Yeah, They Really Were "Gullibillies"

Krugman on Trump, "Millions of Americans have just been sucker punched. They just don't know it yet."

"The white working class is about to be betrayed," Krugman declares in no uncertain terms. "The evidence of that coming betrayal is obvious in the choice of an array of pro-corporate, anti-labor figures for key positions. In particular, the most important story of the week — seriously, people, stop focusing on Trump Twitter — was the selection of Tom Price, an ardent opponent of Obamacare and advocate of Medicare privatization, as secretary of health and human services. This choice probably means that the Affordable Care Act is doomed — and Mr. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters will be among the biggest losers."

Trump famously promised to "drain the swamp," a phrase the Gullibillies took to mean whatever they wanted. To some it was jailing Hillary for imagined crimes. Others thought he would reform Congress or break up the incestuous relationship between Wall Street and Washington. Guess what? They were had.

So, you don't know my brother John? He lives in San Francisco, he's as smart as a whippet and when I called this week he had a question – "what do George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have in common?"

"Goldman Sachs," he answered his own question, with an implied baboom!

John's right. It seems that no recent aspiring or elected US president dares to broach the White House without their hand being held by someone who has done time at this obscenely rich, multinational corporate behemoth. Still building out his cabinet team, Donald Trump already has recruited three of them and there's speculation more are in the pipeline.

But far from yanking a plug to empty [the Swamp], Trump is happily doing bombshells in the murk, gathering in playmates whose corporate and political credentials, not to mention their multibillion- and multimillion-dollar fortunes, suggest little empathy with the "forgotten men and women" that Candidate Trump promised to protect from rich guys looking after rich guys and, as they go, demolishing the financial regulations that might have prevented the Great Recession – or which were reinstated in its aftermath, in the hope of preventing a repeat of the 2008 financial collapse from which the US is still recovering.

...Not only were they too pally with "crooked" Hillary Clinton, who he claimed was "under their total control", but according to one of Trump's TV ads, Goldman Sachs and its ilk comprised a "global power structure" that was "responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.

"Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people," Trump declared.

...Paul Waldman writes in The American Prospect: "So in order to take on that global power structure, Trump is hiring a bunch of billionaires and Wall Street tycoons, cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, scaling back regulatory oversight of Wall Street, and offering an infrastructure plan that consists mostly of tax breaks to corporations to encourage them to build projects that they'll then charge the public tolls in order to use."

...America's estimated 500 billionaires might be unlikely candidates for a White House team that working-class Americans were promised would look out for them – at his last campaign rally in Michigan, Trump told supporters: "We're fighting for every citizen that believes that government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests."

But already Trump, the first billionaire President-elect, has appointed three more billionaires to a team that, even incomplete, is the richest administration in modern American history – prompting Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank to dub it "Trump's Team of Oligarchs".Trump got elected on the "stupid" vote and they were warned that he believed he could do anything, even grab them by the p##sy. They didn't have long to wait for their turn.