Trump’s Big Fail: Making America the 1980s Again

President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office on Wednesday. Evan Vucci/AP

Gargantuan tax cuts for the well-heeled, draconian cuts in programs for low-income Americans, boondoggle spending for iffy missile defense, and siding with the whites of South Africa: Donald Trump is making America the 1980s again. This past week, he shoved the nation into a time machine and transported it to the Age of Reagan, embracing the worst excesses of the era. In several instances, he has surpassed the outrages and extreme measures of our first made-on-TV president. Trump is putting the failed policies of the past on steroids in his relentless crusade to derail and damage the nation.

This week, House Republicans passed a megabill covering taxes, government spending, and much else that Trump has called for. The tax cuts are obscene—the typical Republican fare, throwing piles of money at the upper crust and crumbs (at best) to the rest. According to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, the top one-tenth of a percent—people with incomes greater than $4.3 million—will receive on average a $389,000 annual boost from the tax provisions, if the GOP-controlled Senate accepts this plan. Many Americans who make less than $51,000 could lose about $700 a year in after-tax income. It’s truly a rob-the-poor-to-pay-the-rich scheme.

The true beneficiaries of the Trump-GOP measure ain’t a secret. Look at this chart from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:

One quarter of the entire tax cut ends up in the pockets of the 1 percent. It’s a good time to be an oligarch. The bill proves that the purported populism of Trump and MAGA is a big con.

It also illustrates that Republicans—surprise, surprise—are huge hypocrites when it comes to the deficit. They don’t give a damn about red ink, if the green flows to the wealthy. The conservative Manhattan Institute estimates this tax bill will cost more than Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the Covid stimulus act, Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill plan, and his Inflation Reduction Act combined, adding $6 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. (One GOP House member claimed it would add $20 trillion!) Still, party on, dude. (Okay, Wayne’s World was a 1990s film.)

And why only screw hard-pressed Americans on taxes, when you can screw them by ripping apart social programs they rely upon? To cover a slice of the costs of this tax-cut orgy for oligarchs, the House Republicans included historic slashes of the safety net. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the measure’s assorted reductions and changes in Medicaid and other programs would decrease federal spending on health care by more than $700 billion and leave 8.6 million Americans uninsured by 2030.

It would also shrink the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—a.k.a. food stamps. Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told CNBC this is the "biggest cut in the program's history.” It would be the first time since SNAP began that the federal government would not ensure children in every state have access to food benefits. 

This is so Reaganesque. Remember ketchup as a vegetable?

Trump and his minions on Capitol Hill are trying to revive trickle-down Reaganomics, claiming these tax cuts for plutocrats will juice the economy for all. But supply-side economics has long been discredited. Reagan’s embrace of it led to a recession and such large deficits in the early 1980s that even Republicans voted to raise taxes, and President George H.W. Bush, his successor, accepted the reality that taxes had to be hiked up for fiscal sanity, despite his “read my lips” campaign vow not to increase them.

In addition to bringing back the trickle-down catastrophe, Trump rebooted another old show: Star Wars. Reagan, enamored with the idea of preventing nuclear war, launched the Strategic Defense Initiative that was supposed to deliver a system for shooting down nuclear missiles lobbed at the United States. The military spent up to $100 billion and perhaps as much as $400 billion—no one seems to know for sure how much was wasted—and no such system was ever built. Top scientists at the time said the whole thing was not technically feasible, and many nuclear strategists feared it would destabilize the nuclear balance and incentivize a Russian first strike on the United States. Eventually—after much money went down the drain—SDI withered.

But it’s back. This week, Trump announced Golden Dome, a supposedly “next generation” missile defense shield that would go beyond the aspirations of SDI and protect the nation from not only ballistic missiles but cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, and drones. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the initial down payment would be $25 billion. Once again, scientific experts are calling this a pipe dream. In March, the American Physical Society released a report that concluded:

Creating a reliable and effective defense against the threat posed by even the small number of relatively unsophisticated nuclear-armed ICBMs...remains a daunting challenge. The difficulties are numerous, ranging from the unresolved countermeasures problem for midcourse-intercept to the severe reach-versus-time challenge of boost-phase intercept. Few of the main challenges have been solved, and many of the hard problems are likely to remain formidable over the 15-year time horizon the study considered.

