2017 Apr 24^th

Now we have interviews with people who voted for Trump reported by organizations that support Trump. Guess what: those voters still support Trump. A good example of this stuff is from “Newsmax,” an ultra-conservative news organization run by Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife is a very rich and very, very conservative Pittsburgher. The interviews Newsmax recorded with Trump voters were unequivocal, they all still think he’s doing a great job and all things negative about him are the result of media bias, unfair reporting and other left-wing, sore loser activity. Newsmax has the results of various polls all showing President Trump doing very well.

This result isn’t surprising; if the results were otherwise these voters would have to admit they were wrong. Many haven’t made a lot of decisions in their lives that have turned out well, so they’ll hang on to this one as long as they can. One interesting poll result not mentioned at all by Newsmax is that only 25 percent of those polled believed Trump to be honest and trustworthy. Newsmax won’t touch that one.

The signature Trump scheme is the “big beautiful wall.” As we have heard, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the putative beholders of this ego trip are not all that thrilled. Right wing politicians who support Trump claim we must protect our country from an influx of “drug dealers, rapists and terrorists.” But the people close to the action are not convinced. A full 61 percent of the citizens of Texas do not approve of the wall. You won’t find that statistic mentioned on Newsmax.

Then there is the problem with eminent domain; this is a process by which the government can take a citizen’s land if they can make a case that it is for the common good. They are required to pay the deprived citizen fair market price but the citizen has no choice in the matter. If you are a rancher and you depend on access to the Rio Grande to provide your livestock with water and the government builds a 30-foot high fence separating your stock from water, what use is your ranch? Eminent Domain means you’ve just sold your ranch to the government whether you like it or not.

As it turns out this big beautiful wall may not be needed after all. The number of people coming into the country illegally has decreased substantially. In fact, we have almost as many people going back into Mexico as we have coming north. When this was pointed out to one right-wing politician, his response was that this was because these people knew that they would be caught and deported as soon as they arrived. But this had also been the case under President Obama. Much of the decline is due to an increase in the Mexican economy. If jobs are available at home, why risk coming here.

Payment for the wall has changed: First, it was asserted that Mexico would pay for it. Alas, it’s time to start building and no cash has come from Mexico. No cash is likely to come from Mexico because for a Mexican politician to have any part in paying for that wall would be political suicide. Now what? Now it seems Trump wants the U.S. taxpayers to at least start funding it. He tells us that Mexico will help out eventually. John Maynard Keynes is rumored to have commented about some economic policy “eventually” working said, “Eventually we are all dead.”