This brilliant piece was originally published by our friends at Tablet. If you don’t know Tablet, where have you been? Check it out.
Has Donald Trump betrayed the working-class swing voters of all races who put him into office the second time? According to some rueful MAGA advocates, as well as gleefully chortling MAGA opponents, the president has committed political suicide by betraying his base.
By siding with Israel and bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, according to Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump has abandoned his “America First” foreign policy for a neoconservative grand strategy. By stating that he wants to find a way for the illegal immigrant employees of farmers and hotel firms and other companies to get legal work permits in order to avoid deportation, Trump has abandoned a core promise of his campaign, according to Auron MacIntyre, a pundit who writes for the Glenn Beck outfit The Blaze: “This is just amnesty, even worse it’s amnesty for specific industries, a carve out for the donor class. . . . This is not what Trump promised, it’s not what MAGA voters want.” And by embracing and signing the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act, which cuts Medicaid for alleged “welfare cheats” in order to partly finance deficit-exploding tax cuts for the rich, Trump, the argument goes, has embraced priorities in tax and domestic policy that are indistinguishable from those of the “old right” under a hypothetical President Jeb Bush or President Ted Cruz.
Whether they are made by self-described MAGA movement members or their adversaries, claims that Trump has betrayed the swing voters who put him into the White House reflect multiple misunderstandings of contemporary American politics.
