Blog de Dunlap: Ugliness, distraction, and crazy stories

Danielle,

Last night Donald Trump spent time talking about renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America."

He spent time bragging about making English the official language of the United States.

He promoted a $5 million dollar "gold card" offering, inviting the wealthy to buy access to US citizenship.

He spent time targeting and politicizing a small group of transgender student athletes as a fear-mongering tactic.

He spent time bragging about DOGE firing thousands of federal workers that actually make the government more efficient and listing uncorroborated, wild claims about all of the "government waste" that Elon Musk has identified. That "waste" they cut out was actually cancer research, veterans programs, and support for farmers.

And he spent time suggesting that the alleged days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over — right after praising unelected bureaucrat Elon Musk taking a literal chainsaw to rule over our government.

But he did not spend any time laying out any actual plans to deliver the change that working people are actually crying out for: lower costs. It's because he is doing nothing to actually ease the economic pains that people are feeling. In fact, what he's doing will inflict even more pain. And he's taking advantage of the pain that people are feeling to distort the truth.

Last night had a lot of ugliness, crazy and shocking stories, and contradictions. Stuff that would make any fact-checker's head explode. This is all an intentional distraction tactic. They know exactly what they're doing.

Because Donald Trump and the Republican party have a long-game plan to cut taxes for billionaires and make everyone else pay for it.

The best way to slip through an unpopular plan like that is to stir us up and distract us by saying a bunch of absurd things — Gold cards! Gulf of America! Trans kids and immigrant families are out to get you! — and hope that nobody will actually see what's happening.

Donald Trump is handing our country to a handful of billionaires. I see it. Others see it. I hope you see it too.

We're ready to fight back on this. I'm not going to vote to give tax breaks to billionaires. I'm going to do everything I possibly can to make their plan clear to Congress and to the public so we can build the movement we need to stop them. If you're able, please pitch in $100 or anything you can to help power this fight.