TWO ATTACKS ON SCIENCE

 In the past three days, Donald Trump has given two press conferences that have confirmed beyond a shadow a doubt that he is the worst president for scientific research in modern history, and maybe ever.  The first was a joint conference he made with Health and Human Services leader (and utter quack) Robert Kennedy Junior.  The second was a rambling, insulting and childish speech he made at the United Nations.  Both of them were full of his usual blustering, bragging and lying, that was no surprise.  But it's really the substance of both of them that's is so disturbing.

The first found Trump and Kennedy claiming that acetaminophen, the painkiller found in Tylenol, is linked to an increased chance of autism in children whose mothers take it during pregnancy.   They said this despite the fact that the Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine have found no such link.  The complicated part of this is that Tylenol is the most widely used painkiller during pregnancy because, of course, it's available over the counter.  And, more importantly, it can help lower  fevers in pregnant women, which can cause pregnancy complications.  Repeatedly during the conference, Trump loudly told women not to take Tylenol during a pregnancy, hectoring  them to "tough it out" (easy for a man to say!).   As Dr. Laura Andreson, an obstetrician told the New York Times, “It’s hard to wrap my head around what kind of thought process was behind making these statements.”  Along with this terrible advice, Trump also rambled about vaccines in general, at one point describing vaccinations by saying “It’s too much liquid, too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number.”  He also oddly asserted that the Amish don't get autism, and that autism rates in Cuba are lower than here because they don't have Tylenol!  But then what do you expect from a man who once suggested injecting bleach?

His speech at the UN was perhaps less dangerous, although just as embarrassing.  Along with repeating the laughable lie that he's been making for weeks now, that he has stopped seven different wars as president, and all but begging for a Nobel Peace Prize, he also decided to talk about climate change.   First he claimed that China has been building wind turbines to sell all over the world, but have very few in their own country; this is the exact opposite of the truth.  China now uses more wind power than any other country in the world.  He also flat out called climate change a hoax, and said that “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”  And later insulted the rest of the world by saying "Your countries are going to hell" (that was more about immigration than green energy, but it was a terrible thing to say either way).   

While Trump's attitude about green energy has been known for years (his hatred of wind turbines stems from his anger over one of them being put up near one of his gold courses in Scotland), it was still both maddening and depressing to hear him state them so boldly in front of other countries that have not ignored the overwhelming scientific  research on climate change (not to mention the record droughts, fires and floods that have plagued the world in the past few years). 

While the Republican party has often been at odds with science ever since Ronald Reagan forged an  alliance   between the party and Christian fundamentalists back in the 80's, the fact that we know have a president who has defunded scientific research at colleges he considers too woke while spewing nonsense about autism and climate change is a new low for the country.  The sad fact of the matter is that for the world to make the logical transition to green energy, it will have to follow China and not the US, which is what's happening.  America once stood at the vanguard of scientific research, but now we are falling behind.  The damage Trump is doing will affect both American and the world negatively for years to come.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE IS ROILING OUR DIVED COUNTRY

 Last Wednesday, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was horribly shot and killed while engaging in a debate at a college in Utah.  Kirk was a young married father who's  family has suffered a terrible loss.In the wake of the shooting, some people on the left have quoted things that Kirk said in the past about gun control and  his reaction to other political attacks on people he disagreed with.  None of this can in any way justify what happened to him.

The real problem with Kirk was how successful he was, as he, like so many people in the right wing media world, channeled the frustrations of white men by saying that were the one truly oppressed group in our society.  At one conservative gathering he said that, "Actually MLK was awful. OK? He's not a good person." later adding that  "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s." His connection to white men, especially young ones, was instrumental in getting Donald Trump reelected.  As much as I may find all that abhorrent, again, none of that justifies what happened to him.

