A big part of national politics is selling the groups of people you are supporting, and the general population deciding which of those people they identify with the most.
Trump went a visited a steel plant in Granite City, Illinois that's reopening thanks to his tariffs. It closed in 2015. Here's one of the workers.
Americans know that these factories never seem to reopen once they are closed. The town rots away. One factory isn't nationally meaningful in the long run. We will have to see how things play out, but it's the beginning of a powerful narrative. Obama's famous response to the plight of people like this was to mock them for clinging to their guns and religion while waiting for jobs that would never return. It's as if he didn't notice there was a connection between their plight and his policies.
I suppose this next election the Democrat candidate (Kamala Harris if I had to guess right now) will try and make the public focus on immigrant kids stuck in a bad spot because of Trump's policies. This will be a better image than Hillary Clinton's hilariously bad optics, but I think the crying steelworker gets more votes.
Also barred a CNN reporter from a white house media event, stopped giving reports of calls with foreign leaders, taking calls on his private phone...
This is on top of no tax returns, various members of his team being done for corruption, nepotism in handing out roles, attempting to impeach the guy overseeing the investigation...
Can any Trumpers name even one ******* thing that has improved transparency or "drained the swamp"? Try to do so without mentioning Hillary, Obama, fake news or the Democrats for a change.
The biggest thing he did regarding swamp draining was to end the Trans Pacific Partnership. My vote was worth it just based on that if he did nothing else. International trade governed by complex multinational trade agreements is asking for the ultimate swamp, a market completely controlled by a small group of special interests entirely outside of democratic regulation. It assures the complete victory of capital over labor. We will see whether he can get us out of NAFTA as well. Bilateral trade deals keep capital governed by a more transparent democratic process. That is what Trump favors.
This is a bit down in the weeds, but Trump's in the process of dismantling the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau. The head of this organization is perhaps the 2nd most powerful man in the US, and in some ways more powerful than the President. Trump won a political fight to get his man Mick Mulvaney appointed director. The Democrats had a scheme cooked up to keep their people in charge. Mr. Mulvaney as a congressman had led the charge against the creation of the agency. When he became director he gave an incredible speech detailing his shock at exactly how much power he now had. This is a complicated story, but the Democrats under Obama set up an organization that has nearly complete control over the US economy, whose head can't be fired for political reasons by the President, and whose funding comes from the Federal Reserve instead of Congress. It's a comically corrupt setup. It's designed to impose the dictates of a small group of people (social justice warriors) onto the US economy outside of democratic political control.
