As the Ultra-Wealthy Rally Behind Trump, Republicans Pitch Fake Populism to Workers

As the world’s wealthiest people were lining up behind former President Donald Trump’s candidacy, the Republican Party served up hours of programming at its convention designed to woo the working class with (mostly) fake populism. 

During the first day of the Republican National Convention, the theme was “Make America Wealthy Again.” The evening’s program was a calibrated pitch to the working class — with speakers and video messages repeatedly slamming President Joe Biden over inflation, higher gas prices and grocery bills, and credit card debt. 

Consistent with Trump’s attempts to court blue-collar workers and union members, two union leaders spoke at the event — including Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters. O’Brien made the most of the historic opportunity, slamming corporate lobbying groups and companies like Amazon, Uber, and Lyft for failing to provide benefits to their workers. 

For the most part, though, the event featured complaints about the Biden economy — and little talk about solutions to help workers besides a brief mention of Trump’s dodgy “no tax on tips” promise. The RNC platform, borrowed from Trump, is equally thin on substance. It frequently recognizes the real problems Americans are facing, but primarily gives them people — immigrants — to scapegoat instead of a real, better path forward. 

That makes sense: Republicans’ messaging, the RNC platform, and the entire Trump campaign are about meeting people where they are and giving them resentment politics to chew on, while actively selling government policy to the highest bidders. So far, the donor promises have included maintaining low taxes on the wealthy, further slashing the corporate tax rate, ending scrutiny of cryptocurrency companies, eliminating Biden environmental regulations, and speeding up corporate mergers.  

For all the economically populist rhetoric offered by Trump and his cohorts, the Republicans and former economic advisers in his administration who’ve remained in close contact with Trump himself know that much of what Trump stands for is in line with what the Republican elite has pushed for decades, especially when it comes to worker protections.

Indeed, as the Trump RNC welcomes in key union leaders and attempts to poach a core Democratic constituency, one outside adviser who counsels Trump on economic issues tells Rolling Stone that within the past several months, the former president has privately discussed how much of a “disaster” the Biden-era National Labor Relations Board has become — beholden, in Trump’s assessment, to the kind of Democratic-backing labor union leaders who despise Trump. This source adds that Trump agreed the NLRB needed to be returned to being “pro-business” the way it was when he was in power.

It’s no accident that during the first day of the RNC, The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth, is planning to donate a staggering $45 million per month to a Trump super PAC — or that the same Trump group is being funded by the CEO of coal company Alliance Resource Partners, the co-founder of military spy tech contractor Palantir Technologies, and the billionaire crypto-loving Winklevoss twins.

There was an implicit message in Trump selecting as his vice presidential nominee Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a hillbilly turned venture capitalist beloved by GOP megadonors. 

Occasionally, the facade cracked Monday night — such as when the RNC welcomed uber-wealthy Silicon Valley investor David Sacks onstage to complain about “homeless encampments” in San Francisco and “illegal migrants.” Trumpian resentment politics have never sounded quite so distasteful.

The rest of the speakers were not so off-putting, as their sleight of hand was less obvious.

“Grocery prices are up more than 21 percent. Electricity is up 31 percent. Gas is up 48 percent. Mortgage rates have more than doubled, and rent is skyrocketing,” said Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.). “To me, these aren’t just numbers. This is pain for millions of Americans. It means that so many American families have to live with so much less.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said the MAGA GOP is “dedicated to the forgotten man and woman.” She accused the Biden IRS of unfairly targeting “gig workers, freelancers, and the self employed,” after complaining about the agency supposedly hiring 85,000 more workers; an RNC video message similarly fear-mongered about Biden creating “a new army of IRS agents.”

To the extent the IRS is staffing up, it’s to scrutinize wealthy tax cheats.

As country musician Lee Greenwood introduced Trump at the convention near the end of the night, the RNC’s populist messaging took a beautifully mindless turn, as Greenwood declared that Americans can now choose, with a vote for Trump, “more prosperity, less gas prices, less food prices.” 

That sounds nice. Just don’t think too hard.