But one point that should be made is that Kirk's is not the only recent political killing in this country: just a few months ago, former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated by a Trump supporter who had reportedly made a long hit list of mostly Democratic leaders. (At the time President Trump released a perfunctory statement condemning the killings, but then he pointedly played gold instead of going to their funeral).  There was also Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house suffering an arson attack, Democratic House member Nancy Pelosi's husband being assaulted and  a kidnapping plot against  Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.  But instead of mentioning any of those, in the wake of  Kirk's shooting,  Trump has only talked about attacks on right wing political figures.  In one interview on Fox News, when asked about what to do about right wing violence, Trump said, "I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem  They’ve vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy."  Later, when he was asked about how he was holding up after the shooting of a man that he considered a friend, Trump said that he was doing great and turned the conversation to the construction of a new ballroom in the White House!  Once again, he proved that there is no cure for being a  narcissistic psychopath.

Sadly, Trump is the absolute worst kind of person to have as our nation's leader at a moment like this, but then what do expect from a man who pardoned January 6th protestors who beat police officers?  So, instead I would like to end with some quotes from a man is who is saying the right thing after this shooting, Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox:  “We just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be. To ask ourselves, is this it? Is this what 250 years has brought on us? I pray that that’s not the case.” “If anyone, in the sound of my voice, celebrated even a little bit at the news of the shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror, and see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere.”  

WILL THE SUPREME COURT RESTRAIN TRUMP?

 One of the ways that President Donald Trump has moved so quickly to consolidate his power is to declare an emergency about whatever he wants to control and then use emergency presidential powers granted from past laws to do what he wants.  He has already done this 11 times in his first 9 months in office. Probably the most dramatic use of this is his assertion that the  Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows for the speedy deportation of foreign born enemies during an invasion, permits him to deport Venezuelan gang members without a trial.  Unfortunately,  that act, which  was passed over 200 years ago,  was unspecific about what counts as an invasion, the Trump administration has made the  dubious assertion that gang members are actually invading our country like soldiers.

Recently, Trump's power grab has been hitting some snags; in the past two weeks, lower court rulings have been against him.  First, a move to deport Guatemalan children was held up by a judge in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.  Then Trump's sending of members of the US military to the city of Los Angeles was found to be illegal by the Federal District Court of San Francisco.  Also, his attempt to withhold billions of dollars in research funds to Harvard University was voided by the US District Court in Boston.  And then, in the most dramatic of these rulings,  just last Friday a federal panel of judges ruled that most of Trump's tariffs, the cornerstone of his economic polity, are illegal and will be voided next month.  

While all of these rulings make sense on the face of them, together they more importantly show that, despite all the Trump excusing Republicans holding congress, the American system may still be able to put some restraint on Trump's authoritarian views through the courts.  The ruling against his tariffs, for example, makes perfect sense when you consider that Trump asserts that he has the right to pass any tariffs he wants against any other country based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.  But that act also says that the president can only do so against an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”  The administration claims that our trade deficit with other countries is a threat, even though it has existed for years and has never stopped the US from having the world's biggest economy.  It's almost laughable how Trump doesn't seem to understand what a trade deficit is; countries that we have a trade deficit with simply sell us more of their goods than they buy of ours.  This is hardly a threat when you consider that a country like Canada has almost 300 million less people living in it!  So imposing tariffs that could cripple Canada's economy is hardly being done in response to a threat.  Again,  this ruling just feels like common sense.

But, then there's the Supreme Court, the same court that now has a 6-3 conservative majority, with 3 of those 6 conservative judges being appointed by Trump himself.  Inevitably, the Trump administration is going to appeal these rulings form lower courts to the Supreme Court (he's already requested a ruling on the Tariff decision as soon as next Wednesday).  So the question is,  will this extremist court side with our extremist president?  It's tough to say.

