President Trump has given up any pretense of caring about his subjects. . . I mean, the American people, including much of his MAGA base. While millions of people are facing dramatically rising healthcare premiums and having to make do without their SNAP benefits, Trump has enjoyed a Great Gatsby themed party, added a $300m ballroom to the White House, and remodeled the Lincoln Bathroom with marble and gold. Above all, the president is devoting his energies to foreign affairs and cozying up to his fellow autocrats rather than trying to lower the cost of living, his number one campaign promise in 2024. Indeed, it’s the consensus that the Democratic sweep of last week’s elections can be attributed mainly to the insanely, high cost of living (or to use the latest buzzword, a lack of “affordability”).
While millions of average Americans go hungry and are forced to choose between their medicine and keeping the electricity on, Trump’s kleptocratic supporters blatantly gorge at the trough, rampantly pursuing greater wealth for themselves, whether it be through AI (a colossal bubble), crypto (a colossal Ponzi scheme), fossil fuels (a colossal campaign donation), or the healthcare industry (obscenely colossal profits). In particular, the president touts lower gasoline prices while the cost of electricity skyrockets based on the proliferation of enormous AI data centers combined with cutbacks in green energy production. (Trump says climate change is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” but we know that can’t be true because he and his administration already hold the title.)
One of the most indelible images of this administration was Elon Musk, the world’s richest person (provided you accept Tesla’s ridiculously inflated stock price) brandishing a chainsaw to celebrate DOGE eliminating 280,000 federal jobs and ending foreign aid to poor countries (the USAID program), the latter of which is forecast to cause the deaths of 4.5 million of the world’s poorest children in the next five years. As Bill Gates so aptly put it, “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.” Musk, meanwhile, is happily gloating over his one trillion dollar pay package (presuming he meets numerous unrealistic performance milestones), while his victims continue to suffer both at home and abroad. Musk’s rival when it comes to arrogance is Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director and a co-author of “Project 2025,” who said “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected… we want to put them in trauma.” Why are these dudes so filled with hate? What did a bunch of government workers and poor African children ever do to them?
For Trump, the Welfare of the American People is Just a Distraction from the Real Purpose of His Administration—Pilfering and Plundering.
In the meantime, Trump meets with dictators, makes “deals” (how that man loves his deals!), oversees sundry retributions, takes no responsibility for his failures, lies and lies and lies, and yells “fake news” when anybody calls him out on it. In particular, Trump claims his tariffs have brought “trillions of dollars” to the U.S. Treasury, when the reality is probably close to $100m. The tariffs, which even Chief Justice John Roberts called a “tax”, represent a huge tax on American consumers. Collecting this revenue is apparently how Trump intends to rein in an already enormous federal deficit (based on tax cuts for the rich contained in his “Big Beautiful Bill”). When Trump says the country needs tariffs for its “economic survival,” he’s talking about the proliferation of his shamelessly greedy kleptocracy at the expense of the working class.
When Trump and his cadre of arrogant billionaires say that America is “open for business” again, they’re referring to is their ability to plunder America like a dead animal carcass. This humble spirit fears that, at the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before there isn’t much left for the vultures to pick off—Trump being the biggest vulture.