Thread by @LarryGlickman

I disagree that Trump ran as an "economic populist" in 2016. He called for tax cuts for the rich, opposed increasing the minimum wage (@PeterBeinart says otherwise), & called for eliminating health care for millions. The populism was purely performative.
nybooks.com/daily/2020/11/…

Here's a good @washingtonpost roundup on Trump's minimum wage claims during the 2016 campaign. /2
washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec…

Trump said a bunch of bs stuff about how his taxes would go up, but his proposed plan made clear that it benefitted the wealthy, that it was a typical Republican plan./3
taxfoundation.org/details-analys…

The reason "Ryan wagered that if he swallowed Trump’s racist authoritarianism, Trump would enact his economic vision," is because, with some exceptions, Trump's "economic vision" wasn't fundamentally different from Ryan's. This is why James Baker voted for him as well./4

In a typical speech before the Iowa Caucus in 2016, he called for repealing ACA, condemned debt (“we owe 19 trillion dollars”) & said “the budget that we just approved…funds everything that all of us in this room don’t want to see it fund.” /5
kcci.com/article/donald…

So much of the coverage at the time mistakenly bought into Trump's "populism" as I showed in this thread. /6

https://twitter.com/LarryGlickman/status/1229116772495872002?s=20

Maybe it's true that "Trump didn’t tell Americans that he had embraced Ryan’s take-from-the-poor-and-give-to-the-rich agenda," but it wasn't hard to infer from his platform and his priorities that he would govern that way, as he has./7

The idea that there was some existential ideological conflict between Ryan and Trump is belied by their agreement on goals in Jan 2017: "Ryan, a big fan of charts and wonky policy briefings, said he was inspired by Trump, a builder."/8
politico.com/story/2017/01/…

The article notes that, "Up first on the to-do list, unsurprisingly, was repealing and replacing" ACA. Then, they would work on "tax reform" (read: tax cuts for the rich). Trump said "he would use his bully pulpit" in support which "prompted a standing ovation and cheers."/9

Beinart makes it seem like Trump was some sort of reluctant supporter of the tax cut and taking away health care from millions of precarious Americans. But that's what he ran on! /10