Least surprising news ever
Eugene Robinson at the Post underlines what we’ve always known: Trump was always lying to his “base.” Of course he was. Trump is a corrupt real estate marketer who defrauds his contractors; what does he care about the working class?
Voters who thought President Trump would at least try to fulfill his populist, America-first campaign promises were cynically and cruelly deceived. Trump placates these supporters with rhetoric, distracts them with cultural warfare and encourages them to seek refuge in cultural chauvinism. What he doesn’t do for them is deliver.
Well he does deliver on the racist rhetoric and policies. Maybe watching people being deported is compensation enough?
So is there more money for everybody? No, not for programs that provide important support to Trump’s base. The president pledged to maintain or strengthen the social safety net, but — sit down, you won’t believe this — he lied.
His budget cuts $554 billion in Medicare spending over 10 years, which is of concern to anyone over 65. It cuts up to $250 billion in Medicaid spending, which has implications for anybody who has a loved one in a nursing home. Trump wants to cut $214 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, a vital source of help for the working poor.
The idea of Donald Trump as some sort of Man of the People was laughable from the start — a boastful plutocrat who lives in a gold-plated aerie above Fifth Avenue, claiming lunch-bucket solidarity with factory workers and coal miners. He sold it, though, largely by cementing a racial and cultural kinship and shamelessly misrepresenting his intentions.
Was there ever any reason to think otherwise? Nope.
I expect for some people it is, sadly.
They took him seriously, but not literally. Seriously about the bigotry anyways…
Did anyone really believe he was going to make their lives better? I doubt it… but they did believe he’d make things shittier for Those People.
I suspect they just thought he’d burn down the house – which he’s doing – and make the liberals heads explode – which he’s also doing.
Most of the people I know who voted for Trump seem quite content. They got a tax cut, they get to see all their liberal friends as angry and unhappy as they were during the Obama years, and they showed all those damned feminists a thing or two.
Just saw a fantastic Julius Caesar in London last night. This version played up a bit that maybe doesn’t typically get as much attention (I didn’t remember it at all)–Mark Antony reading Caesar’s will which left money to every Roman and use of his properties as public parks. Later, though, when Antony is hanging out with Lepidus and Octavius, he says,
But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar’s house;
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.