President Donald Trump should have stuck with going after trans people and immigrants. Deciding to hurt everybody else will cost him.
I realize that things are so upside down in American politics that it’s easy to catastrophize the malfeasance that Republicans are joyously letting spread through the Trump administration.
The sheer volume of the current Republican miscalculation of the American people will ultimately be a gift to Democrats and to those of us who would rather not have a government so purposefully targeting and hurting Americans without making anything better.
You see, Republicans are too far down the MAGA rabbit hole to even see the mistake they’ve made. So I’ll tell you.
Trump and his GOP enablers are hurting the wrong people. His latest political mistake is an attempt to exsanguinate the U.S. Department of Education, which hurls money at Republican states.
They started fine. Right out of the gate, they went after transgender people, diversity, equity and inclusion and words that were scary because of “wokeness.” These are political shots that MAGA loves to shoot. These are the people and ideas that Republicans are required to weaponize as a way to scare their base. These are the exact people Trump was supposed to be hurting, and none of it helped anybody do anything anywhere. But that doesn’t matter. The pain caused is joy gained.
Trump had achieved the perfect mix of useless political action and apparent political achievement.
So when he took office in January and immediately proceeded to dunk on all of those people and words, chances are Trump voters were living their best life. They were out here high-fiving and feeling supported as their prince of hate vanquished the unworthy.
It was a good time for MAGA nation, right? The hate vibes were high, and everybody who was supposed to feel targeted felt targeted. It doesn’t even matter that the Trump administration has lost almost 50 court rulings on the way to all that winning.
Then, something changed.