What were they expecting?
Donald Trump continues to claim that he won’t touch Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but we all know better. Several analyses have looked at the Republican budget and have proclaimed that the budget will take from the poorest 40% to give to the wealthy. We were warned about this. One of the writers at Buzz Feed put together a perfect piece that confirmed what we knew called “America had an open book test with all the answers highlighted and still failed.” Boy, did we ever-at least those who voted for Trump failed. In that piece, Ashley Holt outlined the things that Vice President Kamala Harris warned us about that have now come to pass.
Harris was correct when she said Trump would adopt the policies outlined in Project 2025 despite his continued denials. She was also correct that import tariffs would greatly harm the average American’s wallet. We haven’t seen this in prices overall, but we do know that farmers are already suffering. We should, however, expect prices to begin rising as well. Trump is also, as predicted, in the process of eliminating the Department of Education. Harris also warned that Trump would cut Social Security and Medicare to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. That one is a little murky-for now-but they are certainly targeting Medicaid. What Musk is doing to Social Security and Medicare is crippling them so that they can be privatized. Not to beat a dead horse, but people have been funding both of those agencies for many years. There is no reason that they can’t just cut everyone a check and then do what they want with it. Otherwise, it will not be fair to the people who sacrificed over the years through automatic deductions in their paychecks. Trump has also tried terminating the Constitution by overriding it with his executive orders, and our civil rights are no longer at risk, they’re gone. Everything Kamala Harris said during her campaign is happening. Those who refused to listen to her and voted against their own interests are now suffering from “buyer’s remorse.”
Trump’s policies are hitting his supporters hard. Matt K. Lewis, a conservative opinion columnist, developed a very negative view of Trump and supported Harris. In his March 19 column for the Hill, he wrote something that rings very true: “At some point, you have to stop feeling bad for people who repeatedly stick their hand in the fire and act shocked when it burns.” Trump’s voters knew well who he was. Why they thought things would be different is quite puzzling. Lewis wrote about Trump voters who are suffering from his policies, like Bradley Bartell from Wisconsin whose Peruvian wife has been detained and may be deported. Then, there’s David Pasquino, a vet who has been let go from the VA, and Jennifer Piggott, who was fired from her job at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service, who now feels “betrayed.” Honey, he doesn’t care about those who voted for him any more than the rest of us. We were prepared for the open book test, and we aced it. Too bad not enough were.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years