This week, Donald Trump did something pretty rare, for him: He announced that he’s doing something to help someone else out for a change.
If there is any knock on the guy, it’s that most of his attention is taken up by self-serving pursuits: selling digital trading cards of a buffed-up cartoon version of himself, $80 bourbon tasting sets and a veritable grab-bag of other Chinese-made, Trump-branded paraphernalia—or simply playing $18 million worth of golf. But finally he’s stepped out of his comfort zone! You see, it seems his new BFF Elon Musk’s car company has been really taking a digger in the ol’ stock market. So Trump did a little “selfless”-promotion for Tesla on Tuesday—in front of the White House.
You don’t have to ask the guy twice to climb into a vehicle awkwardly and pretend he’s a big boy driver, after all.
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Long story short, Donald Trump is buying a self-driving electric car. The kind he’s spent the last 10 years making fun of as a “hoax”—and telling his supporters to hate. He’s claimed electric cars only go 15 miles. On inauguration day, he promised to repeal a fictitious electric car mandate. During Christmas two years ago, while in a particularly festive mood, he told the “all electric car lunacy” crowd to “ROT IN HELL.”
This sudden change of heart makes me think of an old poker adage: “If you’ve been at the table for 10 minutes and you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.”
We’re well past the 10-minute mark of Trump’s latest presidency. (Can never rule out another one, can we? He certainly won’t.) So it’s time to ask: Who’s the sucker at this table?
Is it Trump for hypocritically reversing one of his deeply held beliefs? Is it the Republican politicians and pundits who must now turn themselves inside out, reversing their deeply held beliefs to keep up? Is it Musk watching his company lose 50 percent of its value since December? Is it the “woke libs” now stuck with cars they bought to virtue-signal their love of the environment, but which are now an expensive object of scorn and ridicule?
All of the above. But also none of the above. Because, while our Great and Powerful Leader is playing CarMax on the White House lawn, he’s also perpetrating trade wars that have sparked chaos and collapse at the intersection of Wall and Main Streets. The soybean farmers who voted for him in South Dakota are left wondering who will buy their crops. Midwestern auto-workers are facing a possible 25 percent hike in electricity costs. Retirees in Florida and Arizona are suddenly worrying about their Social Security payments. Even The Wall Street Journal is predicting a recession.
But Trump’s approval numbers are still in the high forties. I’m by no means the first to point out that he has a unique ability to remain popular with a steady chunk of this country; even at his lowest approval rating—mere days after fomenting a violent attack on the Capitol, if you can remember that far back—34 percent of the US still “approved” of him. A third of the country! Even jovial, now-amateur-portraitist George W. Bush got down to the low twenties, and he was the guy everyone wanted to have a beer with.
While one in three Americans proudly goes around repeating that slogan and wearing the merch, Trump is buying a $114,000 electric car from his billionaire bestie and telling us all to “shut up” about the price of eggs. Musk might have lost as much as $100 billion recently, but he’s still the richest person in the world by almost that much again. And what does Trump get, besides a car that in his mind only goes 15 miles? Another “donation” of $100 million.
I know we’re not supposed to condescend to the MAGA faithful. Or suggest in any way that the people who helped elect him aren’t smart. They are not stupid. They are not racist. They are not deplorable.
You know what they are, though? The suckers at the table.
