When A King Beats A Trump

My best friend Rick used to own a plumbing business, and his slogan – referencing poker – was:

(Normally a Full House wins…you probably figured that out…)

Yesterday we had Trump’s inauguration, which was overshadowed by the coincidental Martin Luther King Day.

A Trump was taken by a King (a bridge game reference…normally…never mind…)

Two greater contrasts in the life of America would be hard to imagine.

Trump is the ultimate shallow conman: a hate-fueled grifter with no conscience or interest in anyone but himself.

Thousands of MAGA fans had driven great distances to see him, for example, but he moved his venue for the inauguration indoors. This barred the common folk because the venue was too small for them; they were told to hang on to their tickets for sentimental value.

Trump’s pretext for the move was that it was cold outside. It had nothing to do with comparing crowd sizes.

In Washington it was 21F. That’s -6C, for those interested in global information. In Canada we’re mowing the lawn at -6. Obama, Carter and Kennedy had temperatures within a few degrees of 21F back in 2009, 1977 and 1961. I did not see this mentioned in the Drainstream Media.

Did he move it indoors for the comfort of his audience? Not likely; during the election campaign he regularly held meetings outside in the summer heat. People had to be taken away on stretchers. He often could not afford an indoors venue, and there were many places he still owed money to from the previous campaign.

In an ominous forerunner of Trump’s presidency, a potentially historic winter storm is closing in on the Deep South and could hit Trump states pretty hard.

He also wants to take Greenland and Canada…does he know what the temperatures are in both places?

Does he know that he will need Universal Health Coverage to bring America into alignment with these new ‘states’?

He wants to round up and deport illegal immigrants. Who does he think harvests America’s food? Agriculture is a sector with the highest proportion of undocumented workers. Nearly half of the people picking the vegetables and fruit in America are undocumented workers. Once Trump has kicked them out of the country, wages will soar as desperate farmers try to recruit new help. Or they may just drop out of food production altogether; for many small and family farms, the profit margin is very thin.

Machines can be employed to do the work, but at great expense and over a period of years. That will show up for consumers as high prices for food, and scarcity of food.

Yet he has promised lower food prices.

This conflict will extend beyond vegetables and fruit - immigrants are also needed in sectors like shipbuilding. Already major shipbuilding programs are years behind schedule, owing largely to a lack of workers. The shortfall is so severe that production is down to its lowest level in 25 years. And Trump has of course promised to increase the number of ships: “because it’s jobs, great jobs.”

But if you run the immigrants out of the country you will have sky-rocketing naval production costs and delays of decades.

Which brings us to Trump’s conflict on wages. He has one guy, Musk, who wants to import cheap servile labor from India, and another, Bannon, who wants to close off immigration, and use American labor. The kind of labor that will cost twice the rate of the imported variety. But I reject the notion that American labor is not as skilled as that Musk is bringing in on the H-1B visa. Musk is doing it to keep his costs down. He is just displacing more expensive American labor.

One or the other is going to have to go.

The bizarre thing is that Trump can’t seem to see the conflict.

One of his most public promises was to reduce the price of eggs. Well, due to bird flu, egg prices reached all all-time high in December. They will continue to rise. The last time Trump was in office, he started a trade war with China and other countries that sent the price of alternate supplies up sharply. He is threatening the same thing again.

In fact, the cost of mortgage debt, credit card debt, car payments and child care were contributors to Trump’s election success – and it is now obvious that he is going to focus instead on cutting taxes for the rich.

Then there is the all-consuming issue of healthcare costs. Millions are now at risk of losing their insurance, because to Trump’s pledge to ‘privatize’ healthcare. That means letting a new layer of prey species into the system – people who add nothing but whose blood-sucking instincts are sharp as fangs.

According to a new Federal Trade Commission report, UnitedHealth Group has been charging many patients 1000% markups on lifesaving drugs. Other companies like Cigna’s Express Scripts and CVS Health’s CVS Caremark were also charged - this is not a one-company aberration. This is a plague.