This year, there have been two rulings by the Supreme Court against Trump: the first was a presidential order voiding birthright citizenship (that was a no brainer even for this court; birthright citizenship is in the constitution).  The second involved cuts to the. US AID program.  Now, on the other side of the ledger, the court has sided with the Trump administration 7 times, on cases allowing for mass deportations, stricter immigration rules, and the gutting of the federal Department of Education.  Along with these rulings, last year the court made what appeared to be a peremptory decision when it ruled for him while he was out of office, stating that any president would have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts committed within their "core constitutional powers."  Basically giving him a blank check to try anything in his second term without fear of criminal charges.  Really, the  court is now so pro Trump, that one has to fear that his stated desire to be able to run for a third term (which has gone from a joke to a serious threat) may actually be upheld.  In other words, while I was glad that the lower courts ruled the way that they did, there's no guarantee that Trump's unprecedented attempt to run this country with absolute power won't be upheld by our highest court.  Yes, we live in very frightening times in this country.    

HOW THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD FIGHT BACK ON CRIME

 

After saying on the campaign trail that he would lower inflation, President Donald Trump's tariffs have caused prices to increase.  After promising not to cut Medicaid, he recently signed a spending bill that did just that.  The Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which he claimed he could end in one day, is still ongoing, and a recent meeting between him and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in which Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for the man that the International Criminal Court considers a war criminal,  ended with Putin conceding nothing while Trump, as usual, fawned over him pathetically.

Clearly, Trump is failing at all of these things.  But one thing he is good at is finding something to distract the media from his failures.  About two weeks ago, after lying about violent crime rates in our nation's capitol, he sent both FBI agents and the national guard to patrol the streets of Washington DC.,  despite no law officer or political leader there saying that they were needed.  Trump has also threatened to send troops to other cities  like Chicago while continuing to spread lies about violent crime rates.  In one truly odd moment, he claimed that “The people in Chicago, are screaming for us to come now...African American ladies, beautiful ladies are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please.’  I did great with the Black vote, as you know. They want something to happen."  (For the record, Trump got only 15% of the Black vote in 2024 overall, and only about 7% of the Black female vote).

Along with distracting the media and letting Trump look tough without actually accomplishing anything (the national guard troops are mostly just standing around in low crime areas), bringing up the issue of crime lets Trump turn to a subject that voters have mostly favored Republicans on for years.  This is despite the fact that, except for a spike during the pandemic, violent crime has been on a downward slope for decades in this country.  Sadly, that message hasn't gotten through to the public; in a 2024 Gallup poll, 64% of Americans thought that crime in the country was increasing, even as crime numbers shrank to per covid levels.  The tricky thing is that telling people that their fears are unfounded by the facts doesn't seem to work, especially when those fears are stoked by local news broadcasts featuring crime stories non stop and right wing politicians pushing the idea that cities with Democratic mayors are awash with crime.

But I think the Democrats should fire back on this issue, and Trump's actions  have left him open to an attack on his tough on crime credentials.  I'm talking about his pardoning of over 1500 January 6th protestors, some of whom, despite his claim to support the police, violently attacked capitol police officers. A December 2024 YouGov survey showed that over 60% of voters opposed his pardoning them, so already most of the public think that that was wrong.  Things gets worse for Trump when you consider that some of those pardoned protestors have gone on to commit more crimes after being released.  I really think that the Democrats should make a big issue of this, releasing television ads and giving speeches pointing out that it was a Republican president who let convicts out onto our streets to wreak more havoc.  Make it an issue at every debate until every Trump supporter in the country has to explain why pardoning criminals was a good thing.  And use the names of the criminals to personalize it, like Brent John Holdridge who was arrested for grand theft just last May, or Matthew Huttle who was killed while resisting arrest within days of his release.

As a progressive, I don't like tough on crime rhetoric in general, but using it against the Republican party for defending Trump's pardoning of the January 6th rioters is just fine by me.  That was one pardon Trump should have never made, and I hope it comes back to haunt him in 2026.

THE LAND OF THE MAD KING

 As we all know, when he was just a young spoiled brat, Donald Trump mentored under the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn who taught the three principles that Trump continues to live by: always attack, never admit wrongdoing, and always claim victory, even if defeated.  Now in his second term, Trump has pushed those ideals to the limit.  All his life he has tried to bend reality to his will, now as a president surrounded only by fawning sycophants, he has decided to reject anything that does not promote his belief that he, Donald Trump, is the most flawless human being that has ever lived.

