It continues to blow my mind that Donald Trump — the ultimate nepo baby — is embraced as a “populist” by tens of millions of Americans.
“By age 3, [Trump] was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire,” the New York Times wrote in 2018. “He was a millionaire by age 8.”
Not exactly a hardscrabble upbringing! Yet so many blue-collar and lower-income Americans delude themselves into thinking that Trump identifies with them, despite all gold-plated and gold-braided evidence to the contrary. The MAGA faithful remain besotted by — and devoted to — Sleepy Donald Trump, vain Lord of Mar-a-Lago and faux populist champion.
Scranton Joe Biden isn’t having it. During a campaign stop in his Pennsylvania hometown in which he unveiled a new tax plan that would boost taxes on wealthy Americans, Biden exposed the phony populism of the Republican oligarch.
On Trump’s wealth:
“He learned the best way to get rich is to inherit it. He learned that paying taxes is something people who work for a living did, and not him. He learned that telling people you’re fired is something to laugh about.
“I guess that’s how you look at the world when you’re at Park Avenue or Mar-a-Lago. But if you grew up in a place like Scranton, nobody handed you anything.
“When I look at the economy, I don’t look at it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago. I look at it through the eyes of Scranton. Scranton values or Mar-a-Lago values. These are the competing visions for our economy that raise questions of fundamental fairness at the heart of this campaign.”
And then, referencing the steep recent plunge in market value of Sleepy Don’s Truth Social ranting platform sucker stock, Biden joked:
“If Trump’s stock in Truth Social, his company, drops any lower, he might do better under my tax plan than his.”
That one left a mark!
Here’s a video of Biden’s entire speech:
Overall, I think this is a great strategic direction for the Biden campaign: Just keep reminding the public that Donald Trump is not one of them. He doesn’t know the price of anything, except for that one gas station in California that’s selling diesel fuel for a billion dollars a gallon or some bullshit. No one’s going to see Trump ordering garlic bread at Cracker Barrel. And he has nothing but contempt for the gullible marks swooning in his presence (yet soon checking their watches) at his lugubrious victimhood whine-a-thons.
And here’s a new Biden campaign video ad reinforcing the point that Trump is an out-of-touch elitist with no empathy for the average, hard-working American:
Pointing out the obvious about Trump won’t matter to hardcore MAGA cultists, who will continue to believe whatever the first former president to stand trial on criminal charges tells them about himself and the state of our failing country. But there still are voters out there who can be persuaded by facts and reality.
And I think that’s how Biden wins: Nibble away at the MAGA margins and shrink the political tumor, so to speak. And mock Mar-a-Lago Don relentlessly. This may cause Trump’s aura and influence to slowly diminish, as is happening in the Manhattan courtroom where criminal defendant Trump must return Thursday for his trial on charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election.
Finally, here’s a video of “Gangsta Joe” that inspired my headline and still makes me laugh a month after it showed up in my YouTube stream. Like gangsta!
(From Project Orange: Saving Democracy From the Trump-MAGA Cult)