‘An idiot and a traitor’: Trump rightfully slammed by the internet for openly dodging discussing the economy

Oh, how the economic tables have downturned.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump told host Sean Hannity that he doesn’t “care” about the economy. While the market may not matter to Trump now, it certainly did when he was on the campaign trail. Trump’s frequent promises to “end inflation” were lapped up by voters, who he was able to convince were put in dire economic straits by Biden administration. Trump laid the blame on Biden for a host of economic problems, and repeated the erroneous claim that the “worst inflation in American history” occurred under the previous administration.

Now when faced with the economic problems that he promised to solve, Trump is totally ambivalent. As a result, some on the internet have given a harsher critique: “he’s an idiot and a traitor.”

To paraphrase the general consensus of economists, you’d have to be an idiot to think that Trump’s policies will put more money in the pocket of the average American. Inflation is set to skyrocket under Trump due to his “mass deportation” plan to forcibly removes tens of millions of migrants from American soil. The operation will be exorbitantly expensive, cause inflation rates to rise, and will hamstring American industries that depend on migrant labor. The human cost of the deportations will be even more devastating, tearing apart families and making many worse off than ever.

But mass deportations won’t be president’s only economically catastrophic policy. Trump has announced that he will apply steep tariffs on foreign imports, taxing Mexico, Canada and China especially hard. Economic experts agree that Trump’s tariffs will drive up the cost of goods, including electronics, clothes, and food. Even those who support the tariffs agree that they will cause inflation. In fact, JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, said that the inflation caused by the tariffs will be worth it to protect “national security,” and told anyone worried about their potential economic impact to “get over it.”

This user points out that on top of his economy lies, Trump has brought up an equal amount of dubious points surrounding a host of other issues. He claims that wind farms are dangerous to birds, that electric boats are more vulnerable to sharks, and he likened migrants to Hannibal Lector. And yet, MAGA was willing to follow him anyway.

Fear is Trump’s most powerful political tool. Like autocrats of old, Trump ran a campaign based solely around stirring up his voters anxieties. Xenophobia. Transphobia. Islamophobia. Trump has employed all of these and more in order to incite his base into a frenzy. Trump has called migrants “animals” that are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. He scared his voters with fake stories of children being given gender affirming surgeries in schools. He stoked MAGA dread with his frequent fearmongering against Muslims. While those who voted for him may not fear Trump, they’re in for a rude awakening if his policies fail to solve their problems in the way that he promised.

Trump has courted the attention of some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the world, and his sphere of influence is filled with those whose financial concerns are far above those of the average American. People who have “more than enough money” to live out the rest of the “ungodly” lives, as the user above puts it. While Trump may have built a campaign on the needs of working class Americans, Trump’s lack of concern for the economy shows that working class Americans are the first people that Trump intends to turn his back on. “Traitor” indeed.