No wonder their CEOs are targets of popular rage.

He wants to make America more financially sound but is willing to shovel money out to make himself and his rich friends even wealthier. He is already responsible for one-quarter of the national debt, and he wants his rich friends to pay even less in taxes. While demanding that the budget limit be removed so be can spend even more.

Trump’s agenda is confused, conflicted, and blood-sucking. Let’s hope that in 2026, the voters begin to see the sham and the shame.

The real shame for America is that he was elected on such a thin margin.

Oh yes – the best part is that all this will be going on while Musk will be firing hundreds of thousands of people and pulling billions out of the working economy for “efficiency”. Americans will be asked to deal with a “bit of hardship,” says Musk.

The last time Musk had any hardship was when his pockets were too small to hold all his daddy’s emeralds.

To pay for a $3 trillion tax cut for the top 1%, Trump’s boys are raising taxes on consumer goods to the tune of $2 trillion, drastically cutting Medicaid and raising Medicaid taxes on 1 million seniors. Trump’s Treasury nominee just said “extending” Trump’s tax handouts for billionaires is their TOP priority: “This is the single most important economic issue of the day.”

Paul Mortimer-Lee of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said the “ill-considered, rushed and damaging” combination of tariffs, the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants, tax cuts and spending efficiencies was “likely to tip the US economy into recession.

“In a worst-case scenario, where immigrant expulsions are massive, tariff increases hit straight away and retaliation is swift and effective, GDP could contract by two to three percentage points.”

In order to carry all this out he will have to ditch the Bidenomics policies that have made America the fastest-growing country in the world.

He spent his transition period threatening trade wars with America’s biggest trading partners: Canada, Mexico and China.

With these conflicting policies it is no wonder that Trump enters the Office with the second-lowest approval rating for a transition since 1993; his previous entry into the White House was the lowest.

More people today hold an unfavorable than favorable view of Trump. Only 21% of Americans are confident he can lower grocery/food costs during his first year in office. According to The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, only 19% are confident that he'll lower housing costs and 16% are confident that he'll do it for healthcare.

People who stayed away from Trump's inaugural lunch included Former Presidents Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush.

A vote change of 123,750 people in the right proportions in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan would have given the election to Kamala Harris.

The number of people who could fit into one football stadium.

And now we will have four years of degradation and possibly dictatorship.

His choice was to go to prison or be President. Heck of a motive. Bottom line: he will make things more expensive and cut benefits for the 21% of people who voted for him.

There was another vision for America, celebrated on the same day as the inauguration.

Trump was sworn in inside the Capitol’s rotunda, facing a bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the federal holiday commemorating King’s legacy.

King would not have advised us to despair of Donald Trump. King used to say: ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’

“I’m glad it occurred on that day because it gives the United States of America and the world the contrast in pictures. Is this the way you want to go — or is this the way you want to go?” said the Rev. Bernice King, the late King’s youngest daughter and CEO of the King Center.

In his first election Trump falsely claimed he had larger crowds than King’s March on Washington.

Civil rights leaders met with Congressional Black Caucus members on Capitol Hill to discuss how to work with and to oppose the Trump administration.

There were demonstrations, vigils and community service events to mark Kings’ holiday.

During his life King worked on racial equality, economic justice, interracial marriage, and social reforms.

He acknowledged that “We will err and falter as we climb the unfamiliar slopes of steep mountains, but there is no alternative, well-trod, level path. There will be agonizing setbacks along with creative advances.”

Perhaps the best-remembered moment from his life came in 1963, when he delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the memorable core of his vision was:

“It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

Any country that could call forward that power, from a member of an abused race, is not going to fall down because of a Donald Trump.

Years into the future, when all the memorials to Trump are gone, King’s speech and King himself will be remembered.

Because there is such a thing as social destiny, and the plain and simple path marked out by MLK call us to follow it even today.

And the world itself – just as it is adopting democracy today – will also follow King’s path.

I hope we are all alive to see that moment, at the end of the path.

King beats Trump, every time.