Sound familiar? The report added, “The costs and benefits of such an effort therefore need to be weighed carefully.” It doesn’t seem like such a weighing is underway.

A Carnegie Endowment paper reached a similar conclusion, noting “the challenge of developing a space-based missile defense shield remains formidable.” It cited a National Research Council study from 2012 that estimated the total cost of a space-based missile defense system could be as much as $831 billion (in 2025 dollars).

It added that this program will likely prompt Russia to build more and better nukes: “Russia will...need to respond. That will entail accelerating existing efforts to modernize each leg of the nuclear triad by replacing Soviet-era delivery systems with newer Russian designs. We can also expect renewed emphasis on exotic weapons that promise to evade all conceivable missile defense systems.” The latter includes the Poseidon, a nuclear-powered torpedo that can hit coastal targets in the United States. Say, New York City. “Golden Dome,” this paper noted, “will therefore press Russia into a new arms race.”

Hundreds of billions of dollars, a system that might not work, more weapons, more global instability—what a deal.

As for South Africa, Trump hosted a visit from that nation’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, on Wednesday. In front of his guest in the Oval Office, Trump pushed the fraudulent notion that Afrikaner farmers have been the victims of a white genocide. That’s why he said he had to take in 59 of them recently as refugees—because they are victims of persecution. (Trump’s administration is not accepting persecuted refugees from other African nations for some reason.) With all this, Trump was promoting a phony narrative that has also been championed by Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, as well as by white nationalists.

A recent analysis by PolitiFact cast this story of white genocide as rubbish: “White farmers have been murdered in South Africa. But those murders account for less than 1% of more than 27,000 annual murders nationwide. Experts said the deaths do not amount to genocide, and Trump misleads about land confiscation.” It quotes Gareth Newham, who heads a justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, who said, “The idea of a ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa is completely false. As an independent institute tracking violence and violent crime in South Africa, if there was any evidence of either a genocide or targeted violence taking place against any group based on their ethnicity this, we would be amongst the first to raise (the) alarm and provide the evidence to the world."

In the White House, Trump was peddling a racist fairy tale promulgated by bigots—in what was yet another throwback to the decade of Reagan. Throughout his presidency, Reagan and the right fought the anti-apartheid movement, voicing support and sympathy for the racist regime of Pretoria. They opposed calls for divesting from South Africa. They denigrated Nelson Mandela and his freedom movement as commies. Some right-wingers went so far as to buy Krugerrands, gold coins minted in South Africa that were boycotted around the world, to express solidarity with the repressive white ruling class.

Decades later—after the liberation of South Africa—it might be tough for Trump to call for reinstating apartheid. (Make Apartheid Great Again?) But he has found another way to exploit that country for his racism-fueled politics. With this unfounded conspiracy theory, he depicts a Black-ruled nation as a place of savagery. Thus, he signals to white nationalists he’s on their side and characterizes Blacks as a threat to white people.

It’s back to the future. (That movie came out in 1985!) We’ve dumped big hair and tacky leg warmers, but Trump is emulating policy disasters of the past, and he’s poised to do far more damage than Reagan. The nation has not learned from the past. We are reliving it with another show-biz president—as both farce and tragedy.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

It’s been a busy stretch at Our Land World Headquarters. There’s too much news to cover and too many assaults on American democracy to track—as well as far too many dumbass comments to monitor. So we’ll be taking off Memorial Day and will see you later this coming week. Enjoy your cookouts, despite increasing your carbon footprint.

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This past week, as House Republicans were scurrying to pass their tax cuts for the rich, Moody’s, the financial services firm, for the first time in a century downgraded the United States’ triple-A credit rating. Asked about this move, House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “Moody's is not incorrect, but that emphasizes the very need for the legislation we're talking about—historic spending cuts."