Recently, a jobs report came out that said that job growth in the US  in the past few months had shrunk below expectations, fueled by the economic uncertainty of Trump's on again/off again tariffs.  Refusing to accept the reality of what he had begun, Trump angrily called the numbers "rigged" and fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official who was in charge of compiling the jobs report.  While many other presidents in the past have groaned about poor economic numbers, Trump is the first to openly say that those numbers, which are carefully compiled, were rigged against him.  Even worse, he has nominated E.J. Antoni as McEntarfer's replacement. Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and certainly no liberal, described Antoni by saying “He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he’s showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them.”  But of course, that is exactly what Trump, who has probably seen Antoni on Fox News praising his administration, wants.   Someone who will always tell him what he wants to hear, even if from now on no will be able to trust the economic numbers released during the rest of the Trump presidency.  (Get ready to hear economic claims of "ten million jobs created in a month: or other such rot!)

Trump's departure with reality took another turn a few days later when he decided to have both FBI agents and the national guard begin patrolling the streets of Washington DC because “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore.” He has decided this despite the fact that violent crime in DC has been dropping precipitously in the past two years as it has across the country.  

His outrageous assertions lead to a press conference in which he openly lied about crime statistics and, of course, named other cities that he felt were also being overrun.  In typical fashion, the cities he listed are all blue cities with African American mayors.  This gets even worse when a simple google search reveals that the cities with the worst violent crime rates in the nation are Memphis, Tennessee and Saint Louis, Missouri, neither of which he mentioned, probably because they're in red states (although they do have Democratic mayors). 

As always, Trump's goal here is to look tough and play to the beliefs of his base that American cities have become crime ridden hell holes, even as violent crime has gone done in this country.  Sending the national guard into the streets of our nation's capitol won't do much to stop crime, but it will make Trump appear  authoritative, and his image is really all that matters to him.  And don't even get me started on how hypocritical this is coming from the man who pardoned around 1,500 criminals who attacked the Washington  DC Capitol building back on  January the 6th in 2020, including many who beat police officers.  

While these two examples of Trump's delusional behavior are bad enough, to me the worst yet was his assertion that "new" evidence involving allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election show that former President Barack Obama was involved in some kind of criminal conspiracy.  While these assertions are patently absurd, Trump has now ordered Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence to begin an investigation of what she called "treasonous behavior".  It's obvious what Trump is doing here: his own base has been turning on him recently over his lack of willingness to release the infamous Jeffrey Epstein files, with former Trump supporter turned rival Elon Musk going so far as to post on X that Trump will never release the files because he's in them.  With most of the public thinking that Trump has something to hide here, pushing for a baseless but distracting investigation of Obama will bring the Obama hating bigots of Trump's base back to his side.  It presents a pathetic full circle for Trump, who began his political career spreading specious lies about Obama's legitimacy as president and is now pushing equally specious charges agains him almost ten years after Obama left office.  Sadly, for Trump, demonizing our first African American president is the gift that keeps on giving.

So here we are America, living in a country led by a vengeful man who lies with nearly every breath and who will accept no fact that doesn't say that he's the best president our country has ever had.  And he still has more than three years to go in his presidency.  Get ready, things could get worse.

 

THE SCANDAL THAT'S DIVIDING MAGA

 They stood by him when he insulted John McCain's war record.  When the Access Hollywood tape came out.  When he pledged to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, and then only built a fraction of that wall without a dime from Mexico.  They stood by him when he bungled the response to the pandemic, going back and forth on masks and suggesting people inject bleach.  They even stood by him after he sparked a riot at the nation's capitol  on January the sixth. But now, really for the first time in the  ten years that he has dominated the Republican party, President Donald Trump's hardest hard core followers may finally be turning on him.  

