Trump in 2011: National Debt 'Going to $22 Trillion', The Country Is 'Going Bad Really Fast', 'Cuts Aren't Enough'

    In 2011, Donald Trump addressed the agreement that then-President Barack Obama and the Republicans in Congress came to regarding the debt ceiling. Trump used the occasion to warn of the growing national debt, then at $15 trillion and, in his words, "going to $22 trillion." Ironically, the latest report from the US Treasury Department shows the total national debt under President Trump at $22,023,119,533,123.43. Monday, President Trump announced a budget deal with Congress that will reportedly increased federal spending by $320 billion, add $1 trillion per year to the debt, and suspends the debt ceiling until July 2021.

    Among Donald Trump's statements about the 2011 debt ceiling agreement:

"I kept hearing they were gonna cut four trillion, five trillion, maybe even more than that. They didn't -- they didn't get anywhere close. So this doesn't solve the problem and that's the big thing. It doesn't solve the problem."

"...the cuts aren't enough." 

"So this doesn't solve the problem and that's the big thing. It doesn't solve the problem. The country is going bad. It's going bad really fast and they didn't do the cutting that we needed." 

    Trump also addressed President Obama's strategy of pushing the debt ceiling issue past the 2012 elections, a move Trump saw as necessary because otherwise Obama "would lose the election in a landslide." The current deal bumps the debt ceiling issue past the 2020 elections.

    Video of Trump's August 2011 remarks:






    A full transcript of the video is found here:





    The text from that transcript is reproduced below.

    "The debt ceiling deal that we've all been watching over the last three or four weeks and it has been a mess. You do have to give everybody credit for working hard no matter what side you're on. Now I happen to be on the side of people that would not have approved the deal. The reason I wouldn't have approved it is two things. Number one, it doesn't address the Bush tax cuts. So what's gonna happen in a short period of time, taxes are gonna be raised, we don't want taxes raised. It's bad for the country to raise the taxes. So it doesn't address the Bush tax cut. I believe they raise automatically, although nobody's been able to tell me that with great assurance. The other thing and almost more importantly, it gets -- Obama passed the election because the next big issue won't come up until after the election. And I can't believe the Republicans agree to that. I will say this Obama's only point, the only thing I saw him very strong on was the fact that he had to go past the election because he knew if this mess happened before the election, he would lose the election in a landslide, he probably or possibly will lose it anyway, although who knows with the mistakes the Republicans make. But he wanted that to go past the election and he got his wish. I don't like that. I don't think they had to do it. I think that's a real real real mistake. So those are two points, but the other point is the cuts aren't enough. I mean we owe fifteen trillion dollars in a very short period of time, fifteen trillion, nobody ever heard of the word trillion three years ago. Now we owe $15 trillion going to $22 trillion and they didn't cut enough. I kept hearing they were gonna cut four trillion, five trillion, maybe even more than that. They didn't -- they didn't get anywhere close. So this doesn't solve the problem and that's the big thing. It doesn't solve the problem. The country is going bad. It's going bad really fast and they didn't do the cutting that we needed."

Obama Administration Used A Second "Former Internment Camp" For Migrant Children In 2014

    The Trump administration's decision to use the Fort Sill military base in Oklahoma as an emergency shelter for migrant children triggered a flood of stories drawing attention to Fort Sill's history as one of several dozen locations where the US government interned Americans of Japanese descent and others deemed as possible security risks during World War 2. Time Magazine appears to have kicked off the trend with a story posted Tuesday evening entitled "Trump Administration to Hold Migrant Children at Base That Served as WWII Japanese Internment Camp." (The Associated Press had run an earlier story on Fort Sill without a "Japanese internment camp" reference in the article.)
     Notably, however, the Obama administration also used Fort Sill in 2014 to temporarily house migrant children, but research indicates not a single news organization, advocacy group, or politician noted Fort Sill's history as an internment camp at the time. And, as it turns out, Fort Sill was not the only former internment camp location utilized by the Obama administration.

    In addition to Fort Sill, the Obama administration used Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to house migrant children apprehended at the southern border. An official Air Force website reported on June 11, 2014, that the base had been told to "establish an emergency shelter to house up to nearly 1,200 unaccompanied migrant children." 

    According to the National Park Service website, in 1942 "[s]ome Japanese Hawaiians and about 40 Issei from Fort Missoula were held at Fort Sam Houston along with 300 Alaskan Eskimos." The Kooskia Internment Camp Project at the University of Idaho reports as many as "1,000; Japanese, German, Italian, and other aliens" were held at Fort Sam Houston. Further, a State of Texas website says: "The internment camp at Fort Sam Houston (San Antonio) opened in late February 1942. The confinement site’s first internees were Japanese, German, and Italian enemy aliens living in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi."

    Oklahoma Republicans in 2014 opposed the use of Fort Sill to house the migrant children, arguing that the use distracted from the military mission of the base. No 2014 contemporaneous news articles or statements by politicians either for or against the actions of the Obama administration mention either Fort Sill's or Fort Sam Houston's former status as World War 2 internment camps.