What’s in It for You?
A Question for Trump Supporters
Yesterday, I read a comment on the internet, “What I love most about Trump is how he lives rent-free in your heads.”
I thought to myself, “That’s true.” He does drive people like me and my liberal friends nuts. But it also made me wonder if that was the only thing they were getting out of the deal – the ability to trigger, jab, and mock us.
After all, it’s not college-educated liberals like me who are getting a raw deal from Trump’s policies. It’s mainly the people who support him.
Trump’s policies have hurt the average working American more than anyone else, especially those who lack a college education—ironically, the slice of the population with the greatest percentage of Trump supporters. His tax cuts take money out of their pockets and give it to the ultra-rich and giant corporations. His government cuts reduce or eliminate services and benefits they rely on. His tariffs do little but raise the price of food and gas. His deportations will increase prices further and potentially collapse the whole agricultural industry, sending the economy into a tailspin.
Trump’s policies have not only done nothing for his supporters, but they have made their lives worse in nearly every way. Wages are stagnant and prices high—just what rich shareholders and giant corporations want to maximize their profits. Healthcare remains expensive and uncertain. Every year, it’s harder to pay the rent, buy groceries, or save for retirement. This is nothing new. It’s a 40-year trend, but Trump is making it worse.
Donald Trump is owning you. He’s picking your pocket while smiling in your face, pretending to fight your enemies when, in reality, he’s the worst possible enemy that you could have.
By enriching giant corporations and wealthy shareholders, he’s giving them power directly over his supporters—the power to artificially raise prices, hold wages down, cancel benefits, offshore jobs, or replace them with robots or AI.
It’s a classic bait-and-switch—tell people they’re getting screwed and claim that only you can fix it, and then once you’re elected, screw them worse than ever before.
Let’s be brutally honest. Although Trump drives college-educated liberals nuts, we are doing quite well economically. Most of us have good jobs with benefits and affordable health insurance. We are making lots of money in the stock market. We are buying cars, sending our kids to private schools, and taking vacations in Godless Europe. We don’t like what’s happening in our country politically, but from an economic standpoint, we are thriving.
On the contrary, what we have, Trump doesn’t want for you. He wants you to be angry, struggling, and misinformed. Why? Because angry, struggling, and misinformed people make the most zealous supporters. They look for simple solutions to complex problems, which Trump is happy to give them in the form of someone to blame—illegal immigrants, the deep state, trans people, the liberal elite, or the big, bad federal government. These people are making your life miserable instead of the people with all the money and power—big corporations and the wealthiest one percent.
And Trump 2.0 is only going to make them more rich and powerful. If you think that will somehow help you, then you really are a sucker. And that’s just what Trump wants, an army of worshipers to hang on his every word, believe his outrageous lies, embrace his self-serving policies, chant his name at rallies, and buy his NFTs and cheesy gold sneakers.
So if you think you’re “owning the libs,” you’re not. Donald Trump is owning you. He’s picking your pocket while smiling in your face, pretending to fight your enemies when, in reality, he’s the worst possible enemy that you could have.