party believes they adhere to, what's going to keep them in power in terms of what their constituents want. And the Republican Party has not voted on a platform since 2016. So the planks of the platform, they could be found in this hodgepodge of promises but no promises.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. You know what Robert Service said about promises, right? A promise made is a debt unpaid.
Hannah McCarthy: You say that like once a week.
Nick Capodice: That's a pie crust promise. Easily made, easily broken.
Nick Capodice: I do say that a lot.
Nick Capodice: Sorry. Everyone who knows me.
Hannah McCarthy: That does it for this episode of Civics 101. It was produced by executive producer Rebecca Lavoi and me, Hannah McCarthy. My co-host is Nick Capodice. Our senior producer is Christina Phillips. Music in this episode by Adeline Paik, P.O.W. arc de Soleil, Victor Lundberg, Keza Kirk Osymyso, Dirk Taylor, Chris Zabriskie, Marxist Arrow, and Eden Avery. If you want more Civics 101, we've got a lot of it at our website, civics101podcast.org. While you're there, you can also subscribe to our newsletter to get Civics 101 in your inbox and read it at your own pace. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.