By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
Fantasy: If every voter knew and understood everything that was in Trump’s Big Bad Bogus Belligerent Belied Bereft Baleful Budget Bill, 70 percent of them would vote out of office every Republican who voted for it.
It’s safe to assume, though, that those who get their “news” from the White House official media outlets, Fox, Newsmax, OAN, or their talk radio equivalents will never know. Add together Democrats’ signature inability to produce a coherent and clear message and Republicans’ Machiavellian methods of voter suppression, it’s a bad bet.
What did it take for the performatively recalcitrant but predictably foldable “holdout” Republican congresspeople to fall in line? A trip to the Oval Office featuring Trump-signed tchotchkes and presidential puffery. To paraphrase the old saw, they know what they are; they were just arguing about the price (Esquire: tinyurl.com/junk4u).
Those legislators are so sure their constituents care more about punishing immigrants than they do about their own health care or food security that they’ll overlook what’s being done to them. If not to them, to millions of others about whom they don’t care. They’ll have been convinced that the billions dedicated to Homeland Security for incarceration and deportation are worth it, even though, of the people now being rounded up, fewer than 10 percent have committed violent crimes (Cato Institute: tinyurl.com/2link4u).
Now, most of the incarcerated are people who’ve obeyed the law since they arrived illegally, who’ve been here for years, contributing to society and our economy. People whose absence will put businesses out of business. But to MAGAs, it seems, the more immigrants are rounded up, the worse the conditions in which they’re imprisoned, the more gratified they feel.
In addition to the disinformation from rightwing media, Trump’s voters will have seen video of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the El Salvador-mimicking concentration camp in Florida’s Everglades swamp. Cages, admired by jocular, visiting Trump (CNN: tinyurl.com/gulag4u). They’ll have seen the tasteless, unbecoming gloat from Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (X: tinyurl.com/gloat4u). They’ll have loved it, taking selfies by the tasteless, unbecoming signs outside the gulag (Instgram: tinyurl.com/self4u). They’ll buy RNC-approved merch (tinyurl.com/shirt4u), while chuckling over Trump’s favorite adviser Laura Loomer’s sadistic commentary (Independent: tinyurl.com/laural4u). Approval of the inexcusable: Team Trump counts on it.
As one who once considered this country fundamentally good, this is stomach-turning. Few, if any, disapprove of deporting murderers and rapists, the committers of violent crimes that constituted Trump’s least inconsistent campaign promise. But what’s happening now is cruelty for its own sake, spearheaded by Stephen Miller and his racist desire for an all-white America. In the future, will we be remembered not for building great things, but for stalags and gulags?
The BBBBBBBBB contains more intentional cruelty. There are, no doubt, people receiving health care and food benefits who take advantage of the system, but they are relatively few. Most people on Medicaid are working or can’t (KFF: tinyurl.com/theywork4u). Now, they’ll all have to fill out paperwork at least twice a year; some as often as monthly. Why? Because today’s Republican Party has long since internalized Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” vision of people in need.
According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “There are no change (sic) in benefits. There’s a change in requirements to get the benefits.” Translation: “It’s there. We’ve just made it hard to get, which we hope you don’t.” The same applies to food stamps, the cost of which is less than that now allotted to incarcerating or deporting migrants, and of which more white people partake than black or brown (Pew: tinyurl.com/SNAP42u).
Because of the same upside-down, Robbing-Hoodwink priorities, funds for school lunch programs will be eliminated. Climate change is a hoax, as we know, so tax credits for alternative energy will phase out. Because oil. Adapt or die.
Tariffs? Who knows? Trump has flipped, flopped and flipped again. The bizarre letters he wrote to leaders of Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, and Tunisia thud somewhere between Mafia threat and freshman writing assignment (Korea Times: tinyurl.com/2korea4u).
Between now and the election of 2026, it’ll be a battle of words. Truth vs. lies. Straight talk vs. deflection. What characterization applies to which side will be retinized by the beholder. As usual, burdened with a predilection for factuality, Democrats will fight with their hands behind their backs, against a virtual state media conglomerate within which lies and deflection are what bring and keep their viewers and listeners.
We can’t depart before changing the subject to the — what to call it? — strangeness of the Department of Justice, whose words are its Bondis, announcing there’s no Epstein client list after all, having previously said it was on Gen. Pam’s desk being reviewed. And that Epstein definitely, absolutely, no question killed himself. Nope, not at all suspicious. The DOJ is independent and liars don’t lie.
Another: Now that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in U.S. custody, why haven’t we seen pictures of the MS13 knuckle tattoos that Trump assured us (YouTube: tinyurl.com/4tats4u) were absolutely, definitely, pinky-swear not fake?
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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