This was record-setting disingenuousness. The massive bill he and his colleagues passed does indeed contain spending cuts (which would wreak havoc for millions of Americans), but the tax cuts will surpass any of these so-called savings and lead to trillions of dollars of more debt. That’s precisely why Moody’s lowered the rating. Johnson had it backward. The Trump-GOP bill is the problem, not the solution.

Trump offered one of his most brazen lies of late a few days ago. (I know—how can you even tell?) A reporter asked him, “You campaigned on lowering the price of groceries. How can you justify cutting food assistance in this bill? He replied, “The cut is gonna give everybody much more food because prices are coming way down...They’re now buying gasoline for 1.99 [a gallon].”

He just makes shit up. You cannot buy gasoline for $1.99 a gallon. NBC News’ Garrett Haake followed up:

If this contest were for the vilest comment of the week, Donald Trump Jr. would win easily.

Did he not know that Jill Biden has a Doctor of Education (Ed.D) in education leadership? It is not a medical degree.

The judges tend to look for entries that are not too obvious—though some weeks that is impossible. And this was one of those weeks. At a hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a simple question. Here’s the exchange:

Hassan: What is habeas corpus?

Noem: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.

Hassan replied, “That's incorrect.” She then schooled Noem:

Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.

Much scorn was directed at Noem for her display of ignorance. Her ridiculous response was enough to secure her first place. But the judges want to note that this award also covers her follow-up remark.

Hassan next asked, “Do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?” Noem answered, “I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.”

Nope. Another fail for Noem. The Constitution refers to the suspension of habeas corpus only in Article I, the portion of the document that outlines the powers of Congress, stating habeas corpus can only be placed on hold “in cases of Rebellion or Invasion.” It is not a presidential prerogative. Not only could Noem not define the principle of habeas corpus; she mistakenly described the president’s authority, assigning him a power that does not exist. Her performance was both dumb and dangerous.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a horrible decision: It would permit the sale and possession of devices that convert semiautomatic rifles into weapons capable of firing at rates comparable to machine guns. Even worse, these devices can now be purchased without background checks. This move overturned a previous ban on these “forced-reset triggers,” and it will likely increase the lethality of mass shootings, such as school shootings.

Mark Barden, the father of one of the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and co-CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, an advocacy group that promotes gun violence prevention programs and policies, issued this statement: “The decision to allow these dangerous modifications to firearms into our communities is taking us in a dangerous direction. This will not make us safer. It will put more people, including our children, at risk by making more tragedies like the one that took my little Daniel possible.”

A few nights ago, I happened to be at a benefit for Sandy Hook Promise, as a guest of a supporter of the group, and saw Barden, a Nashville-trained guitarist, share the stage with a fellow musician named Patti Smith. A supporter of this outfit, Smith did a four-song set, accompanied by keyboardist Tony Shanahan and Barden on guitar. At 78, the rock icon sounded beautiful, her voice smooth and strong. She spoke passionately about the issue and ended her set, not surprisingly, with her anthem “People Have the Power.”

Introducing that song, she recounted that in the 1980s, she and her husband, Fred Smith, a member of the MC5, a pre-punk rock band, decided to compose a song that could be sung at political protests. They kicked around ideas for some time but never hit on the right one. Then one day, while Smith was peeling potatoes in the kitchen, Fred came in and said, “Tricia, ‘People Have the Power.’ Now you write it.” And he walked out. She nearly threw the potato at him.

Patti and Fred ended up writing the song together, which was released in 1988. But years passed before it became a widely recognized tune regularly played and sung at rallies. By then, Fred was gone. He died of heart failure in 1994 at the age of 46. But his hope for this song was eventually realized. Patti told us that she has occasionally attended demonstrations as a participant where the song has been played, with no one realizing she was in the crowd. And she gets to share that moment with Fred.

Much of the media quickly moved past Trump’s unfounded claim that former FBI Director Jim Comey had called for his assassination. But in the last edition of this newsletter, I explained why this was an important matter, and several readers agreed.