Yes, the hard core conservative belief that convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had a secret list of powerful people who knowingly had  sex with underage girls on his private island, a list  that they assume will contain names like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, is a very strong one in the MAGA universe.  And now they believe that the government is holding onto that list to shield those powerful people from criminal convictions.  The brass ring, the thing that conservative media has longed for years, is the mass trail and jailing of numerous prominent progressives for horrible crimes, proving that their longtime hatred of the Clintons, the Obamas and the Bidens, among others, was always well founded.

It's interesting to note that far right conservative conspiracies seem to focus on one document or source of information, that, if released to the American public, could  blow a conspiracy carried out by progressives  wide open; back in the Obama years, a majority of Republican voters thought that then president Barack Obama was secretly a Kenyan, and that the release of his long form birth certificate would prove it.  It got so bad that Obama did eventually release it, although many of them (including Trump) claimed that it was fake.  And then during the Biden years, there was an obsession about finding the then president's  son Hunter's s lap top, and again there was a sense that this one item would reveal not just Hunter's criminal activity, but also the crimes of the whole "Biden crime family."  

Those two conspiracies were absurd (although to be fair, Hunter Biden did commit crimes, but there's no proof that his father was involved in any of them), but the Epstein list conspiracy does have some  basis in fact.  (It's certainly a lot more plausible than the QAnon conspiracy, which thankfully seems to have died down).  The most important fact is that Epstein was indeed a convicted child sex trafficker who groomed and raped hundreds of teenage girls, assisted by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of child trafficking and other charges in 2021 and is still in prison.  The other important fact is that Epstein did indeed have connections with powerful people like Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.  Epstein died while in prison in 2019 from an apparent suicide.

And in 2024 the Trump campaign rode the Epstein conspiracy hard, with Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance saying that the Epstein files should be released and Trump MAGA media supporters like then pod caster Dan Bongino fanning the flames, promising the hard core faithful Trump supporters that putting Trump back in the White House would see the release of the list, and that trail of  those progressive pedophiles could begin.  So imagine the disappointment of the MAGA voters when the Trump administration recently announced that there would be no more investigation of the Epstein matter, that there was no client list.  Even  Bongino himself,  now a member of the FBI, threw cold water on the conspiracy, contending that Epstein's death was definitely a suicide.

While I'm not someone who tends to  believes in conspiracy theories, I will admit that there are some strange things in this story.  First of all, Epstein's suicide certainly seems suspicious, given that he was already on a suicide watch, and the release of the video from the prison on the night of his murder which shows no one entering his cell, is missing a minute.  (Could killers have rushed into his cell and killed him in a way that looked like a suicide by hanging in under a minute?  Seems far fetched to me.). Secondly, Epstein's first conviction in Florida in 2005, in which he plea bargained to avoid serious jail time, appears to be  only a slap on the wrist given the severity of his crimes.  There's also some question about how he  became a billionaire in the first place.

But the most suspicious part of the story is the relationship that Epstein had with Trump; it's been common knowledge for years that they were indeed friends for around 15 years. The two of them can be seen partying together in photos and videos in the earlier 00's, and  in 2002 in New York Magazine, Trump described him this way “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it,  Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”  Although the two men would eventually have a falling out over a property purchase, Trump's connection to him is undeniable.  Which makes the MAGA people's shock over his failure to release all the files amusing to the rest of us who have seen what kind of horrible person Trump is for over a decade now.  Putting it simply, if Trump did indeed have sex with underage girls on Epstein's private island, it really wouldn't be shocking given that this is a man who's been accused of sexual assault or rape by 28 different women.  And who was found guilty of making illegal payments to cover up an illicit affair.  And who was found liable in a defamation case brought by  writer E Jean Carrol in which the judge ruled that the jury believed her story of him sexually assaulting her. And who has been caught on video making leering comments towards teen girls ("In ten years I'll be dating you!") and having sexual thoughts towards his own daughter.  So now MAGA finally is seeing Trump for the sexual predator he always seemed to be?  Welcome to reality. 

