The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield
Welcome to "The Greenfield Reportwith Henry R. Greenfield," where 50+ years of world travels across 10 countries shape insightful takes on current geopolitical events. Join Robert for eye-opening global reports with practical local solutions, and enjoy guest appearances offering fresh perspectives. Embark on a journey of understanding and lively discussion.
The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield
Episode 24- Red, White, and Who? The Hidden Truth Behind July 4th America
America exists in two realities – the chaotic nation portrayed in global headlines versus the functional everyday experience of its citizens. Henry R. Greenfield navigates this contradiction, revealing how travelers experience smooth, passport-free entry using facial recognition while online forums overflow with tales of harassment that rarely materialize.
Against the backdrop of July 4th celebrations, Greenfield shares a poignant examination of American patriotism through generations. He contrasts a humble WWII veteran who served from North African deserts through D-Day to concentration camp liberation – a man who returned home to build a modest life without fanfare – with today's leadership claiming "greatness" while implementing policies that redirect resources from vulnerable populations to the already wealthy. The "Big Beautiful Bill," celebrated with fireworks and pageantry, stands to remove millions from Medicaid while delivering substantial tax benefits to corporations and high-income earners.
The economic landscape reveals equally stark contradictions. The Biden-era economy, handed to Trump with 3% growth, has slipped to -0.5% while corporate America thrives on promises of further tax advantages. Perhaps most revealing is the political realignment where working-class Americans now side with corporate interests that previously outsourced their jobs and eliminated their pensions, while viewing historic advocates for worker protections as enemies. As Greenfield observes through a traditional Republican's perspective: the wealthy who once feared the working class now confidently share beers with them before retreating to exclusive cigar lounges, secure in the knowledge that attention has been successfully redirected.
What would the Greatest Generation think of the America they fought to preserve? As fireworks light July skies and flags wave, Greenfield challenges listeners to consider whether we're building a country worthy of those who sacrificed everything for its future. Join us for this unflinching examination of American society beneath the surface of political rhetoric and media narratives.
Welcome to the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield, your gateway to understanding today's geopolitical landscape. With 50 years of experience across 10 countries, henry shares expert insights on world affairs, offering practical solutions and engaging guest perspectives. Dive into the Greenfield Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter.
Speaker 2:Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter. This is Henry R Greenfield. In the United States of America for the Greenfield Report, there has been a dizzying level of events, ranging from the passage of the big, beautiful bill signed by President Trump on the 4th of July to the tragedy of the flash floods in Texas, killing at least 82, to the shooting and murdering of two highly respected firefighters called to a fake fire, lured there by a 20-year-old, self-proclaimed gun-obsessed Trump supporter, who then took his own life as he had been rejected not just by the military but also the very firefighting system that he chose to gun down. At the same time, when you strip away the tragedies or self-proclaimed greatest, this or greatest, that which Trump and his minions do every day, the everyday in America is not at all what you hear or read about outside of the United States. In media publication and online forums like Quora, there are millions of views and comments on how America is falling apart or how people were harassed at the border. That actually never happens or, if ever, very, very rarely.
Speaker 2:No one mentions that you don't even use your passport any longer to enter the United States and there are no more welcome home, mr Greenfield. You simply stand in front of a camera, no passport insert, nothing, and they facially recognize you and someone hands you a plastic green card. Then you pick up your luggage and hand the card back to the attendant on the way out and off you go. No checking of your phones, no political discussions, nothing. They are simply trying to get people through in an expeditious manner. But you'd never know that from all of the things that you hear around the world and all of these crazy stories that you read online. We saw none of it and we went through Chicago, which is one of the top five airports in the world in terms of handling volume of passengers, and it went incredibly smoothly. It was beyond smooth, other than the complete disbelief that we had that you never, even now or will in the future, have to show your passport to enter the United States. And before you ask, no, we were not part of the global program or anything else. We were just simply Americans returning home, contrast with all that hype and terrible stories of getting kicked out of the country. As for the Biden economy, for surely the Trump economy has been nothing but chaos, but the Biden economy just keeps rolling along, exactly as predicted, but going down and down, also as predicted with Trump's up and downs on tariffs and, of course, all of his other policies. Well, let's not call them crazy, but all of his other policies, which the rest of the world are still trying to figure out, as well as the Americans, as well as the importers, as well as all the logistics people, as well as all the retail people. That is the chaos of America that nobody ever talks about.
