Bigotry and Flattery Fuel Trump's Campaign
Plus: What is Speaker Johnson willing to sacrifice for Ukraine aid?
Donald Trump claimed to raise more than $50 million at a fundraiser on Saturday. Now he just needs to do that about ten more times to pay off his legal judgments to E. Jean Carroll and the state of New York and he can start raising money for his presidential campaign.
Meanwhile, the latest polls have Trump effectively tied with Joe Biden in the national popular vote, and Trump’s net favorability as about five points better than Biden’s, according to FiveThirtyEight.
No Egger this week—he’s off staring into the sun to deaden the pain of Iowa’s championship loss yesterday to South Carolina. Happy Monday.
Trump’s Party in Palm Beach
Donald Trump raked in big bucks Saturday night. His campaign claimed he raised more than $50 million at the Palm Beach, Florida, house of billionaire John Paulson.
“It’s clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5,” two Trump aides boasted in a statement.
What was that message?
It seems to have been a main course of bigotry with a side dish of flattery.
The flattery first. As the New York Times reports, Trump pandered to the Palm Beach plutocrats: “The most successful people in the whole country are in this room.”
This is the gospel according to Trump. Success is all, and success is wealth. In Trump’s America, wealth is what is to be praised, and the wealthy are to bathe in their own self-regard.
But successful as they are, the plutocrats still need the solicitous help of their government:
Trump also sought to point to parts of his record that could appeal to the wealthy donors in attendance. He highlighted the tax cuts under his administration and asked attendees about whether they had a preference for that measure or his regulations that allowed them to take advantage of specific write-offs.
To the poor and struggling out there who might be seeking assistance? “In America, you make it on your own!” But somehow if you’re super-wealthy, you can always use a bit more help from the government.
But Trump seems to have spent more time Saturday night denigrating poor immigrants than praising the wealthy. After all, part of the pleasure of success consists for some in looking down on the less fortunate.
So in Palm Beach, Trump repeated his oft-expressed claim that those trying to get into the United States are “coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster.”
And Trump referred to an episode during his presidency when, speaking to members of Congress, he described Haiti and some African nations as “shithole countries” compared with places like Norway.
“And when I said, you know, Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice,” Mr. Trump said at the dinner, to chuckles from the crowd. “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
The chuckling attendees appear to have thought that this denigration of struggling immigrants was fine.
It’s surprising, in a way, because some of the attendees, judging from their last names, are not sons and daughters of the American Revolution. Some may well be children or grandchildren of people who came here, fleeing persecution or seeking a better life, from countries that weren’t “nice.” Some of those in attendance in Palm Beach were not part of the Teutonic or Aryan or Nordic races that Trump, reviving a tradition of American racialism that flourished a century ago, favors.
For example, Paulson, Trump’s host, is the son of immigrants from Ecuador and Eastern Europe. His parents came from places and ethnic groups Donald Trump would have denigrated. And Trump wishes to make it more difficult for others to follow in their footsteps.
Political leaders once tried to urge the wealthy to look beyond their immediate comfort, to act for the greater good, not to pull the ladder of opportunity and advancement up after them. And the more responsible of the wealthy themselves criticized the inevitable temptation to wallow in smug self-regard and indulge in fanciful grievances. But not in Trump’s America.
—William Kristol
Catching up. . .
Israel announces withdrawal from Khan Younis: CNN
Biggest 2020 Trump donor hasn’t given anything yet: WSJ
Trump has another magical mystery deal, this time on abortion: Politico
How the Nebraska legislature could pick the next president: USA Today
Trump’s bold new Ukraine strategy—surrender: Washington Post
Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro contradicts Biden’s natural gas plan: Financial Times
Quick Hits
1. Biden is tough on China
This is a two-parter. The first is that AUKUS, the defense cooperation agreement among the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia that the Biden administration negotiated in 2021, may choose to include Japan in some of the pact’s technology sharing agreements. The Financial Times reports:
The Aukus defence ministers will announce on Monday that they will launch talks related to Pillar II of the alliance, which involves collaboration on technologies such as undersea capabilities and hypersonic weapons, according to people familiar with the situation. They are not considering expanding Pillar I, which focuses on Australia’s procurement of nuclear-powered submarines.
