They haven’t done a thing for us
Trump decides the way to make people stay home is to make their lives at home even worse.
US opposition politicians and aid agencies have questioned a decision by President Donald Trump to cut off aid to three Central American states.
Mr Trump ordered the suspension of aid payments to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to push their governments to stop migration into the US.
To stop it how? A Berlin Wall type of thing? Just tell them they can’t leave, end of story? We tend to see that as tyrannical and unjust, those of us in the “no you’re not supposed to bully and torment people” community.
In 2017, Guatemala received over $248m while Honduras received $175m and El Salvador $115m.
“I’ve ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras and El Salvador,” Mr Trump told reporters on Friday.
“No money goes there anymore… We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we’re not paying them any more because they haven’t done a thing for us.”
Those are actually not tremendous sums of money, and as for not doing a thing for us…why should they do a thing for us? We’ve done quite a few things to them in the past, not-good things, so I don’t really think they owe us a few million dollars’ worth of whatever it is he wants from them.
Yeah, Trump has that “you scratch my back before I do anything for you” mentality; it’s also common among his base. “Why should I pay taxes? The government doesn’t do anything for me.” (A totally untrue statement, but even so, why should that be the only impetus?) A friend of mine who voted against every school bond because he didn’t have any kids in school. I suspect he’s a Trump voter, but I haven’t seen him in several years, so don’t know that for sure.
It’s how most people I know interpret capitalism. You only get something if you give something. And it has to be something that I personally value before I give you anything. Compassion is not needed, and is a sign of weakness.
That sort of thinking is awful…and may not really even be justifiably called thinking so much as opining.
He’s probably sulking because the ungrateful bastards aren’t using the aid money properly, like buying lots of machine guns and bullets to mow down the people trying to leave. It’s a very effective method in stopping immigrants, you know, lots of countries do it.
https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-shooting-migrants-mexico-border-sean-hannity-fox-news-8843766
“We were paying them tremendous amounts of money and we’re not paying them any more because they haven’t done a thing for us.”
This quote makes me genuinely unsure if Trump even understands the concept of charity. Like, not that he’s against it because he’s callous or whatever, but that he doesn’t actually even know what it means.
Oh, I think we know with a pretty high level of certainty that the concept of charity doesn’t exist in Trumpbrain.
Not that the money the US spends in other countries is unmixed charity, as a rule. We spend it to mollify, to prevent activities we don’t like, to encourage desired outcomes, to undermine rivals, etc. But the concept does at least exist.
iknklast – “transactional” is the word for that. I regretted not using it after I posted. Trump’s presidency has caused a big uptick in the use of that word, I’m pretty sure…
I’ve read commentary suggesting that Trump wants to see another migrant caravan so he can whip up more Wall bullshit. It will also put pressure on Mexico, as refugees/immigrants come in from their southern border.
Makes it even more horrifying.
Yeah, you can’t try getting into the US if you’re dead.
Thanks, Ophelia. That word fell right out of my brain about three weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to get it back. Too much else on my mind, I guess.
Funny, I though foreign aid was for that nation to ‘do a thing’ for themselves.
More revelation of the authoritarian mindset. Trump has always spoken as if foreign countries are deciding which persons to send to the U.S., hence “Mexico isn’t sending us their best,” and stopping these payments unless the Honduran Bureau of Caravans agrees to delay the next shipment until after the election.
It’s how he views trade, too, but that’s another longer story.
That plus yet another example of his stunningly defective theory of mind. He can’t recognize other minds in people, yet he thinks Mexico itself has a mind and is using it to decide to “send us” its people.
And thinks that it should only send its ‘best’ people, leaving only the dregs to run the country to ruin.
AoS, why not? After all, he’s liable to drive the ‘best’ out of the US, giving us a brain drain the like of which the world has never seen (well, maybe in Communist Russia, but they actually didn’t allow a lot of them to leave, they just ‘purged’ them).
Once the best of those already here leave, it will take the ‘best’ Mexicans to pull this country out of the status of shithole country. Donald realizes how much Mexican help he needs and this is his way of asking for it…right?