The New "Deplorables"

We just landed back in the cold after an unusually warm weekend in New Orleans. On Friday, we caught the Pelicans-Grizzlies basketball game and on Sunday, we checked out the Saints-Raiders game. In between, we saw some alligators in the bayou and went on a nighttime cemetery tour. A great few days in the Big Easy, even if I was with a 12-year-old who refused to let me sample one of the best foodie cities in the world. (His idea of fine cajun cuisine is Smoothie King, which I admit is a massive parenting fail.)

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

Yesterday, the news broke of Jimmy Carter’s passing. In death, Carter has one last lesson to teach us. After he lost a bruising re-election campaign to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Carter could have gone on the speaking circuit and the corporate board route. Instead, he did something unusual in addition to his work promoting democracy around the world: he rolled up his sleeves and helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

You don’t need to be a former president to build a house. Any one of us can do it, if we only seize the initiative. Much like you don’t need to have a massive platform to spend the next four years rebuilding the Democratic Party. Any one of us can do it, if we only dedicate ourselves to it. Carter did not approach life cynically. He just picked up a hammer and went to work, one house at a time. There’s a lesson for how to approach the next four years, at least for me.

The New “Deplorables”

Photo by Natilyn Hicks Photography on Unsplash

When are Americans going to be tired of the new establishment trashing them?

Elon Musk, who has set himself up to be Trump’s governing partner, is agreeing with random Twitter trolls that Americans are “retarded” and can’t be trained to do the work of highly skilled immigrants.

His partner in cutting government waste, Vivek Ramaswammy, is accusing “native” Americans (i.e., not immigrant or first-generation Americans) of venerating “mediocrity over excellence.”

I am old enough to remember when Trump supporters went absolutely ballistic over Hillary Clinton calling some of them “deplorable” in 2016. But when Musk agrees that many of the same people are “retarded” and Ramaswammy accuses them of worshipping at the shrine of mediocrity, most of them take it with a shrug.

Musk and Ramaswammy are pushing this narrative in support of H1-B visas, which allow highly skilled immigrants to work in the United States. During Trump’s last year in office, nearly three-quarters of H1-B visa holders came from India, with Chinese nationals coming in a distant second. But for Musk and Ramaswammy, the issue is larger than whether there are workers in other parts of the world who can perform jobs Americans are unable to do. Musk agrees with the notion that “you can’t outtrain being retarded,” which means that there must be something genetically wrong with the part of the MAGA base that opposes legal immigration for skilled workers. Ramaswammy believes that Americans are culturally deficient, paying more attention to 1990s tv sitcoms and hanging out at the mall than to math olympiads. Even if Americans wanted to perform the jobs of these immigrant visa holders, Musk and Ramaswammy think that they are too stupid and lazy to learn how.

Just imagine the reaction from Trump if two billionaires within a hundred yards of Joe Biden said a fraction of what Musk and Ramaswammy have said over the last few days. Fox News would blow out commercial breaks to report on it.

The irony is thick. Naturalized and first-generation Asian immigrants — the ones who Ramaswammy holds up as exemplars of what other Americans should be — overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris this cycle, according to a Brookings study. An AAPI Data Poll analysis shows that Indian-Americans supported Harris by a 15-point margin. Musk and Ramaswammy are actually denigrating the backbone of the MAGA base, the overwhelmingly white Americans whose families have been in this country for more than a generation.

On Saturday, Trump threw his support behind Musk and Ramaswammy. Trump told the New York Post, “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.” It appears that Trump is confused. He actually uses H2-B visas prolifically, which the New York Times reports “is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, which is for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months. Federal data show Mr. Trump’s companies have received approval to employ over 1,000 workers through the two H-2 programs in the past 20 years.”

In other words, Trump has imported immigrants to do the menial work he cannot find or does not want to pay Americans to do. A healthy media would investigate what happens to the H-2A and H2-B visa holders whom Trump sponsors to work at his resorts. Do they obediently return to their home countries when their 10 months are up or do they overstay their visas, joining the millions of other undocumented immigrants whom Trump demonizes? And why does Trump import these immigrants in the first place? These jobs must be advertised to Americans first and must also pay a prevailing wage. If no one applies to fill them, the visas kick into effect. Does Trump admit from personal experience that there are just some jobs that Americans will not do — especially temporary, menial labor jobs that require the worker to relocate repeatedly?

Trump’s decision to side with Musk and Ramaswammy should be no surprise. In a tussle between billionaires and (to put it in Muskian terms) the “retarded” members of his own base, Trump will always follow the money.

But the larger question is, how long will his voters support him if he keeps it up?

There is a percentage of the MAGA base that will stick by Trump, no matter what. Even if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue. Even if he unleashes an attack on the Capitol. Even if his friends sneer that they are “retarded.”Always.

But there are also a large number of Trump voters who supported him in November because they wanted cheaper groceries and a more secure border. It remains to be seen whether Trump will deliver on his promise of bringing grocery prices “way down.” The last time the price of eggs and meat decreased, Barack Obama was in the White House, a strong dollar negatively impacted US food exports and the end of an avian flu epidemic lowered the price of eggs. Will it happen again? We should be laser-focused on keeping Trump to this pledge.

And that’s where the countervailing forces of Trump’s campaign promises kick in.