WASHINGTON – So, to quote that leading light and respected political philosopher Sarah Palin, “How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for ya?’’
From all early indications, not so well, unless, of course, playing kissy-face with the Russian bear, replacing a half-way decent health care law with a fraud that would delight Bernie Madoff, a return to the dirty air and polluted waters of the 19th Century and the prospect of what the experts call hostilities are the sort of things that get your heart to palpitating.
Nope, the first two months of Trump World have proved even worse than projected, and that’s a scary proposition since President Donald J. Trump, who assumed office Jan. 20, was considered the American Nero before he moved bag and baggage, crib and cribbage, into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The only way things could be rockier is if the new president moved the White House atop a gravel pit.
Don’t put it past him.
But there’s at least one place on the map of the U.S. of A. where the populist billionaire – and, yes, that is a contradiction in terms – remains the savior who will pump thousands of jobs into a moribund economy and, in the process, make America great again. That would be the Commonwealth of Kentucky, where The Donald was greeted like Woodrow Truesmith in Hail the Conquering Hero during a delirious rally at Freedom Hall in Louisville earlier this week.
President Donald Trump continued his push to repeal and replace “Obamacare,” speaking Monday at a rally in Kentucky (Kentucky Today Photo)
No talk about an FBI probe or the office holder’s outrageous claim that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, tapped his phones at the Trump Tower in Manhattan during the presidential campaign for reasons unknown. All the brouhaha revolved around empty promises, self-aggrandizement and the usual Trump three-card monte game that keeps the rubes throwing down them five dollar bills.
It was, by all accounts, the sort of adulation usually reserved for the moment the University of Kentucky basketball team takes the court. And Trump, as is his wont, soaked it up, embracing the plaudits like Louisvillian Muhammed Ali after he bested Sonny Liston for the first time. An outsider never would have known that the latest Gallup Poll determined that only 40 percent of those questioned approve of the president’s job performance while 55 percent disapprove, a 15-point gap.
And that’s an improvement. A few days earlier Trump’s popularity was down to 37 percent – lower than the number Obama faced at any time during his presidency.
There’s no data to show otherwise and it should be noted that anecdotal evidence can only rarely be trusted, but it appears the commonwealth remains an outlier when it comes to Trump, sticking with the obvious grafter and national embarrassment despite mounting evidence that he is, dangerously, out of his element.
And that dedication comes despite steps the president is taking that will do real harm to the Bluegrass. His “skinny’’ budget, an outline of what he officially intends to offer later in the spring, essentially eliminates the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has poured millions of dollars in economic development funds into some of the nation’s poorest counties in Eastern Kentucky.
The same goes for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides significant content to KET, the prime medium that links this diverse state together.
The American Health Care Act, the Republican plan to replace Obamacare that carries Trump’s full support, repeals the current law requiring Medicaid to cover addiction and mental health services in the 31 states – including Kentucky – that signed up for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. That is particularly problematic in many Kentucky counties where opioid addiction – particularly involving OxyContin – has reached epidemic proportions.
It’s hard to tell, given the results of the last three presidential elections, whether Kentucky voters love them some Trump or hate Barack Obama more. Early returns show that Trump is harming the commonwealth to a substantially greater degree than Obama ever contemplated.
The AHCA – which has earned the sobriquet Trumpcare – could conceivably lead to 24 million people losing their health care coverage, according to a report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Since 500,000 Kentuckians have benefitted from the plan put in place under Obamacare, it’s reasonable to deduce that hundreds of thousands in the commonwealth could be affected.
Rural hospitals throughout the state might also be disturbed. Before Obamacare, those without health insurance would often seek medical attention in emergency rooms and then ignore the resulting bill. A report released by The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky determined that charity care provided by the commonwealth’s hospitals dropped 76.9 percent from 2012 to 2015, resulting in a savings of about $2 billion per year. Reducing the number of individuals with some form of health insurance will throw that entire system out of whack.
And what benefit will the good people of Kentucky realize from all this? An unwanted, unnecessary and silly wall on the southern border for the purpose of keeping brown people out. It also, presumably, will help fund the president’s constant sojourns to Mar-a-Lago so he can take advantage of the pristine conditions on his golf course.
It’s hard to tell, given the results of the last three presidential elections, whether Kentucky voters love them some Trump or hate Barack Obama more. Early returns show that Trump is harming the commonwealth to a substantially greater degree than Obama ever contemplated. Yet there they were, thousands of Kentuckians, some of whom arrived hours ahead of time to cheer on their false prophet as if the Wildcats had just clipped Duke at the buzzer. Even killing Osama bin Laden failed to bring Bluegrass denizens to their feet in Obama’s behalf.
The question is why, particularly since the list of Trump’s boldfaced lies outstripped Pinocchio’s nose in the first few moments of his administration. As op-ed columnist David Leonhardt pointed out recently in the New York Times, President Donald J. Trump “lies in ways that no American politician ever has before.’’
He has lied about Obama’s birthplace, insisting it was Kenya as opposed to Hawaii, and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination – hinting that the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, was somehow involved. He said Muslims celebrated in the streets of Jersey City on 9/11, and he has told wild whoppers about Mexican immigrants, the unemployment rate, the murder rate and just about everything one can imagine.
As Mary McCarthy once famously said about Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.’’
Yet there they were, screaming like teenage girls with tickets to catch The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. They are mostly white men who have somehow convinced themselves that Trump is the one who will reaffirm their status in the social hierarchy, bringing back the mining and manufacturing jobs that the under-educated have turned to for decades to eke out a reasonable living and provide for their families.
Those supporters can only shun reality for so long. There’s no reason to believe the coal mining sector is going to rise like Lazarus, particularly in Eastern Kentucky where retrieving the remaining coal simply isn’t cost effective. But there stands the president, making promises he can’t keep. And his supporters eating it up.
So much for hopey-changey.
Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.
