Trump’s “program”
by digby
Jim Tankersley makes the case that a Trump nomination could be good for Rubio and Cruz’s career. It’s interesting and well worth reading if you’re a political junkie who enjoys this sort of navel gazing (as I do.)
But this struck me as worth pointing out because it’s become an article of faith among lots of people and not just Trump’s rivals on the stump that he is a closet progressive who will pass all kinds of lefty policies if he gets into office. Here’s one passing comment that illustrates that:
Even if Trump beats the Democratic nominee, he could prove ripe for a primary challenge in four years if he, say, pushed a single-payer health care plan through Congress.
Trump has said that he’d support single payer. This makes liberals excited and Conservatives apoplectic. But Donald Trump doesn’t know what “single payer” is. Indeed, he’s so completely clueless about health care policy that he might as well be speaking in tongues:
I think I’m closer to common sense. We are going to repeal Obamacare.
We’re going to repeal Obamacare. We are going to replace Obamacare with something so much better. And there are so many examples of it. And I will tell you, part of the reason we have some people laughing, because you have insurance people that take care of everybody up here. I am self-funded. The only one they’re not taking care of is me. We have our lines around each state. The insurance companies are getting rich on Obamacare. The insurance companies are getting rich on health care and health services and everything having to do with health.
We are going to end that. We’re going to take out the artificial boundaries, the artificial lines. We’re going to get a plan where people compete, free enterprise. They compete. So much better.
In addition to that, you have the health care savings plans, which are excellent. What I do say is, there will be a certain number of people that will be on the street dying and as a Republican, I don’t want that to happen. We’re going to take care of people that are dying on the street because there will be a group of people that are not going to be able to even think in terms of private or anything else and we’re going to take care of those people. And I think everybody on this stage would have to agree…you’re not going to let people die, sitting in the middle of a street in any city in this country.
That’s big of him to say that. He apparently has never heard about laws requiring emergency rooms to care for people or the safety net programs of medicare, Medicaid and the VA.
The “artificial lines he’s babbling about refer to the the old GOP trope about selling across state lines being the magical pony that will solve the health care problem. Yes, politicians are bought and sold by big business we understand that. But insurance companies are not getting rich on the law and the problems with those insurance companies will not be solved by “free enterprise.”
It’s clear that he doesn’t care about health care policy nor does he want to know anything about it. And if anyone thinks that this guy will spend even 5 seconds in office trying to push through a big single payer health care program because he says that all the politicians except for him are Insurance company whores, they’re not listening to what this man is actually saying.
He hits his rivals on anything and everything he can think of and it has no bearing on his actually beliefs or policies. He is the last man on the planet who actually cares about the influence of lobbyists — unless they advocating for the Chinese or the Mexicans. That’s who he blames, not American businesses. Listen to what he says.
Why people persist in believing that this celebrity plutocrat has some kind of coherent program beyond building walls, banning religions and persecuting minorities escapes me. It’s especially ludicrous that this billionaire who gladly admits to buying and selling politicians as “part of doing business” is some kind of economic populist is ridiculous. Sure, he promises to enact protectionist policies (“make better deals”) with foreign governments, but I’m going to guess that his understanding and concern for the needs of American workers might not be what people hope.
He is a white nationalist, authoritarian demagogue period. He’s just vamping on the rest of it saying whatever it takes to make his rivals squirm.