Alright, so I’ve been seeing these videos floating around where people are legitimately surprised by things Donald Trump has done—things he actually promised to do during his campaigns. The common thread in all of these reactions is something like, “Well, he said he’d do it, but I didn’t think he’d actually go through with it!”
And here’s the thing: if someone votes for a politician who doesn’t follow through on their promises, isn’t that kinda bad? Like, wouldn’t you want the person you voted for to keep their word? So why is this a thing now? Is this just people messing around and trolling, or did they genuinely think Trump wasn’t going to do what he said he’d do?
I mean, maybe it’s because of how unpredictable Trump was during his presidency. He had a habit of saying things one way but then doing the opposite, which could’ve made some people doubt whether he’d actually follow through on his big promises. But now that he is following through on some of those things, it seems like people are genuinely caught off guard.
So here’s what I’m wondering: is this something to celebrate? Like, is it a good thing that people didn’t think Trump would keep his word? Or is it just another example of how the political landscape has changed in ways no one expected?
I think this is the primary reason, but I’ll add a couple of thoughts.
His people. The core of his actions right now is ‘project 2025’ which was written by an extreme right wing think tank in Washington called ‘The Heritage Foundation’. They’ve been around since Reagan and have been thought leaders in the GOP all this time. In other words, they know the system extremely well and they are well organised.
His supporters. A large number of his supporters are poor, Christian folk, often from red states. They are poor because the structure of the American economy has been designed to extract money from the non-rich and channel it to big business and rich individuals. Think Walmart and Musk. For 40 years GOP have been telling the lie that billionaires as job creators, that taxes, regulations and unions are bad, that trickle-down economics works. This has led to staggering amounts of money taken from the middle and working classes and piled into bank accounts of the real elites (here meaning billionaires and biggest companies). Trump’s supporters know the economy is rigged and they want to change it. Unfortunately they believe their church leaders (who have unabashedly instructed their flocks on politics and single issues like abortion) and the mainstream media (meaning Fox) who push these lies incessantly. The Democrats have not attacked (let alone resolved) these issues under Obama and Biden. But Trump claims he’ll shake up Washington as an outsider and tackle these issues. His supporters somehow do not equate a nepo baby, ivy-league educated billionaire ex-president as one of the elite. They think of him as ‘their man’.
In short, the propaganda from Fox, the Internet, their churches and their neighbours has persuaded them to vote against their interests and elect a group of elite political insiders and businessmen who have taken 4 years to plan the hostile takeover of the government in order to channel even more money to themselves.