Sorry, people: Donnie is a Trumpist, not a populist

Sorry, people: Donnie is a Trumpist, not a populist

"There’s not a single populist muscle in Donnie’s whole plutocratic body. He will sell out wage earners, small-business people and anyone else to serve his own needs or whims, as his lifelong record (as opposed to his recent rhetoric) reveals. Donnie learned from Daddy Fred, who built his son’s inherited fortune by milking federal housing programs in the 1940s and ’50s and then, as the landlord of these New York City apartments, flagrantly discriminated against black applicants. One of Fred’s tenants was Woody Guthrie, who grew so appalled, he wrote about Trump’s greed and racism. Donnie has enhanced his fortune by emulating his father’s business ethics, including engaging in wage theft, outsourcing his clothing line and other brand-name products to such low-wage countries as China and Vietnam and underpaying undocumented immigrants engaged in dangerous construction work on his luxury projects. Also, as of this summer, Trump or his companies were defendants in 1,300 lawsuits — many of which were over stiffing cabinetmakers, plumbers and other small business suppliers. Candidate Trump grandiosely says he’ll lift up the middle class, but his proposed economic policies would do the opposite by expanding the GOP’s old anti-labor agenda: giving massive new tax cuts to corporations and the rich, slashing public spending on programs that working families rely on and embracing the laissez-faire ideological claptrap that Tea Party Republicans mindlessly repeat in their ceaseless efforts to drive down wages."