Tacuma Roeback: Trump’s Chicago speech, same playbook, dangerous rhetoric and cheers

& Donald Trump with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago forum on Tuesday (Photo Credit: Used Under Creative Common License 4.0). Donald Trump’s interview with the Economic Club of Chicago was a “nothing burger.” In a forum where political candidates are expected to deliver thoughtful, nuanced and detailed tidbits about proposed economic policies, Trump did not know or execute the assignment. What we got was more of the same old playbook: baseless attacks against his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, rambling boasts about past achievements and flimsy anecdotes framed around half-baked proposals that experts say would have disastrous effects on our economy. What’s even worse were the people in that room who cheered heartily for him like they were at a pep rally rather than at a forum hosted by the nonpartisan Economic Club of Chicago, which has hosted numerous U.S. presidents and business leaders in its nearly 100 years of existence.& I wondered if we were hearing the same thing, but ultimately, I realized it didn’t matter. Economic Plan That Would Backfire Trump drew cheers for espousing his usual xenophobic rhetoric around immigrants. They applauded his plan for employing across-the-board tariffs...