Why did Trump’s Air Force try to scrub videos and records of the excellent and celebrated Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo Code Talkers in World War II? Many pilots, sailors and troops were happy to get their support. And why scrub the World War II Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs? My mother-in-law served in the Women’s Army Corps as a nurse. Lot of soldiers were happy to see her. Trump wasn’t a hero and doesn’t understand patriotism.
Why’d Trump try to erase Black athletes from military websites? Maybe because Jackie Robinson was handsome, smart, athletic and patriotic, a comparison not flattering to Trump.
Trump brags about what his several bankruptcies did for him. But while he took a lot of the assets for himself, Trump put “a number of local contractors and suppliers out of business when he didn’t pay them.” For Atlantic City, it was good riddance.
Language like “contractors and suppliers” suggests businesses. But he [quotes] “bankrupt[ed] untold numbers of hourly workers and small businesses,” “the father of five who lost his business,” “the minimum wage workers a Trump resort cheated out of overtime.” “Somebody loses. But it’s never billionaire Trump.” Instead it’s “the little guy” [close quotes] who loses his wages, overtime, retirement savings or small business. The only thing Trump understands is how to hire lawyers who will help him bankrupt everybody else.
In one department after another he and his musky crony has fired everyone who knows what’s going on. They don’t know whom they’ve fired or why, just so there’s no one left who could put things back together.
He doesn’t understand the economy. Nearly everyone, conservative and liberal, Republican and Democratic, tries to tell him his tariffs will hurt the people he claims to be trying to help, the uneducated, the working man – I referred to gender because that’s his stereotype – the farmer, the factory worker – the very people who’ll get hurt by inflation.
He says he’ll bring jobs back to the US. But the jobs he says he’ll bring back went to China because people there were willing to work for a pittance. Trump is trying to turn American workers into beggars who’ll do anything for a pittance. Long ago people handed out $5 bills for votes but that’s a swindle – this Administration is trying to take back thousands of dollars every year for your Social Security, your health care, your overtime, your minimum wage, the good jobs that Biden, yes Biden, had put in the pipeline – but people listened to Trump instead of following the money.
Trump is dangerous to us all. He’s dangerous to our ability to live and work together peacefully. He’s dangerous to our incomes. He’s dangerous to our way of life, our ability to live happy and productive lives. He’s dangerous to our health.
There are two reasons why Trump has been firing and deporting experts? First, by robbing the poor, Trump, as Dictator, will have lots for his rich friends – it takes a lot of money to impress and get the loyalty of rich friends so they’ll throw valuables back at him.
The other is purely psychological – he’s determined to be top dog no matter who it is and isn’t good for. So he’s striking out against everyone who knows what would really help – especially the much-abused experts who have spent their lives trying to figure out how to make life better for those of us with ordinary incomes.
I dated a girl like that once. I just figured she was insecure and mostly pitied her. But Trump is too dangerous to be pitied.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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