Trump’s style of engaging voters is direct: He tells them exactly what he promises to do. And it’s pretty convincing. What he tells them is exactly what they want to hear.
And then he does nothing. Or worse, he does things that have the opposite effect of what he promised. But it works, because his voters have the attention span of gnats. By the time he lets them down, they’ve forgotten what he promised them. Or maybe they look at the evidence and don’t understand what they’re looking at. Or maybe it’s identity protective disorder. Or maybe they’re just dumb.
The Economic Policy Institute recently published an article describing the ways in which Trump has harmed the people who voted for him (https://www.epi.org/publication/100-days-100-ways-trump-hurt-workers/). They listed 100, but I’ll try to summarize them below.
Trump has reduced the rights of unions to negotiate wages and working conditions for more than a million federal workers. He has terminated federal grants to investigate child labor law violations. He has reduced the wages of 390,000 federal contractors. And he has weakened laws governing worker safety.
He has withdrawn U.S. support for an international agreement to impose a worldwide minimum corporate tax. He has imposed huge tariffs (temporarily paused) on our major trading partners. He rescinded an executive order requiring that half of cars sold in the U.S. by 2030 be powered by electric batteries. He has begun the process of huge reductions in funding for Medicaid and for food stamps.
In case you wondered about his strange choice of words to refer to immigration from Latin America as an “invasion,” it was to use a 1798 law meant to defend against an anticipated military invasion by England as justification for his actions. He’s lying, as usual. He knows it’s not an invasion. But by using that word, he convinces the dumbest half of our population that what he’s doing is legal. Lying is his main political tool. But just to make sure, he halted all refugee admission applications, even getting rid of the CPB (online refugee application) phone app.
He revoked temporary protective status for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which gave immigrants from those countries automatic refugee status. He shortened the emergency cash and emergency medical assistance eligibility programs for refugees from 12 months to four months. He deputized some law enforcement workers, including IRS criminal investigators, to assist in immigration enforcement.
After once claiming that he knew nothing about Project 2025, he named Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025, as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Anyone who has studied the cruelty of Jim Crow laws in the American south after the Civil War understands that the damage done to Black citizens since then has produced severe impediments to equal opportunity. But people who either didn’t learn that history or didn’t understand its effect, government programs to achieve Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) sound like a socialist plot to help uppity Blacks, so they’re happy about Trump’s frontal assault on DEI programs. The rest of us call that garden variety racism, and want the playing field leveled. And Trump even rescinded Executive Order 11246, which enforced anti-discrimination and equal employment opportunity requirements in federal contracting.
Trump also instituted a hiring freeze for federal employees. He fired all probationary federal employees, those on the job less than two years. He offered deferred resignation to many federal employees. And he directed all federal agencies to terminate remote work agreements and require full-time in-person work, which adds an hour or two of commute time to many federal workers’ days.
And he has effectively shut down the Agency for International Development, the closest thing we have to a public relations department for America. Expect the opinions that foreigners have about our country to decline.
Trump’s proclivity for prevarication hasn't diminished. Trump’s recent speech to Congress was peppered with lies. Trump said, “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe.” This wasn’t true.
He said, “We’re going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody’s ever seen. Plants are opening up all over the place.” That wasn’t true. He said that towns like Aurora, Colo., and Springfield, Ohio, were “destroyed” by immigrants. They weren’t. He said, in reference to Europe and aid to Ukraine, “we’ve spent perhaps $350 billion, and they’ve spent $100 billion.” That’s not true either.
He said, “For the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction.” According to the latest Rasmussen poll, the opposite is true. He said the Biden administration imposed an “electric vehicle mandate.” That wasn’t true. A target for electric vehicles was proposed, but not mandated. And he said, “I’ve stopped all government censorship.” He hasn’t. In fact, if you’re a foreign graduate student, you can be deported for having an opinion different from Trump’s.
Trump speaks like a low-class 12-year-old. He ignores our Constitution. He panders to the most ignorant of our voters. He breaks the law on a daily basis. He’s found 100 ways in his first 100 days to embarrass us and humiliate our country.
Trump voters, aren’t you proud of how you voted?
Les Pinter lives in Springville.
