In 1787, the year our founders signed the U.S. Constitution — Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Alexander Hamilton about his fears of an autocratic dictator in America: “If once elected, and at a second or third election outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false values, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, be supported by the States voting for him…” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/20/founding-fathers-demagogues-civic-virtue/.
Five years later, Alexander Hamilton wrote this to George Washington: “When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper…is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity… It may be justly suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind…’” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/20/founding-fathers-demagogues-civic-virtue/
What scared our Founders? They fought the American Revolution to get out from under a dictator — England’s King George III — the Donald Trump of that day — a king who was mentally ill, who imposed heavy taxes on American colonists to pay his debts, whose army murdered protesting colonists, who undercut the colonial economy, who struck down local governments and imposed colonial rule, who burned down colonial towns and okayed naval bombardments on the colonies. https://www.history.com/news/american-revolution-causes. Bandera is in for a gut punch if Trump’s reelected.
If Trump becomes president, Bandera families will wind up paying grandma and grandpa's bills along with everything else they owe every month. That’s because Trump wants to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It’s a big worry since the average age of folks here is 53.1 years old, according to the U.S. Census in 2020. And we’ve got lots of folks older than that.
It’s not a new threat.
• 2017 - Trump budget threatens Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
• 2018 – Trump budget to cut $2 trillion from Social Security
• 2019 – Trump’s 2020 budget cuts Medicaid. Social Security
• 2020 – Trump threatens to cut Social Security funds if he’s re-elected.
• 2024 - Trump suggests he’s open to cutting social Security and Medicare
• 2024 – Social Security is on the ballot…as Trump threatens cuts
Don’t doubt the threat. On the 11th of this month, Trump said this: “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements… There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do.”
Trump defenders said it means he wants to save the U.S. money. How could he do that? One way he’s talked about — cutting the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare.
This from a man who added over $8 trillion to the federal debt while he was president and cut taxes for billionaires making them $2.2 trillion dollars richer since 2017.
