Trump Wants BBB Passed - not in Spite of Its Unpopularity but Because of It.
"The cruelty is the point" has been replaced by "the perversity is the point."
“The oddity in all of this is the people Trump despises most, love him the most. The people who are voting for Trump, for the most part … He wouldn’t even let them in his f*cking hotel. He’d be disgusted by them. Go to Mar-a-Lago, see if there’s any people who look like you.” - Howard Stern
Poll after poll, analysis after analysis demonstrate that
1) the majority of Americans don’t like Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” and
2) its negative effects will disproportionately impact MAGA-world.
Yet oddly enough, those two facts, along with Stern’s quote above, actually explain why Trump is so gung-ho on punishing not just his perceived “enemies” (immigrants, higher ed, trans people, scientific experts) but also his fan base. More than anything, Trump wants to win, and if he can win and at the same time trample on the backs of the people who trust him, all the better.
It’s time to admit that Trump wallows in perversity…and not just sexually.
There are so many aspects of Trump’s derangement on display daily yet don’t get nearly enough coverage and commentary. First and foremost, there’s his apparent dementia, as evidenced by his answer to a reporter’s question on July 1 (the reporter is asking how long inmates might end up being detained at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’):
Yes, his brain is mush…but it’s his pathology and perversity that’s truly on display these days.
Trump loves polls. He is forever quoting those that purport to show him winning over the public, and in turn denigrating any poll — including Fox News — that demonstrate otherwise. Still, in spite of these assertions, he is forever hedging his bets about committing to something that might not “play well” with the public. Hence his constant “2 weeks” mantra before making any decision…assuming he plans on actually settling on a decision.
Because, truth be told, apart from a few pathological obsessions — tariffs, wind farms, poor water pressure (seriously, he harps on that all the time) — he doesn’t possess any real policy positions on which to base a decision:
“On most issues, Trump has no principles, and even on subjects where it seems like he might—such as China—he has shown remarkable flexibility, as when he moved to ban TikTok in his first term but then about-faced after one of the platform’s chief investors became a top donor. Because Trump believes nothing, he holds out the tantalizing prospect that he could do anything, and many people are willing to take him up on the offer.”
If it’s true that he doesn’t believe in anything, then Trump could easily switch positions, call off his attack dogs in Congress, and claim that he’s rescuing MAGA-world from darker days.
But we have to remember this: the thing that gets Trump off the most is being able to say “F— You” to anyone…the bigger, the more powerful, the better. And who is more powerful than the majority of US voters? “I can do whatever I want and you can’t stop me.” Lots of people — Elon Musk, Mike Pence, Chris Christie — have learned the hard way that he enjoys rubbing their faces in the dirt. He demands not loyalty so much as obsequiousness…and even then that’s often not enough. His ego only gets truly stoked when he can humiliate and crush.
The sad thing about MAGA is that many of them won’t even recognize that they’ve been played. Assistant Professor of Business Law Nicolas Creel writes
“The most audacious con game in American political history is unfolding before our eyes, and the marks don't even realize they're being fleeced. Republicans have successfully courted working-class voters with promises of putting "America First" and bringing back good-paying jobs, only to govern with an agenda that systematically picks their pockets while enriching the wealthy elite they claim to oppose.
“The GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill represents the culmination of this betrayal—a reverse Robin Hood scheme that steals from the poor to give to the rich on a scale that would make medieval bandits blush. While Republican politicians wrap themselves in populist rhetoric about fighting for forgotten Americans, they're quietly advancing plutocratic legislation that would literally take food out of the mouths of the families who voted for them.”
Creel’s focus is on the Republican party, but make no mistake, the version of the BBB that’s working its way through the Congress will almost assuredly enact all of Trump’s agenda (or at least the agenda that he’s been told he wants by Stephen “Himmler” Miller). And so, apart from a few tweaks around the edges made by Congressional Republicans, this is Trump’s bill…because the Rs are only cosplaying at being legislators.
There are many things about the relationship between Trump and the Republican party that are absolutely infuriating, but the most abhorrent is that they know better:
On the other hand, they are also — like Trump — uncomfortable with the members of their base, who increasingly rely on the social safety net…a net that Republicans have historically decried and still will not embrace. They get away with this neglect because Red State voters have been lulled into believing that their economic condition can be blamed on immigrants and “woke” policies.
Eventually, however, MAGA Medicaid recipients will begin to feel the pinch. Perhaps, then they will recognize the true source of their pain…and reject the Republican party. So why doesn’t the party recognize this enough to scale back some of the cruelty in the big, not-so-beautiful bill?
As Jennifer Rubin writes in The Contrarian:
Republicans still cannot imagine if they or a loved one:
Could not get food because their application for food stamps was snarled in red tape designed to kick people off benefits to which they were entitled;
Could not get preventive care, addiction treatment, nursing home care, or prescription drugs because they have been kicked off Medicaid and priced out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges;
Could not get to a rural hospital in an emergency after the local one closed;
Could not find a cancer trial after cuts to the National Institutes of Health;
Could not get care from Veterans Affairs.
What is in their DNA (aside from a deathly fear of being primaried by Trump’s followers) that prevents them from serving their constituents?
The truth is that Republicans are philosophically ill-suited to serve people who rely upon governmental largesse.
Noam Lupu, a political scientist at Vanderbilt offers an insight:
“[T]here are organized interests with very strong preferences about budget cutting that are part of the Republican coalition, and then there are voters in the coalition who stand to lose from these cuts. [Ergo,] the party organization became more likely to listen to the intense organized interests because the voters don’t really have anywhere else to go.
That’s effectively what we’re seeing with this bill.”
In other words, the party is philosophically aligned with monied interests who have financed their political campaigns with but two demands: “lower my taxes and cut benefits.”
MAGA, on the other hand, is just a loose coalition of voters who happen to love Donald Trump. Their power, such as it is, is de-centralized and only beholden to one man.
According to Lupu, however, there is always this: “Parties that take their voters for granted eventually do get punished. I do think a party that consistently hurts its own supporters will eventually lose them.”
(Read the full analysis by Thomas Edsall here.)
When it comes to hurting Americans, Republicans can’t help themselves.
To Donald J. Trump, this perversity is his raison d’etre.