Speaker 2:But first I would like to begin with how I spent my 4th of July morning. We should all remember, underneath the hoopla and the incessant fireworks which, by the way, now are everywhere, they're no longer confined to a city and definitely they are personalized, as most stay at home and just sent up a few hundred dollars, perhaps thousands of dollars, in fireworks rivaling their neighbors in an odd display reminiscent of those over-the-top Christmas displays that movies have been made about in the past. Who knows, perhaps in the future we'll have something that says fireworks of Nebraska in the future, or fireworks of New York. Anyway, there's a lot of fireworks and they're all around you. And then there's typical Americana, along with rodeos and parades, and of all around you. And then, ah, there's typical Americana, along with rodeos and parades, and, of course, baseball, always baseball, or, as aficionados would call it, the show. Again, back to the show.
Speaker 2:As I sat with my flavored coffee hazelnut as Americans must have additives to everything, black espresso is weird for most my sister-in-law presented me with a book she had been telling me about for some time. Her cousin had created it. It began in the desert campaigns of 1942 and 1943 in North Africa and moved on to the preparation for a D-Day landing, then on to Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge, through shrapnel wounds in the head to amputated or almost amputated legs, back to the front and crossing the Rhine, finally ending up at a concentration camp freeing the emaciated few who had survived just as Hitler was taking his life in Berlin, survived just as Hitler was taking his life in Berlin. There were the medals seemingly tons of them made of bronze, mostly tarnished in their cases, a folded flag presented by the army to the cavalry riflemen who had earned all of this, and even the shell casings for the 12-gun salute at the graveyard where he was buried.
Speaker 2:This was the story of her father who, like most in that war, never spoke of it after they came home, except to her cousin who, after his death, retraced it all and put it together in book form, even including the erroneous telegram that was sent to her grandmother for his sweetheart. You see who he ended up marrying and eventually, when he returned home on a hospital ship in 1946, was not yet on the list of those to contact in case of well, in case of death. But he lived, he came home, he did what millions of others did he got a job, he learned to trade, he married and bought a house and lived in it with her and his children for 60 years until his death. And again, he never spoke of the war, he never spoke of himself, he never spoke of the people who died with him, except he did his duty. He felt, and only shared that with her cousin when he was in his 80s, as though it was his time to share before he was gone. It is now there, in sepia, black and white, yellowing telegrams and grim narratives of preparation, logistics, fighting and more and more fighting, of death all around him, of praying and having his prayers answered, escaping that death and coming home.
Speaker 2:Now let us fast forward to the show we saw this past weekend A president saying he is the self-proclaimed greatest in history, the big, beautiful bill taking up to 15 million or more people off of Medicaid was erroneously said by the president that it was also the most popular in history in history. The trillions given away to those who need nothing, as they have so much and cannot even spend it all, and taking it away from the very supporters of the president who elected him in the first place. The incessant blaring on TV of how great it is to take from the poor and to give to the bloated rich. The excess of Bezos, who refuses unionization, spending $45 million or more on a fake Venice wedding don't forget they wouldn't even allow him in Venice full of fake personalities like the Kardashians, while thousands of his employees are on Medicaid and will lose their benefits as now quote they make too much under the Trump plan. Nothing in the BBB is true other than, yes, there will be tax cuts.
Speaker 2:As one of the remaining vets at the 80th D-Day celebration said last year to then-President Biden, we didn't fight this hard and lose so many friends just to have it taken away by someone who refused to serve meaning, of course, donald Trump and his bone spears who is rich in taking it away from the poor. Well, old vet, if you are still with us, sorry, it's your bad, as Trump has triumphed in every way. You see, he is the populist president. We're now the rich hide behind him, getting ever more billions while you get your medicaid and food stamps taken away from you and also, I'm sorry to say, your veterans benefits.
