I’ve noticed a very strange trend in recent years. It seems Republicans are actively working to brand themselves as the party of the working class since Trump paid token lip service to a few of their concerns like offshoring. Sure, he was a guy that ranted about offshoring jobs, but his own clothing line was produced in Bangladesh and Mexico (same as he ranted about illegal immigration but used their labor on his own properties). The logic seems to be that since MAGA is (falsely) labelled a “working class” movement, then the Democrats–who are wrongly perceived as catering only to college professors and investment bankers–are now the party of the rich, while Republicans are fighting for the “little guy.”
Never mind that objective data shows Trump voters were economically better off than Hillary voters in 2016. “The horde” (conservative white males online) have worked hard to spread the narrative that basically goes: “Trump has changed the party into the party of the working class. It’s the Democrats that are for the elites.”
Donald Trump is/was a billionaire that poops on a gold toilet. Given his laundry list of business flops (the difficult task of bankrupting on casinos, starting ventures from airlines to energy drinks that went nowhere, endless debt), it’s safe to say the only reason he’s still rich is because he’s a tax-cheat and con artist (Trump University disbanded for fraud, Trump charity disbanded for fraud) that inherited 400 million dollars from his father. But sure, he’s a real working class hero because he eats KFC…on his private jet. How relatable!
The last three Republican Presidents were George HW Bush (son of a mega-powerful senator), George W. Bush (son of a former President, W. being a guy who would’ve had a hard time getting a job driving a bus if he hadn’t been born rich), and Donald J. Trump. Trump was not only rich himself but passed a massive tax cut to those who were already wealthy, made cuts to programs that help the working poor/working class, generally made the lives of working class people harder including a deal with OPEC to cut oil production because he thought oil prices were too low, and had a cabinet that was worth more than the bottom half of the nation combined—complete with the daughter-in-law/heiress to the AmWay Ponzi scheme, Betsy DeVos. [Mitt Romney is also mega-rich and the son of a Governor, making John McCain the only nominee they’ve actually had from the working class this century.]
Given Trump’s incredible ties to China (they fund Truth Social, he had a personal bank account there worth 25 million), you’d have to be an idiot to believe he actually meant what he said about wanting to “hammer” them. Likewise, it’d be a stretch to think he actually meant what he said about increasing American competitiveness (like how he’s encouraged GOP senators NOT to vote for Biden’s desperately-needed bill wanting to increase American chip-making and computer manufacturing). The people saying that the Republicans are now the party of the working class are the same suckers that gave Trump 250 million dollars to “stop the steal,” which he reappropriated into his Super-PAC for whatever the hell he wanted to spend it on.
It is impossible to see Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott out there talking about “sunsetting” social security and ending Medicare, and be truthful in saying the Republican Party is any less pro-rich than it’s ever been.
Every proposal that has ever been made to help the working class has come from the Democratic Party (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, public housing, Pell grants, farm subsidies, massive public works projects FDR used during the Great Depression, the New Deal, the Great Society, Obamacare’s provision to stop “pre-existing conditions” from kicking people off their health insurance). Trump wanting to put up some sheet metal between Mexico and the U.S. doesn’t change squat.
Even in Biden’s term, look at how hard Biden’s fought to get a third stimulus (not one Republican voted for it), an ongoing child tax credit, and an infrastructure bill. Republicans have sunk Build Back Better, which had lots of things geared towards the working class, and Biden has hit a wall on most of the stuff he really wanted, like Universal pre-K, paid leave, a public option for American healthcare, codified abortion and voting rights (yes, these do directly help the working class), and massive public works projects like high-speed rail that would be good paying jobs.
And it’s not just Biden, all recent Democratic Presidents (Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, LBJ) came from the working class and faced uphill odds to become as successful as they were. This is clearly a party that wants leaders from non-rich backgrounds, and you can see that directly in what legislation they attempt. Recently, the House Democrats passed a bill to stop oil companies from price gouging—not one House Republican voted for it, same as infrastructure and the third stimulus.
At the time of rampant CoVid and congress scrambling to pass the third stimulus/America-reopening bill, congressional Republicans were talking about repealing the inheritance tax. Even more recently, Mitch McConnell said Americans are living large off their stimulus checks, but will work harder in a few months when the funds run out. Not only is this ridiculous (that McConnell thinks an American can quit working for a year off a $1,400 check only shows how out-of-touch they are), but it reveals the GOP’s real goal: keeping Americans poor and desperate for any job they can get. They don’t really want Americans to “lift themselves up by their boot straps” or be “inwardly mobile” towards riches; they want a country of non-unionized workers that have no other options but to work in grueling conditions for whatever their employers decide to pay them.