Dear John,

I’m not a big believer in polls. A lot of them are junk, and even the most high-quality polls are at best a snapshot in time with a significant margin of error.

But a recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College caught my attention. It shows that nearly half of voters now say that the country was better off when Donald Trump left office than when he came in.

That’s a huge change since 2021, meaning a lot of Americans appear to have simply forgotten or blocked out just how bad the Trump years really were.

Hello? Did we forget double-digit unemployment? Or how the entire economy shut down while Trump told Americans to inject bleach? Or how he refused to leave office peacefully and incited a violent insurrection?

Americans are desperately in need of a refresher on how bad the Trump years really were, and Inequality Media Civic Action is launching a new video series using proven effective, data-driven messaging to remind people about the “10 things you might have forgotten about the Trump years.”

Will you donate $5 to Inequality Media Civic Action to help educate the public and remind voters how awful the Trump presidency really was?

Let’s review some basic facts:

• When Trump came into office, the unemployment rate was 4.7%. When he left office, it had risen to 6.4%. Today, after three years with President Biden in the White House, it’s come all the way down to 3.8%.
  
• Under Trump, the number of Americans without health insurance rose by 2.3 million, even before the pandemic. Under President Biden, the uninsured rate has hit an all-time low.
• Even before the pandemic, most middle-class American households saw their incomes go down under Trump.
• Trump loves to talk tough on crime, but during his administration, the murder rate jumped by almost 30% to the highest rate since 1991. President Biden oversaw one of the largest one-year declines in the murder rate ever recorded.
  

Now, I could throw out numbers like this all day, but numbers tend to just wash over people.

To really remind people what the economy was really like, we need punchy, evocative videos that hook people by telling a story that revives the feelings of chaos and insecurity that they felt with Trump in the White House.

That’s what these videos are designed to do, and thanks to the brilliant artists, strategists, and producers on this team, we’ve figured out the tricks of the trade to make videos that go viral and change minds.

But to reach the number of voters we need to contact between now and November, we’re counting on your help.

Will you donate $5 to help Inequality Media Civic Action educate the public and stop Donald Trump?

Thank you for joining with us in the fight for democracy,

Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action