Speaker 2:I am somehow sadly happy that almost all of these world war ii veterans, on all sides, are now gone. The post-war that was created out of their blood, sweat and tears is being torn up. Do you feel that they would want to be around right now and to see this happening and everything that they created all those years, all those decades they put in, that they thought that they were doing the right thing, that what true patriotism to them was to get up every morning, do your duty, come home and to be in a healthy situation with your family, as opposed to what is going on today? Today, of course, like it always is in America in one form or another, money, money and more money, and it's worse than even in the Gilded Age that Trump so lauds going to the rich. And then who can tell? Yes, they are your friends.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of a good friend, a rhino he's called these days, but a traditional republican in the past, who I've known for many decades. He told me that he marvels how the rich guys at his club here in detroit will go out and have a beer now with the working class, uaw members joining in, saying the Democrats and all of their bullshit benefits are bad, as they say. They're giving them to the illegal immigrants, to the criminals, while these poor guys are working hard. My friend noted these are the same people who outsourced all of these workers' jobs. They are the ones who took every last penny from them. And now they're children, if they have jobs, as they have few benefits and definitely no more pensions. He says they even come back afterwards and go to the cigar lounge. They sip on expensive whiskeys, just like they have done for the past 150 years, and now they no longer are afraid of those workers.
Speaker 2:For those workers believe the enemies are the ones that have been helping them for the past 150 years. The enemies are the ones who gave them social security, that gave them Medicaid that their kids are now losing and also those SNAP benefits that their children and also their daughters are losing, especially if they are single moms. They're also losing those unemployment and other benefits and definitely, looking at SSI, as Speaker Johnson keeps talking about. He's going to get those 29-year-old guys sitting somehow on a couch in the basement doing video games. Not sure where they are, I don't know any of them, but hey, they're going to find them and they will take them off of SF's side. Of course anybody else is disabled is also going to be hurting those tax and other credits for their children, especially for those single moms, those enemies some even call Biden a war criminal who invested in all those roads that are being torn up and being completely rebuilt all over America in the hundreds of billions for the first time since Eisenhower's program in the 1950s.
Speaker 2:Yes, biden was the worst, the worst guy who was handed an out-of-control pandemic with people dying at the rate of 3,500 per day, and he ended that within months. Remember that time when Trump got on the plane and Biden said sure, take it on home, donald. You can borrow that 7471 last time. And Trump did the. I did it my way, like every other drunk that you'd find at a karaoke lounge in hundreds of places around the world. Biden, by the way. He stayed and he cut child poverty by 50% in one year.
Speaker 2:Biden, of course he's the bad guy who not only invested in alternative energy and chips, but where 78% of that money went to red states, and they rewarded him and his protege, kamala Harris, by massively voting against him. Yes, it's that Biden, whose son definitely tried to profit off his father, a man who's publicly audited net worth, after 60 years of working for the American people, is around $10 million. I have a friend who actually has a place on the beach in Delaware, near to Biden's, which he says is modest, but hey, the value has gone up, he said several times, since Biden bought it decades ago, which comprises most of his minimal so-called wealth. Biden is the enemy, while Trump publicly sells every kind of junk, using his presidential seal for private personal gain, making billions, while his sons are out making currently 92 deals that's, by the way, self-reported on their part. Who knows what the real number is around the world? Again in billions, where Trump gladly accepts a personal gift of an aging $400 million, 747 from a country that is no real friend to the united states. But then again it is in the gulf, the renamed gulf, not the persian gulf, but the gulf of arabia. As we have reported on over and over, the goal is to make the gulf great again trump's words, not mines which means more and more billions for Trump, which he also openly says. So the state of America is actually good, very good, especially if you have money.
Speaker 2:Trump inherited once again not just a good economy that he had from Obama, but this time one that was humming along at a 3% growth rate per year. Now it is a minus 0.5% since Trump arrived, and he has shaken the us government to its core, which is where primarily the losses are, as the us corporates have continued to do well. Look at the stock market it was up under biden, it crashed under trump. Now it's back up because american corporates are actually well run and, of course, they also get all those wonderful benefits from Trump, and they're going to get more benefits from Trump by cutting corporate tax rate and cutting their personal tax rates. So corporations in America are happy indeed. And then, along the way, trump used and abused and threw out the richest man in the world, elon Musk, costing Elon, unfortunately, about $100 billion, who is now a shell of himself, saying he will start a political party which, unfortunately, I believe, will go nowhere, as Trump is already attacking him.
Speaker 2:As we have written in other posts, the numbers are in and they are not good for anyone that is poor in America. However, the poor, once again, are hidden. The haves are doing well and they will do even better. The deficit and the debt will be pushed down the road. We all know what the problem is in the trillions. We all know that US government treasuries are down because nobody trusts the US government anymore and we all know that that's going to cost future generations the US government anymore, and we all know that that's going to cost future generations.
