Disappointment Scorecard for Donald J. Trump Voters

Disappointment No. 1:

If you are younger than 65, I hope you weren't counting on Medicare or Medicaid to cover your medical expenses during retirement, because Paul Ryan is going to try to take them away from you. Don’t take my word for it. It’s on his web site. This is what happens when people vote against their own self-interest.

Disappointment No. 2:

Now that you've voted him into office, rest assured that Donald Trump will:

(1) Build a huge beautiful wall along the southern border and get Mexico to pay for it, or...

(2) Build the wall and pay for it himself, then try to get Mexico to reimburse us, or....

(3) Build a metaphorical wall by strengthening border security, or...

(4) Build more of a "virtual" wall, or....

(5) Do nothing and keep changing his mind, or...

(6) Throw up some fencing here and there.

It's so hard to tell since he has proposed all of these plans, but hey, you'll be happy either way, right?

Disappointment No. 3:

After Paul Ryan and Congress take away your Medicare and Medicaid and Congress says "no" to the Mexico wall and mass deportations, we know now that your coal jobs aren't coming back, either. While it’s easy to blame President Obama’s supposed “war on coal” for causing a steep decline in the industry’s fortunes, coal’s struggles to compete are caused by cheap natural gas, cheap renewables, air-quality regulations that got their start in the George W. Bush administration and weaker-than-expected demand for coal in Asia.

Nationwide, coal employment peaked in the 1920s. The more recent decline started in the 1980s during the administration of Ronald Reagan because of the role that automation and mechanization played in replacing miners with machines, especially in mountaintop removal mining. These and other market forces recently drove six publicly traded coal producers into bankruptcy in the span of one year.

Mr. Trump cannot reverse these trends.

Disappointment No. 4:

Millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump are expected to lose overtime pay rights soon after he is sworn in as president. Tom Bonier, CEO of the polling firm Targetsmart, pointed out on Nov. 21 that “almost 20 million Trump voters would lose time and a half overtime” under a Republican plan to reverse regulations put in place by President Barack Obama.

According to Politico, House Republicans are already plotting the most efficient way to dismantle Obama-era regulations. An overtime rule requiring companies to pay time-and-a-half to workers who make less than $47,000 a year is expected to be one of the first reversals.

Exit polls taken during the Nov. 8 election showed that 41 percent of Trump’s 61 million votes were cast by people who make less than $50,000 a year.

Aren't you glad you voted for Trump?

Stay tuned. You've got more bad news coming in the near future.

Disappointment No. 5

After campaigning as a champion of coal miners and steelworkers, Donald Trump is reportedly close to choosing for Commerce Secretary a New York billionaire who owned a West Virginia mine where a dozen miners were killed in 2006.

Trump’s favored candidate, Wilbur Ross, also engineered buyouts of coal, steel and textile companies that cost workers their benefits and their jobs. It’s a striking choice, considering Trump’s promises to improve the lives of coal miners and other working-class Americans.

Ross allegedly was aware of, but ignored, safety violations prior to the deadly accident at the Sago mine.

Some other examples:

In 2004, Ross bought Cone Mills, a struggling textile producer in North Carolina, and merged it with another firm to create International Text Group. The company, later renamed Cone Denim, laid off hundreds of workers and outsourced jobs to emerging markets where labor is cheaper.

In 2002, after spending decades as an investment banker, Ross earned the nickname “bottom feeder” when he started buying up decaying steel mills and coal mines. In 2004, he began the process of purchasing some mines owned by the bankrupt coal giant Horizon Natural Resources ― but only after a bankruptcy judge stripped thousands of miners, some with black lung disease, of their medical coverage and union status.

Aren't you glad you voted for Trump?

Stay tuned. You've got more bad news coming in the near future.

Disappointment No. 6

This one is for veterans.

First off, thank you for your service. I’d thank Trump, too, but he didn’t serve. Must have been an oversight on his part.

Second, when you are in uniform, one of the things you are fighting for is the preservation of our Constitution and the freedoms it provides. You may not have ever thought about it – and you may not always agree – but two of those freedoms are contained in our First Amendment. It states that I can be a Muslim and worship Mohammed while burning an American flag if I so desire.

It’s those freedoms that form the cornerstone of our democracy and Trump wants to take them away. He wants to lock Muslims away at Guantanamo Bay and make it a crime to burn a flag, punishable by loss of citizenship or jail.

I’m not a Muslim and I don’t want to burn a flag, but I will speak out for anyone’s right to do that as long as I’m alive. You don’t deserve the freedoms that come easily if you’re not willing to accept the ones that come hard.

 

Aren't you glad you voted for Trump?

Stay tuned. You've got more bad news coming in the near future.

Disappointment No. 7

After campaigning as a populist who was going to rescue the middle class and champion the common man, Donald Trump is now becoming the exact opposite – the anti-populist president. Wake up, Trump voters, the celebrity con man has conned you once again...bigly.

In a campaign commercial that ran just before the election, Trump railed against a “global power structure…that has robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations.” The ad featured images of The New York Stock Exchange, the hedge fund billionaire George Soros and the chief executive of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Now, Trump has named Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and co-investor with Soros, to spearhead his economic policy. Instead of draining the swamp, he has dived into its deepest depths to find a collection of billionaires, Wall Street insiders and powerful corporate-board members for key positions in his administration.

That stands in stark contrast to the populist campaign that Trump ran and the support he received from working-class voters across the country, the New York Times pointed out.

Trump told his voters that the elites have trampled over their interests for too long, and claimed that the system was corrupt, while at the same time advocating massive tax breaks for the very wealthy, deregulation of Wall Street, gutting the federal health care law without regard for the consequences for working-class families and even partial privatization of public schools through a new national voucher scheme.

The problem is, Trumpeteers enraptured under the spell of the reality TV star were either too lazy, two disinterested or just plain too stupid to understand what was really going on…and now it’s too late. 

Disappointment No. 8

Attention Walmart shoppers…it appears that your boy Trump is a lot closer to those dirty commie Russians we all detest than he is to you...his voters. You’ve been conned again.

First:

It has just been reported that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia acted covertly to boost Trump in the election race because they wanted him to win. Russia sees Trump as much easier to manipulate than Hillary Clinton would have been.

A report in the New York Times says the agencies had "high confidence" about Russian involvement in hacking, and a CIA assessment reported by the Washington Post made similar findings.

On December 9, President Barack Obama ordered an investigation into a series of cyber-attacks, blamed on Russia, during the election season. The hacks targeted emails at the Democratic Party and a key aide to presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Intelligence agencies say the Russians passed on the Democrats' documents to WikiLeaks, the Times reported.

Second:

Texas oilman Rex Tillerson – now believed to be the leading candidate for Secretary of State – is known to have close ties to Russia which are raising eyebrows in Congress and elsewhere.

As head of Exxon Mobil, the world's 8th largest company, Tillerson is under pressure for his ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, especially given questions about the president-elect's outspoken admiration for the Russian strongman.

This one is just getting started.

And third:

The FBI has been investigating potential ties Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort may have had with Russia. The New York Times reported in August that a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine advised by Manafort designated $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments for him between 2007-12. It is unclear what exactly the series of 22 payments designated for Manafort were for.

Russia, Russia, Russia…if it walks like a Russian and it talks like a Russian…

Aren't you glad you voted for Trump?  Будьте осторожны, чего Вы желаете.

Stay tuned. You've got more bad news coming in the near future.