Trump as president is going to cost America a pretty penny. We already have the evidence: the cost of Trump’s family affairs to American taxpayers have been making headlines with Eric Trump’s $100,000 business trip and an estimated $1 million/day spent to protect the Trump’s family (and his Tower) in NYC.
The president has refused to release his tax returns and we know it’s to hide information the American people would not like. The little bit we do know about him is that he likely has avoided paying federal taxes — for about 20 years. And when Hillary Clinton suggested it during a debate, Trump haughtily replied that makes him smart.
I normally would not use the term “welfare queen” — mostly because it’s a really awful, racist stereotype used by conservatives to rile up hatred against Black people and people on social assistance. But Trump is forcing me to make an exception.
The nefarious “welfare queen” is a concept coined by Ronald Reagan on the national stage during his 1976 presidential campaign. He used tales about Chicago woman Linda Taylor to shock and anger White America about lazy (Black) people living off the taxes paid by hardworking Americans like them. In a Slate article about Taylor as the “original welfare queen”:
“In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record,” the former California governor declared at a campaign rally in January 1976. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” As soon as he quoted that dollar amount, the crowd gasped.
It’s funny because the welfare queen is coded as a Black woman, but Taylor — his favorite example of a supposed “broken welfare state” — actually was a white woman. But reality is irrelevant here; the racist assumptions of America was enough to do the damage. The idea of an epidemic of lazy Black women having multiple children to live off social assistance programs may be factually wrong, but it’s effective. Racist white Americans are too excited to have an excuse to support their racism — facts be damned.
So thanks to these assholes we now have the epitome of the selfish person who unabashedly games the system for their benefit — on America’s dime. Trump’s federal taxes would have gone to support the government he now leads. Instead this man is nominating people to head agencies he’s actively avoided paying into while bringing in (unelected) family members who’ll now save money when their ventures are taxpayer-funded.
If there’s anyone who deserves the ire of Americans for wasting our money, it should be Trump and his family. While they rake in more cash and gain power both in the political and business worlds through Trump’s election, the rest of us are picking up the bill for their lavish living and out-of-touch governance. It’s bad enough to have this racist rapist of a Cheeto as the leader of this country, but knowing that the millions of poorer Americans who have probably been paying more federal taxes than him will suffer under his policies is particularly infuriating. I’m sure the Eric Trump-like trips are just the beginning. I have a feeling his man and his family really know how to run up a tab.