Donald Trump has gone silent on working class cost of living issues | Opinion

For the past two years, Donald Trump has spread fear about the state of the United States and championed himself as the only man capable of saving the country from itself. Only he could bring down the price of groceries and gas. Only he could fix the broken health care system. Only he could fix the broken immigration system. Only he could end the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

Now that the voters have drunk the Kool-Aid, the jig is up. The grift is over and the prize of the presidency is won. But will the buyers of the golden sneakers have buyer’s remorse? I suspect that for all but the most cult-following MAGA lemmings, the answer to that question is yes.

Despite two years of constant finger-pointing at the Biden administration for rising grocery prices that were actually decreasing during that time, since the election, Trump has gone dead silent on the issue of working class cost of living issues. His only comment on grocery prices was during his interview with Time magazine for his man of the year article in which he admitted that there isn’t much he can do to bring grocery prices back down to the levels of 2019. Economically, the only thing that will do that is a strong recession that no one wants. He has said virtually nothing about the cost of gasoline, in large part because the prices were already falling to four-year lows before the election and have continued to fall since.

What Trump has said about issues impacting the lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum that make up 80-90% of his support base is that he is going to unleash his First Buddy Elon Musk on slashing the federal government and he will increase the number of skilled foreign workers receiving HB-1 visas. There is no universe in which the level of government cuts driven by Trump, Musk and their junior sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy, do not drastically cut the level of benefits relied upon by Trump’s base for their daily living. Whether that be food stamps, free school lunches, subsidies for small businesses and family farms, government support for rural hospitals, or government funding for public schools in economically depressed districts, Trump’s fascination with stripping the federal government of its funding and authorities in order to afford a new round of tax cuts for corporations and the uber wealthy will do nothing to help those who swallowed his lies and fears to put him back in office.

Instead of focusing on the lives of those he convinced that the country was falling apart, he has taken on the new obsession of reclaiming the Panama Canal, buying Greenland and, before he announced his resignation, making sure Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Canada’s Premier is as short as possible. Never mind that Jimmy Carter returned the Panama Canal to Panama in 1977 with full control of the canal zone ceding to Panama in 1999 per the Torrijos-Carter Treaties. Forget about the fact that Greenland’s prime minister and the government of Denmark have repeatedly and emphatically stated that Greenland is not for sale.

Ignore the reality that Trudeau’s chances of winning re-election in the upcoming Canadian elections were south of zero before Trump goaded Trudeau into skedaddling down to Mar-a-Lago to make nice after Trump’s comments about placing tariffs on Canadian imports and wanting Canada admitted as the 51st state.

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Trump’s spokespersons and advocates making the media rounds insist that Trump is just being Trump by making outlandish comments to use as an opening negotiation tactic in getting agreements that will benefit the United States. As generous as that characterization may be, it belies a woeful lack of insight into the larger interconnectivity driving the global economic and political system, to say nothing of validating Trump’s complete disrespect for international conventions and the credibility of previous United States’ commitments.

Back at the traveling salesman’s stand, MAGA fans are still waiting to hear the details of Trump’s concept of a plan for improved cheaper health care and how he will get the price of a dozen eggs back to $1.99 and gas down to $1.50 a gallon. I hope they aren’t holding their breath.

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Brad Gutierrez, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Air Force combat pilot, professor of political science, military diplomat, and senior public policy civil servant. He is currently a woodworker and nonfiction writer based in Marshall.