It’s both shameful and depressing how many billionaires, including much of the Silicon Valley crowd, have been “coming back” to Donald Trump in recent weeks, regardless of his 34 felony convictions in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial or fascist-like threats of “retribution.” With Nicki Haley having fallen by the wayside and Trump becoming the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, the fact is, the Republican “donor class” doesn’t have anywhere else to go. These people, along with many of the old “country club” Republicans who can still be counted on to vote against the “libs,” don’t care about their country; all they care about is their own greedy self-interest—lowering their taxes and gutting any regulations that might hurt their profits (or those of the companies in their investment portfolios). The greatest, all-encompassing problem facing our country is already inequality—our ever-growing, incredibly dysfunctional, economic inequality—and yet these people can’t seem to get a large enough share of the pie or control enough of the Monopoly board.
Too many Americans have given up on democracy because they think it’s failed them, but these Trump supporters still reflect the pre-Enlightenment notion that ordinary people—the “masses,” the “common man” (and woman)—are subject to being used and manipulated by communists and Marxists, influences Trump and his MAGAs have more recently taken to calling the “radical left” Democrats. To their way of thinking, anyone who wants a more equal and just society is their enemy. Ideally, American democracy always holds the potential for equality, but true equality inevitably threatens these people’s wealth and power. As Jamelle Bouie said in the New York Times back in the fall of 2022:
Trump is the chosen candidate of reactionary billionaires and fanatical opponents of racial and gender equality for a reason. Strip away the thin veneer of “populism,” and what you have in the Trumpified Republican Party is an old-fashioned movement to restrain democratic self-government for the sake of capital and hierarchy. . . It is not that Trump and the Republican Party are opposed to voting and elected office in and of themselves; it’s that they are opposed to a more equitable distribution of wealth and status, which a robust democracy — and only a robust democracy — makes possible. They are opposed to anything that might undermine the domination over others by people like themselves.
The Far-Right Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” is a Radical Plan to “Roll Back Nothing Less than 100 Years of Liberal Encroachment by the Administrative State.”
For the Republican donor class, “liberal encroachment” means anything that threatens the domination Mr. Bouie speaks of. I’ve addressed it before, and fortunately it’s already sparked a good deal of alarm, but if you want to know what a second Trump presidency will do to America, take a look at the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” including an 887-page plan called “Mandate for leadership” that outlines their goals for the next Republican administration. Under the guise of dismantling the mythical “deep state,” the plan calls for defunding or totally eliminating many executive branch agencies, including the departments of Education, Commerce, Justice, Labor, Transportation, and Energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. Among the casualties would be the public education system and many forms of business regulation, including worker safety and child labor laws.
Make no mistake, hiding among the plan’s 100+ right-wing idealogue authors are a wide range of private sector lobbyists and consultants whose goal is to push for unprecedented deregulation. These people are nothing but whores who could care less about the damage their actions do to the country or its citizens. Among their top priorities are rules gutting fuel economy standards, halting the EPA’s “economy-destroying agenda” and “extreme green policies” (say goodbye to any progress on climate change!). In simplest terms, why do you think Donald Trump solicited $1 billion from fossil fuel industry executives?
All the while, “common MAGA” voters root passionately for Donald Trump and against their own economic self-interests—and as a result America could be heading for even greater economic inequality.