The statement will come just before US President Joe Biden hosts Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a summit at the White House on Wednesday and a historic US-Japan-Philippines trilateral meeting on Thursday. The US and Japan will on Wednesday announce that they are planning the biggest upgrade to their security alliance since 1960.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was in Guanzhou to warn the Chinese government about its support for Russia in its war against Ukraine. Per the New York Times:
Ms. Yellen also warned her counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng, that Chinese companies could face “significant consequences” if they provided material support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, according to a Treasury Department summary released on Saturday of two days of talks in the southern city of Guangzhou.
The meetings on Friday and Saturday were an effort by the world’s two largest economies to address trade and geopolitical disputes as the countries try to steady a relationship that hit a low last year.
. . .
Beyond economic issues, Ms. Yellen and Mr. He discussed Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing concern in the United States that Chinese companies were helping to support Moscow’s military. The Biden administration has already been imposing trade restrictions on Chinese companies that it has accused of violating U.S. sanctions.
Flashback to 2020: “Pro-Trump Group Tries to Portray Biden as Soft on China.”
2. Is Speaker Johnson about to Lankford himself?
“Lankford” is the term for when a legislator tries to do something responsible and it winds up ruining their career. Johnson has already come close—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to vacate the chair after Johnson allowed a government funding provision to pass the House with more votes from Democrats than Republicans. Now, Johnson is going back for seconds, according to the Wall Street Journal:
Embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) has pledged to bring up Ukraine aid for a vote in the House soon after Congress returns from Easter recess in coming days. But what the bill will look like—and who will support it—remains unsettled due to fractures among Republicans and Democrats over both aid for Kyiv and related assistance for Israel.
The Senate passed a $95 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan in February with bipartisan support. Johnson has resisted calls from defense hawks of both parties to simply bring the Senate bill up for a vote in the House, saying his chamber will move forward with its own bill that would add “some important innovations” not included in the Senate version.
In a tacit acknowledgment of the tricky political terrain, Johnson has said he was weighing splitting up Ukraine aid and Israel aid so that lawmakers can vote on each element separately. Doing so could maximize Democratic votes for Ukraine, which accounts for about $60 billion of the package, while allowing some Republicans to vote for Israel aid, even if they don’t support more money for Ukraine.
Our friends at Republicans for Ukraine are giving Johnson some encouragement. So are former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Hudson Institute chief John Walters. In an April 1 letter to Johnson, they wrote:
We encourage you to lead with conviction and bring the aid package to a vote.
We understand the pressure in an election year to set aside national defense issues “over there” for the sake of domestic needs here. But none of our challenges at home will be made better by abandoning our Allies at this time of great need, when they are staring down enemies of the free world.
Johnson, despite his poor voting record on Ukraine aid bills, has made a series of positive comments about the need to help Ukraine defend itself. Let’s see he can make his actions match his words.
Cheap Shots
When Americans move to some place like Denmark, the Danes ask "Why are all those people from shithole countries moving here?"
There are, of course, many holes in the immigration views of those openly practicing "smug self-regard," as Mr. Kristol rightly describes it. Perhaps too many to count in their Swiss cheese orientation. Among the inconvenient truths: many of their forefathers did indeed come from what were deemed undesirable nations or territories at the time. Some managed to sneak in, through Ellis Island and other ports of embarkation, with falsified or no paperwork. Some married others within those classes of undesirables. Some abused their workers to build their fortunes, in an era when labor laws and trade unions still were nonexistent. Some/many/most do not pay all of their required taxes and otherwise find high-priced accounting talent to identify loopholes, shade the paperwork, and generally work the system to their advantage. And on and on and on.
Wiser people would look at immigrants as a source of opportunity, not a dark stain on our national character. We seldom seek our immigrants out -- they usually choose us. But they are bringing things with them, not in possessions and material wealth, rather in knowledge, experience, trade skills, and the willingness to work hard -- often harder than we will ourselves -- and do the dirty jobs that none of us want in a nation where we often have other, better options. Yet somebody needs to do that work, and to a level of quality that we can rely upon as we make our other plans. It's okay to say that we need to be firm but fair on the border issue yet also acknowledge that we are better off for having on our side the best and the brightest of those coming to us from oppression elsewhere. The glass is half-full on the immigration issue if one opts to see it that way.