President Donald Trump promised to help the working man. But there’s a problem: Men and women who work with their hearts and hands have been slighted.
America is more, much more, than business tycoon deal-makers, white-collar professionals and AI. We must not let the bulk of Americans slip into the category of what noted Black author Ralph Ellison called the Invisible Man. Invisible, that is, to the big shots. Of course, all of them are visible to God. In His sight, all of us are equal — and that innate civic equality should be the starting point of our politics.
Trump is a self-declared champion of the plain folks, but he’s an improbable messenger. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and by now, it’s solid gold, even platinum. That’s great for him, but it doesn’t make him representative of us. He pals around with the glitterati and billionaires. The working men and women he encounters are typically manual laborers at Mar-a-Lago, his Bedminster country club or, by now, the White House.
You did not see working men in ringside seats at Trump’s inaugural platform. Instead, we witnessed the greatest collection of wealth ever gathered in a single place: moguls Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai. For millions of Americans struggling to stay above water, the picture on the platform was evocative of the clueless phrase attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette: When told that the people couldn’t afford bread, she supposedly said, “Let them eat cake.”
But riches do not foreclose political empathy for the working class. Franklin D. Roosevelt lived a privileged and cosseted life. Yet as the 32nd president from 1933 to 1945, he proved himself to be a true friend of the working class and the American national interest overall. He spoke truly for the people who were ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-fed. And so he pushed to help them, providing jobs and dignity in the form of the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps and fair labor standards. And, of course, Social Security, which stands today, headquartered in Baltimore County, as an enduring symbol of Uncle Sam’s commitment to work-minded, fair-minded brotherhood — and sisterhood.
Has Trump’s hurricane of executive orders and proclamations coupled with Musk’s blunderbuss assault on federal agencies and employees helped or hurt the working class? It is too early to be definitive. But the initial scorecard seems unpromising.
Trump pledged to curb inflation and even reduce grocery prices. The pledge’s shelf life has already expired without result.
The U.S. Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board were created to protect working men and women. Trump, however, has fired an NLRB commissioner in violation of its charter statute and is slashing the number of DOL employees assigned to ensure fair wages and worker health and safety in the workplace. Is this how America will be made great again? I think not.
Trump’s hiring freeze looks no better. The freeze disproportionately impacts farmers and those dependent on SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate are looking to hike the Pentagon’s budget by $150 billion to coast past $1 trillion annually when the United States confronts zero existential threats and should be running victory laps after the Soviet Union dissolved more than three decades ago. The major beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s bloated budget are defense contractors; not just the familiar names, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, but new names, such as SpaceX, owned by the same … Elon Musk. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Trump’s tax cut extension would disproportionately benefit families with earnings of more than $450,000 per year. It may be true, as President John F. Kennedy remarked, that a rising tide lifts all boats. But some boats rise many times higher than other boats. For the sake of social peace and good civics, let’s keep some perspective on who needs help — and who doesn’t.
Trump’s program to deport millions of immigrants unlawfully in the workforce theoretically should push wages higher by diminishing competition for labor. But that wage trajectory has not yet been apparent. Indeed, the deportation plan seems to be floundering. Trump has fired his acting deportation czar for numbers lower than expectations. But things could change on that score in the coming months as more Latin-American countries agree to take more deportees. To make sure the plan works, Trump and Musk should spend more time actually focusing on this problem, as opposed to just tweeting and chain-sawing about it.
Trump’s impending punitive tariffs will undoubtedly spike prices. Dollars and cents will be taken from the pockets and purses of working people. A tariff is simply a fancy name for a tax imposed on imports. And every consumer knows that a tax drives up prices. If a 25% excise tax is imposed on cigarettes, the price jumps accordingly. The consumer pays, not the cigarette seller.
Trump’s initiatives to end birthright citizenship, to end legal cognizance of transgender persons or to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and Denali to Mount McKinley are irrelevant to economic security for working men and women.
To be sure, man does not live by bread alone. Social and cultural issues may keep the working class loyal to President Trump despite the financial hardships his administration is imposing.
What regular folks — and that’s most Americans, the kind who never get invited to Mar-a-Lago — want is a president who cares about them and protects them. Not just their financial livelihoods, but also, yes, their moral, cultural and family values.
One president who fit that description was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most successful Democratic politician in our history. Can today’s Democrats learn from him? Can they update his one-for-all and all-for-one agenda for these new times?
Time will give us the answer.
Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.