Steven Kane emailed:

Thanks for the deep dive into this story. You're correct that the hysteria and hypocrisy of the right over this dumb statement is the sign of a much more disturbing situation. The MAGA cult is so inured to bloodlust statements that ever more hysteria over the trivial is required to maintain the spell. This has infected the body politic so much that the current administration, abetted by a prostrate GOP in Congress and an enabling Supreme Court can continue their cruelty and corruption while still retaining significant public support. Now they've arrested a congressional representative on bogus charges. The question is, can we break this spell before it does irreparable damage, if it hasn't already? Otherwise, have a nice day!

That’s an important question. For decades, the GOP kept throwing red meat to its base, pushing hate-generating conspiracy theories and demonizing its critics and rivals. Trump did not invent this; he merely upped the volume and intensity and built a cultish audience. It’s unclear to me whether over the long run the spell worsens or the fever burns out. But it’s certainly holding tight now, and the damage is piling up.

Nancy Strothmann wrote:

I remember reading that the French Revolution began to lose some of its bloodlust allure for the crowds at the guillotine only after one noble woman cried and screamed all way to the moment the blade fell. Until then, it was just entertainment. Now these were real people being done real harm. I don't know what the equivalent in our times might be. The enormous cost of defending yourself in court against these outrageous charges doesn't have any emotional high for the MAGA crowd. I hope we can avoid violence, but the incident against the mayor of Newark suggests we are on a slippery slope.

I don’t know if that story is true. But it’s worth pondering what can move popular sentiment. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a degree of revulsion to Trump’s cruel and often illegal deportation campaign. Maybe that's a start. 

DC O’Brien shared a complaint:

It bugs me when members of Congress or pundits say, "I'm not saying Abrego Garcia is good or bad, just that he deserves due process." The point of due process is that Garcia (or anyone) is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law (i.e., due process). So yes, Garcia is innocent and deserves to be released. If courts later find whatever they find, then we move forward. Please tell your friends to stop apologizing for the Constitution.

Responding to a recent issue on Trump’s too-many-to-count conflicts of interest, Cabot Thunem had a question:

I would assume there is a good website that lists all the corruption going on. I do understand no media outlet could possibly keep all this covered. I tried a Google search but could not find anything that looked both unbiased and comprehensive. The best one is from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, but I need to dig a little farther before I rely on it. Any suggestions?

Cabot, that link is for an old collection of Trump’s transgressions. CREW has a new list. And check out this piece from my colleagues Russ Choma, Dan Friedman, and Tim Murphy: “10 Ways to Enrich Trump and the MAGA Movement.”

On the same topic, Ashley Coates wrote,

OMG. I was blown away by this statement in your newsletter: "Unfortunately, no conflict-of-interest rules apply to the president. (They cover other government officials.)" Sure, we can try to regulate specific types of conflicts of interest (such as with Sen. Chris Murphy's legislation you mentioned), but we need an overarching No Conflicts of Interest rule. What can we do to rectify this fundamental problem?

That is a basic problem. The founders had a remedy for a corrupt president: impeachment. They didn’t foresee a political party becoming a cult that worships and protects a scoundrel in the White House. As Choma recently explained to me, conflict-of-interest rules don’t apply to the president because there is no one in the executive branch—which the president heads—to enforce such rules regarding the chief executive. He has no supervisor. The restraint on his power and actions lies with Congress, which brings us back to impeachment. And when Congress and others developed many of the anti-conflict rules after Watergate, the thinking was that transparency related to personal finances and campaign finances of presidents and presidential candidates—which would enable the public to see if they were up to no good—would be sufficient because shame and public outcry would provide a strong counterforce to a corrupt politician. Trump has taught us that was a misguided notion.

Jeff Glenisky sent this nice note:

You’ve been one of my favorite political writers for decades, and I always look forward to reading your Saturday analysis. Keep up the fine work; you’re one of the best out there. This will end, eventually.

Thanks, Jeff. But here’s a reminder: Our Land usually comes out twice a week, on Tuesday and Saturday. If you’re missing the Tuesday edition, check your spam.

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“Not everyone.”
“Well, everyone who bothers to pay attention to science.”