That said, there is no proof that Trump ever did anything illegal in regards to Epstein, and I for one do not believe that the infamous list actually exists, no matter whose name is on it.  Yes, there is a criminal file regarding Epstein, and yes, Trump's and other famous people's names are in it, but being mentioned in a criminal case file as an acquaintance of a criminal and actually being guilty of a crime are two very separate things. I think the logical answer is that Epstein hid his crimes from almost everyone, like a serial killer, and that his famous friends had no knowledge of his monstrous behavior.

Whatever the truth is,  Trump clearly can't seem to make this story go away.  His supporters have dug into this for too long to suddenly buy his assertion that there's nothing to any of it.  Many right wing media figures, like Tucker Carlson, refuse to let it go. And breaking news of a  lewd (but not really incriminating) letter sent by Trump to Epstein years ago will only fan the flames.  Perhaps now, finally, Trump's life long despicable treatment of women will finally hurt him politically.

A DISASTEROUS BUDGET BILL

 

In a sad moment of bitter irony, President Donald Trump's budget bill, which is one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history, is going to be signed by him on the fourth of July.  The mind truly reels at this.

This budget bill is, quite simply, a terrible example of everything wrong with America.  It will make permanent  tax cuts that Trump  passed in his first term, which are heavily slanted towards reducing taxes for the rich.  And to help offset the loss of revenue these cuts will bring, Medicaid and food assistance for the poor are being sliced by billions of dollars.  It's estimated that millions of Americans will soon lose their healthcare because of these cuts.  How could it get any worse?  Well, the non partisan Congressional Budget Office has foreseen that, even with those spending cuts, this budget will eventually add over three trillion dollars to our national debt.

So to put it bluntly, this bill will hurt millions of poor Americans to help pay for a tax cut for the rich, continuing the obsession that the Republican Party has been pursuing since Ronald Reagan first introduced so called Supply Side Economics back in the 80's.  (He also left behind big deficits).  And, in an example of just how cynical this whole enterprise is, the tax cuts will take place immediately, while the Medicaid and food cuts won't really start kicking in until 2028, showing that the Republican bill writers consciously moved these unpopular cuts past the mid term elections, knowing how angry they will make voters.

So, while Trump has often seemed like a different kind of Republican, at the end of the day he still has the same awful budget priorities of Reagan and George W Bush.  The fact that he's breaking a campaign promise to not cut Medicaid and reduce the deficit is, of course, hardly surprising given how much he has always lied .  Remember how he promised to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it back in 2016?  Or how about how he was going to jail Hillary Clinton?  So I can't say that I'm disappointed by a man who's always gone back on his word, but I am upset about how quickly the rest of his party gave in.

As the bill was being debated in congress, there did seem to be a few Republican congress people from swing states who had moral objections to it, and it polled terribly with voters, who liked it less and less the more they heard about it.  But, sadly, those few principled Republicans who either objected to the Medicaid cuts (like Josh Hawley) or deficit increase (like Rand Paul) eventually folded like umbrellas given just how strong Trump's support is with the base of the Republican party who continue in their cult like devotion towards him. 

It should be noted that along with tax cuts and budget cuts, the bill also contains 100 billion dollars in spending for the Immigration and Custom Enforcement office, which triples their budget.  (To put that in proper perspective, as the magazine Newsweek points out, ICE now has a higher budget than the entire military spending of many other countries).  And, of course, it eliminates all spending on green energy and tax rebates for electric vehicles, because a brutal crackdown on undocumented immigrants and ignoring climate change as the world swelters is just par for the course from our narcissistic, psychopathic president.   

The cruelty of this bill lies not only in the lie Trump repeated often on the campaign trail about not defunding Medicaid, it's also a stab in the back to the working class of this country who will be hurt the most, even as they have turned to the Republican party more and more in recent years.  Sadly, Trump's stand on immigration, trans rights and other social issues have fooled tens of millions of Americans to vote against their own economic benefit.  But then, the Republican party has been using social issues to do that for decades now.  Trump is just pushing it further than past presidents.