Texas is typically considered firmly in the corner of President Donald Trump, who won the state by the largest margin in decades. But now the editorial board at a major Texas newspaper has blasted the commander-in-chief for his dismissive attitude toward Americans’ economic pain.
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“Believe Trump,” declared the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday. “He doesn’t think about Americans’ financial pain.”
This is in reference to a shocking statement Trump made in mid-May when asked about how the war with Iran was hurting American pocketbooks. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” said the president. “I don’t think about anybody.”
“Even an elected official whose enumerated lies run into the thousands during his years in office tells the truth sometimes, even when he doesn’t mean to,” notes the Chronicle. “In fact, we have a name for inadvertent truth-telling, as columnist Michael Kinsley noted years ago. A politician telling the truth — in Kinsley’s words, ‘some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say’ — is committing a Kinsley gaffe.” According to the Chronicle, “The Kinsleyian truth is, Trump doesn’t care about Americans’ financial situation, or much of anything else regarding the everyday concerns of ordinary Americans (including the millions who voted for him).”
The paper’s editors go on to list several of the many ways the president has failed in his consideration toward the public, writing, “Trump doesn’t care that his fellow Americans are watching the gas-pump click to roughly $50 or more each time they fill up. He doesn’t care that shoppers are paying noticeably more every time they tap the credit-card reader…or that millions are losing food assistance. He doesn’t care that his fellow Americans are having to forgo healthcare, having lost access to Medicaid or coverage under the Affordable Care Act. He doesn’t care that small-business owners are struggling, that Texas farmers and ranchers are suffering. He doesn’t care that White House adviser Stephen Miller’s mass-deportation crusade is fracturing families and stifling local economies. He doesn’t care that, thanks in part to his war of choice in the Middle East, inflation for many hard-working Americans is outpacing wage gains. He says he doesn’t even care if the peace talks with Iran collapse.”
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The paper’s bottom line is simple: “Donald Trump does not care.”
What does he care about? According to the Chronicle, “This president does care about is the opportunity to use the office to which he was elected to enrich himself, his family members and the rarified coterie of fellow billionaires he’s so proud to be a part of…He cares about garish ballrooms, gargantuan triumphal arches and his name and visage plastered on buildings…He cares about spending our money — $1,776 billion, to be exact — on a scheme so brazen it almost defies belief.”
Meanwhile, writes the paper, polling shows that Houston residents are tremendously worried about the economy as they face the “largest one-year decline in attitudes toward job opportunities since the 1980s oil bust. As in the rest of the country, the economy is functioning beautifully for the wealthiest among us while everyday working people struggle to make ends meet.”
The paper comes to a sharp conclusion: “Donald Trump was elected in large part because he promised to ease those anxieties. He has not. His care-lessness and his gift for grift have made them worse.”
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