Speaker 2:Well, some people have projected it at a collapse, but for Trump, he doesn't care. The US dollar is down and Trump doesn't care about that either. Exports are down 20 percent. Trump doesn't care, but his import tax on tariffs is working nicely and it's going to work even better. Tariffs is working nicely and is going to work even better. It doesn't matter to him if it is passed on or it is eaten, as he says, by the importers.
Speaker 2:Again, don't forget, he's giving him those tax breaks so that he's saying, hey, well, I'm giving you a tax break so you can afford to eat some of that. What matters is he is collecting revenues and he needs the money with all of his various tax cuts, including the fake no tax on tips, which of course, affects about one percent of those in that industry, or the no tax on overtime, which affects about one to two percent of americans. But hey, that sounds great. And how about that best one of all, which is the no tax Social Security, which almost no one can benefit from except what are so-called rich retirees, meaning people who make that three to four to five thousand dollars on Social Security per month, plus on top of that they have pensions. So, yeah, that's a very nice break for them. But what about the tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans who live on Social Security? They're not going to benefit at all because their personal deduction actually already covers that amount, and that means that their tax cut will have no benefit to them whatsoever. In the golden age of Trump, obviously he gets the gold, he gets the platinum, he then gets the crypto and everything in between those around him, down to the mere upper middle class, meaning $200,000 or more per year in income. They will do very well for now, the working class and poor will be crushed.
Speaker 2:Everyone is saying that, not just me, even if Trump delays some of the cuts until after the 2026 election. You see, trump and Project 2025 have thought it all through, and the Democrats, of course, have thought through nothing. Like always, the Democrats did nothing until it was too late. Even some wags said, after the eight-hour speech by Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader for the Democrats, where he was literally screaming at the end after droning on and on for hours in an erudite but totally unlistenable this is unfair speech that he should get angry more often. Anger is interesting.
Speaker 2:Policies, however, such as we have outlined again and again and we will be getting back to that in the future on the Greenfield Report in my view, are even better. Our view is if you want to win, be ahead of the curve, stay ahead of Trump. He is predictable. You can beat him and with it, you can save America. But fighting internally inside the Democratic Party, well, let's not even go there at this moment and make those now gone GIs and other millions around the world who gave their lives for freedom renewed meaning.
Speaker 2:For if you do not, if this generation which thinks Democratic, socialist Muslims with zero job experience are the answers and more and more giveaways from no charges for buses to rent control to more taxes on the rich and more and more giveaways they are going to lose. They may win in New York City, but they are going to be used as the poster child against the Democrats and, by and large, the American people. They work and they're not interested in giving away things to other people, and the Democrats just don't seem to get it. And I'd like to add something very important here. When you have no experience in running anything and this candidate for New York City mayor has no experience other than being an assemblyman up in Alb anything and this candidate for New York City mayor has no experience other than being an assemblyman up in Albany and is actually himself born in Uganda, I don't know how in the heck is he going to run the most complicated city in the world, the financial capital of the world? And if he ruins that, good luck to the Democrats in the future. They will continue to lose.
Speaker 2:However, my view, if they are not in touch, as, after all, nancy Pelosi's answer, when the progressives attacked her for being too beholding to corporations Now you might not like this, and of course, she was attacked by the other side as a communist, by Trump she said get over it. In the end you all have to understand we are capitalists. That's the truth in America. America is not going to change. The land of hope and dreams is still there, and they are still selling the dreams via any means possible, from gambling to the lotto to watching the lives of the rich and the famous, or, as I call it, the rich and the vacuous more and more and more reality TV. The reality is is, if you are upper middle class or with a couple of pensions and above, you are doing good to great.
Speaker 2:For up to 50 million people, however, or more, they are not, and it's going to get way worse. As Elon Musk once said, the problem with Western democracies is they have too much empathy. Well, trump will never be accused of having too much empathy, that's for sure. Never mind, the rich bros will come down and have a beer with you and remind you that all of what you have today, you only have it because they didn't take that last dime away from you. But no worries, they are working on it. This is Henry R Greenfield signing off from America on the 4th of July 2025, where the patriotism still runs high, the Biden economy is slowly tanking under Trump, but surprisingly still resilient, and where the current occupant of the White House says he is the greatest in the history of the world, as they say, only in America.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry R Greenfield. We hope today's insights into the ever-shifting geopolitical landscape have sparked your curiosity and broadened your perspective. Stay connected with us for more in-depth discussions and expert solutions. Until next time, keep exploring the world beyond the headlines.