The Great American Betrayal: Trump’s War on Ordinary People

He promised to drain the swamp — instead he filled it with billionaires, crooks, and fascists…

Donald Trump represents the most recent — and destructive — iteration of the American right.

The old Confederacy was built on rightwing oligarchy and racism; since the Democratic Party abandoned the Klan and the Lost Cause in the 1960s, the Republicans picked up that mantle. And Trump, a lifelong racist, was ideally suited to lead the new GOP movement.

Trump exclusively serves whoever pays the biggest bribes, either in cash, 747s, or votes, who today are mostly big, monopolistic businesses, the morbidly rich, foreign dictators, so-called “Christian” hustlers, and the Republican base of male white supremacist racists.

Lyndon Johnson famously said of Nixon’s “Law and Order” racism campaign:

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

This has been the GOP’s mantra for over 50 years and Trump has turned it into an art form. While the Party’s tax and anti-union policies have transferred at least $50 trillion from the middle class into the money bins of the morbidly rich just since Reagan’s inauguration, Trump has a extracted several billion dollars for himself and his family by exploiting the presidency.

Trump-loving white racists continue to vote for the Party because he’s working so hard to disempower women and Black people while pushing brown people out of the country or throwing them into concentration camps.

In the meantime, in the service of their rich donors, Trump and his Republican toadies have:

— Fired over 8000 Social Security workers, throwing the agency into chaos so people’s experience working with them will be frustrating (so they’ll accept privatization).
— Forced people, starting two months after the 2026 midterm elections, to re-qualify for Medicaid every six months; most people wouldn’t even maintain a driver’s license if every six months they had to go back to the DMV to requalify.
— Destroyed unions across America (most recently, Trump stripped union representation from hundreds of thousands of federal workers) leading to a collapse in wages and benefits.
— Stripped our public schools of funding, reallocating resources to whites-only and religious academies.
— Left America so awash in guns that we’re the only country in the world (other than Gaza) where the leading cause of the death of children is bullets.
— Killed off research into mRNA vaccines that were showing great promise to prevent and even cure cancer, among other diseases.
— Ended free and inexpensive college education, making America the only country in the world with over $1.5 trillion in student debt crushing an entire generation.
— Ruined America’s “soft power” around the world by shutting down USAID, leading to the deaths of millions, mostly in Africa, while China and Russia pick up our former allies.
— Betrayed our democratic ally Ukraine by withholding new weapons for eight months now while sucking up to Putin and now openly taking the dictator’s side.
— Embraced autocratic and dictatorial regimes around the world while dissing our democratic allies in Europe, India, Australia, Asia, and South and Central America.
— Politicized our military, something George Washington warned loudly against and every president since Jefferson has done his best to avoid.
— Corrupted our courts and prosecutors by appointing unqualified Fox “News” stars and others, including people credibly accused of sexual assault, taking bribes, and engaging in a coup attempt.
— Established new standards for criminality and self-dealing in office.
— Ignored due process requirements in US law and the Constitution when it comes to brown-skinned immigrants.
— Corrupted America’s reputation as a beacon of democracy for the rest of the world.
— Intimidated media, law firms, and corporate leaders into going along with creeping fascism while demanding from them bribes and tribute to the Trump Crime Family.
— Frozen money appropriated by Congress for green energy projects that would ameliorate climate change and cancer-causing pollution.
— Pitted Americans against each other while whipping up hysteria around race and religion.
— Betrayed Jesus and the founders of the rest of the world’s major religions by embracing corrupt preachers and politicizing churches.
— Put masked, armed thugs on the streets of America to terrorize people and turn our country into a police state.

All in the service of the richest among us and to the detriment of working class Americans who keep “emptying their pockets” for Trump, the GOP, and the billionaire social media moguls.

What’s it going to take for average people to wake up to how badly they’ve been screwed by Trump and his bizarre crew of lickspittles?

History suggests the major turning points are economic; every 80 or so years America experiences a massive crash, followed by a severe war and a progressive renewal. The Crash of 1771 followed by the American Revolution; the Panic of 1856 followed by the Civil War; the Republican Great Depression followed by World War II. And this year it’s been exactly 80 years since the end of that war.

Trump’s incoherent — and clearly unconstitutional — proclamation of a phony “economic emergency” to commandeer from Congress the power to impose tariffs is already slowing our economy, increasing unemployment, and jacking up inflation. And his ICE raids have led to produce rotting in the fields, giving us a 38% increase in wholesale vegetable costs over the past month, compared to last year.

Combine this very real probability that he’s driving us into a recession or even a depression with his dangerous, anti-democratic foreign policy — that seems to be entirely rooted in embracing whatever country gives him the largest bribes via jet planes and real estate projects, or doing whatever Vladimir Putin demands of him — and we may well be on the verge of a 1930s/1940s style crash and world war scenario.

The world order shakes, markets and banks collapse, Putin takes the rest of Ukraine, China takes Taiwan, India goes to war with Pakistan, Israel attacks Iran, Trump dithers and impotently threatens, and the world could well be in a major crisis far quicker than most Americans think possible.

Will that be enough to wake up the average voter the way the Republican Great Depression did in the 1930s, stripping the GOP of political power for the next 40 years? Will it bring about a new progressive renewal, like the ones that followed the crash/war cycles of the 1780s, 1860s, and 1940s?

Or will Trump, Putin, and Orbán finally succeed in taking America down the Russia/Hungary road from oligarchy to outright authoritarian fascism before the 2028 presidential election?

To the extent we still can speak out, participate in our political system, and are willing to fight for a return to the egalitarian democracy of the New Deal and Great Society, our future is still largely in our own hands.

Tag, we’re it!

Louise’s Daily Song: “The Great American Betrayal”

The song that was inspired by this article is here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is here.
My newest book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink comes out soon and is now available for pre-order.
You can follow me on Blue Sky here: https://bsky.app/profile/thomhartmann.bsky.social