Donald Trump is an amazingly persistent man. On the campaign trail, he promised the American people repeatedly that he would build a “beautiful wall” on the border with Mexico, “to keep murderers and the rapists out.” Now, he’s demanding $18 billion to start the project.
There is a minor problem with this request. While announcing his candidacy in 2015, Trump — the self-styled great deal maker — declared “I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall.”
This promise was repeated countless times during the election campaign, to the delight of his audiences. He regularly asked his audiences who would pay for that wall. “Mexico,” they hooted and repeated after him.
Not a great dealmaker after all
However, the $18 billion request to fund Trump’s great beautiful wall has not been sent to the presidential palace in Mexico City, as one would have expected, but to the U.S. Congress in Washington.
In other words, Trump’s Great Wall will apparently be paid for by us, the American taxpayers.
But that can come as a surprise only at first glance. Trump was put into office by 60 million American voters who bought into his populism and anti-establishment rhetoric.
Who’s the deluded one?
We, the American people, tell ourselves that we inhabit the land of the free and the home of the brave. In fact, we are convinced we are the world’s chosen people.
Whatever we are as a people, we are obviously not the country of the intelligent. Truth be told, we are behaving like the population of some south-of-the-border banana republic in a Hollywood B-movie from the 1950s.
As the entire world gets to experience every single day first hand, Americans are firmly in the hands of a two-bit wannabe dictator. Between one-third and one-half of us are still enraptured by his antics.
Crass class politics
At this stage, one really can’t blame Trump any longer. He has amply shown his notorious disdain for everyone who is not a billionaire — or at least not filthy rich.
According to the just published book by Michael Wolff, "Fire and Fury," Trump’s real circle of advisors are a small group of very rich people. He talks with them on the phone every night while munching on a cheeseburger and watching the three television screens had had installed in his bedroom.
And he is mighty proud that he has made them a whole lot richer, as he confessed over the New Year’s festivities.
Trump’s tax “reform” bill he signed into law late last year has given those “best people” a huge amount of tax “relief” — including some special deals specifically written into the law that will benefit his fellow real estate developers.
Billionaires won’t pay for the wall with Mexico
So those $18 billion Trump wants for his wall won’t come out of the pockets of the 1%. It will be paid for by the rest of us.
As Trump is concerned, the broad masses of the American people, his official rhetoric notwithstanding, are no better than Mexicans or some other country’s masses of poor.
By some strange vagary of fate, we happen to be living on this side of his beautiful border wall. But for that privilege, he now has us pay for the wall.
Trump and the billionaires
Trump’s fellow-billionaires know full well that he’s a moron. And they, not he, are the real winners of the Trump presidency.
When it comes to them, Trump was born on the wrong side of the tracks. New York’s rich never accepted him as anything but a gaudy nouveau-rich. They never let him into their inner circles. That’s why Trump was so driven to build all those hotels and golf clubs.
Trump’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 is but the latest attempt to curry favor with the plutocrats whose approval he so desperately seeks.
Plundering the U.S. Treasury
To the plutocrats, Trump is more than they could have ever imagined. After all, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and campaign finance rules, the rich have already privatized American democracy, bought the U.S. Congress and own the Republican Party.
Now, the personal neediness of Donald Trump and his increasingly surreal elevation to the presidency of the United States has allowed them, in effect, to plunder the U.S. Treasury.
Since American workers are apparently enjoying Trump’s performance so much, it is only right that they end up pay for his beautiful wall. As they say, every nation has the government it deserves.
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