Donald Trump is a give-and-take man. If you scratch his back, he will scratch yours. This worldview might make sense for a businessman, which Trump was for many years. This makes less sense for someone who is ostensibly a public servant.
During the recent campaign, Trump has been offering a bargain to voters. If they vote Republican, he’ll do his job. If they don’t – well, the American people can just be left alone.
The clearest example of this is the President’s proposed “Trump Dividend” program, which would give every American adult a direct $5,000 cash gift. Trump has been pushing the idea in a naked effort to curry favor with reluctant voters since the GOP’s emergency midterm convention, which would cost more than $1 trillion. However, in recent times, he has started implementing the same vendetta concept in different states, making open extortion schemes a regular part of his stump speeches.
For example, two days earlier, at a rally in Kansas to promote the campaign of Republican Senator Roger Marshall, Trump made this trade-off clear.
“With Roger Marshall in the Senate, we will make E-15 permanent for years,” Trump said. “But if it’s Adam Hamilton, I’m not doing it. That’s it. I’m just doing it for him. It’s a big deal for Kansas.”
The program Trump is talking about, E-15, refers to the sale of gasoline diluted with ethanol, a corn-based alcohol that is a key product of Kansas’ corn industry, which is vital to the state’s overall economic health. Typically, the sale of E-15 fuel is regulated by the government for environmental concerns, but the Trump administration recently relaxed those rules to lower gas prices and provide a boost to struggling corn farmers. In short, the deal offered here is simple: Trump created a federal program that made life easier for some Kansans. He will end everything unless they vote for his favorite candidate in the upcoming elections.
If this had been a one-time incident on the battlefield, it would have been shocking. Kansas is an unexpectedly close race, where Republican incumbent Marshall faces a very strong challenge from Democrat Reverend Adam Hamilton. is hamilton ahead in some surveysAbout 47 percent to 45, and both candidates are set to debate Wednesday night for the last time before the election. Then again, Kansas’ economic future is certainly at risk.
But Kansas is not the only state where Trump is carrying out this kind of open political extortion. A day later, Tuesday night, he traveled to North Carolina, where families living around the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base have lived for decades. trying to get a settlement from the US government after they were poisoned by toxic chemicals in their waters between 1953 and 1987. There are still thousands of victims waiting for payment from the federal government, their cases tied up in Justice Department red tape. Join Trump’s bargain: If his party wins, those cases get resolved quickly. If his party does not do this, it will not be a priority.
However, in North Carolina, this is an almost impossible question. Former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper appears to be defeating former RNC Chairman Michael Watley 13 point lead In the latest surveys. Sure, there are House races in which Republicans need to compete, but North Carolina voters can only do so much to preserve Trump’s trifecta of House, Senate and White House.
But like any gangster, the details of the extortion hardly matter to Trump. It’s all leverage and threats, carrots and sticks. The President’s job is to protect the people of the United States. Extortion, often, begins with a crook offering their “protection.” And like any good security plan, many American voters may feel they have no choice but to accept it.