Donald Trump

Terminally Online People and Their Half Baked Plans to Make Donald Trump Go Away

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I don’t like remembering December of 2016, but I think we all remember the SNL skit where Hillary Clinton showed up at the homes of electors and tried to convince them to vote against Donald Trump in the electoral college. One could certainly laugh at the skit, and one could even empathize with the shock many people felt after Trump won- I mean, he got less votes and won the election. If you go back and watch the speech, even Trump looked shocked when he came out to declare victory. The whole thing was surreal at the time. It was still absolutely batshit that people though the electoral college would be faithless enough to defeat the candidate they pledged their support to. It was a super long shot in 2000 when Al Gore needed less than five, and that wasn’t happening in 2016.

The problem with this is that it never ended though. People thought the Russian interference in our elections and every other scandal “would be the end of him.” When he was defeated in 2020, they wanted him punished for the very real wrongs he had done. Even now, they hope there is some early way out. The truth is that there never was. The even more real truth is that for most Americans, it was never really a priority.

I came across a tweet that angered me quite a bit. It’s tone deaf. There are truly a class of people in Washington who think that the top concern of most people is imprisoning Trump. You can read it here:

Basically the thought here is that Joe Biden, after receiving 81 million votes, should have made it his priority to prosecute and jail the guy he just defeated. Not stop Covid, revitalize the economy, expand health care, invest in green energy, or really any of the stuff he told people he would do. Never mind that the crimes committed in New York and Georgia were state crimes, never mind the need to investigate whatever involvement Trump actually had in January 6th, never mind that the Florida case hadn’t even happened yet, never mind that while Mueller found that Russia did interfere in the 2016 Election, there was no two party conspiracy, and never mind that neither impeachment ended in a conviction- lock him up. Look, do I think he did a lot of this stuff? Yes, and he was convicted in a state of doing it. The idea that someone was going to lock him in Leavenworth and we’d never hear from him again was nuts though. That locking the guy in Leavenworth, or Minersville, or whatever other crazy place you wanted him locked up in, should have been the top priority, well that’s just insane.

Yes, I’d love it if Donald Trump was gone from American politics. The reality though is that he’ll be gone when he’s done being President- which the Constitution clearly says will be January 20th, 2029, but don’t get too comfortable with this Supreme Court. In all seriousness, Trump and Trumpism will probably only be gone when the American people are ready to move on to something else. They will. They moved on from Obama, from Clinton, from Bush, from Reagan, from Nixon, from Eisenhower, from Truman, and even eventually from FDR’s politics (he of course was dead).

I stopped watching cable news a few years back, almost entirely, and it’s the best thing I ever did. I built a nice following on Twitter and other social media a few years back for my political opinions, but the truth is that I think that world is too segregated from normal society now. People only talk to people like them, then think the world is like them. Most people are much more mad that groceries and gas cost a lot than they are that Trump says mean and insensitive things. No, he’s not being hauled off to The Hague, or impeached and removed, or prosecuted, or any of that. Most people don’t care either. If you tell them this is your priority, they think you’re nuts. This is truly a level of strange that I think has infected most politically active people.

They Should Have Left the Government Shut Down.

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Last week the Senate failed to extend subsidies for people buying health care on the Affordable Care Act Exchanges. This week?

Friday’s proposal from House Republicans includes measures that would allow small businesses to join together to buy insurance plans for their employees and put in place new requirements for pharmacy benefit managers in an effort to lower drug costs.

Starting in 2027, federal payments, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, would aim to lower premiums for some low-income Americans. Health plans that provide abortion coverage would be excluded.

A vote on the package is expected next week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

“House Republicans are tackling the real drivers of health care costs to provide affordable care, increase access and choice, and restore integrity to our nation’s health care system for all Americans,” Johnson said in a statement.

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted the proposal Saturday.

“Mike Johnson just released a toxic Republican Healthcare plan that hurts everyday Americans,” Jeffries wrote on X. “It fails to extend the ACA tax credits that expire this month. And is a deeply unserious proposal.”

This is a joke. Sure, let employers buy together, but what does that do for people who are buying their own health insurance? The answer is nothing. For people like me, who buy their coverage at full price, this will mean not only do I get hit with higher 2026 premiums, but when millions drop their coverage in 2026, my premiums will skyrocket again in 2027. Health care costs the least when the most number of people are able to pay for their care, or are insured. House Republicans actively are plotting to harm that. Why? Some sort of stubborn insistence on free markets? I doubt it. They simply don’t want the government to provide anything, so they can cut taxes more for wealthy people. At this point, it’s clear their goal is no income taxes at all.

This did not have to happen. The decision by Chuck Schumer to send Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, Catherine Cortez Masto, and Jackie Rosen over to vote to end the government shutdown without even this small concession from Republicans will essentially do massive damage to the American health care system. If Republicans were going to re-open the government without these subsidies, Democrats should have forced them to end the filibuster to do it. Let them have the blood on their hands. Instead Democrats gave them a way out of their own mess, and we all know it was approved by their leader, because they gave just enough votes to get it done. Senate Democrats basically own this mess as much as Trump’s GOP, which is utterly embarrassing for a party whose crowning achievement of the last 20 years was a health care system that insured over 20 million people who were previously uninsured.

We really need to get rid of John Fetterman in 2028, by the way.