Trump Forgets Loyal Supporters

Friday was the birthday of the late, great Townes Van Zandt, whose The Late Great Townes Van Zandt album appeared 25 years before he died. One of his early classic songs has been running through my mind of late while watching first felon Donald Trump turn Elon Musk loose as an attack DOGE on the government that has served us so well.

The song, You Are Not Needed Now, should become the new anthem – or lullaby-bye – for working class Americans whose votes gave Trump a second chance to wreck the country. You MAGAts gave Trump the power; you are not needed now.

The Daily Kos reported last month that 433 of the 444 U.S. counties designated as “farming dependent” by the Agriculture Department supported Trump with an average of 77.7% of their votes.

So, on the first day of his administration, as reported by The Washington Post, “despite promises from the Trump administration that a federal funding freeze would not apply to projects directly benefiting individuals,” he ordered the USDA to freeze just those funds.

Among those programs were an “Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides financial assistance for farmers to improve their infrastructure.”

Some of that money was earmarked to help farmers adapt to the warming planet – a data-confirmed factoid that Trump denies in order to promote the petrochemical profits that are changing weather patterns while we watch.

To cement the arrogance of this ignorance, the Trump USDA purged all climate chaos information from its website, leaving farmers in the dark about how to deal with their changing environment.

Last month, Jeffrey Stein, associate attorney for Earthjustice said: “USDA’s irrational climate change purge doesn’t just hurt farmers, researchers, and advocates. It also violates federal law several times over. USDA should be working to protect our food system from droughts.”

Thanks for your votes, farmers. But you are not needed now while Trump and his congressional minions prepare massive tax cuts for the billionaires whose ad money convinced you that he cared about you.

But, take heart farmers, you are not the only ones who supported someone who does not support you.

Trump’s immediate pardon of his red hat rioters for trying to violently overthrow the government in 2021 drew an instantaneous rebuke from the Fraternal Order of Police, which has endorsed Trump every time he has sought the presidency.

That union was joined by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in complaining: “When perpetrators of crimes, especially serious crimes, are not held fully accountable, it sends a dangerous message that the consequences for attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence."

Thanks for your votes, lawmen. But you are not needed now while Trump strengthens his ties with those white nationalists he sicced on your fellow officers.

And, of course, the biggest losers are the regular Americans who did the work to make the money that the oligarchs paid to buy a presidency, and enough members of Congress to guarantee their perpetual dominance.

And is it irony or justice that most red states depend upon Trump-threatened federal funding contributed by more prosperous blue states to provide basic services to their people?

Despite constant warnings from economists and people of good sense, many people believed that that inveterate liar Donald Trump when he said he would be lowering the cost of living from Day One of his second term.

And while the status of Trump’s tariff tiffs with the world changes on an hourly basis – he might be too old to learn that consumers, not countries, pay for tariffs – his intentions were as clear as their effects.

When tariffs were enacted last week, the Joint Economic Committee estimated that they could cost average American families about $1,600 a year. Others estimated a $2,000 hit. But that’s just a small “bump” for the millionaires and billionaires that Trump serves. [And he managed to pay himself $18.2 million in taxpayer money during his first seven weeks in office to play golf on his golf courses.]

Hey, he appreciates you allowing him to keep the grift going. So much so that his economic policies – according to the Joint Economic Committee – will let you pay an extra 11% on electronics such as computers, phones and televisions; 7.5% more for clothing; 6% more for cars, trucks and car parts [others estimate much higher increases]; and “at a time when a trip to the grocery store is already squeezing household budgets, grocery prices will jump under these tariffs.”

But, as Townes said: “Lay down your head a while. You are not needed now. You are not needed now.”