Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

Trump’s “Project 2025” Sings Woody Guthrie’s “Mean Talking Blues”


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Years ago, Woody Guthrie wrote “Mean Talking Blues,” a stinging satire of malicious right-wing officials who take perverse pleasure in demonizing, holding down, and punishing poor people:

“I’m a big disasterJust goin’ some place to happen

I’m an organized famineStudying how I can be a little bit meaner

I laugh my loudestWhen other people cry

I hate everybody don’t think like meI’m just mean.”

What a perfect theme song for Trump’s “Project 2025” – a MAGA crusade to stomp on millions of America’s poorest families, trying to deny them access to the most basic human needs.

Needs like… food. Brooke Rollins, Trump’s multi-millionaire agriculture secretary, made crude political jokes about poor people during the GOP’s government shutdown, laughing as she schemed to cut off their food stamps. She was an “organized famine,” illegally maneuvering to deny food for 42 million hard-hit American citizens.

In addition, Project 2025 operatives want to yank health coverage from the poor – and just for meanness – they propose killing the modest program that helps impoverished families afford to have heat in their homes.

Meanwhile, Trump poses as The Great Gatsby, living in tacky opulence, while ignoring the economic mess and rank inequality created by his Roaring 20s plutocratic presidency. Indeed, the inequality is widening as he doles out hundreds of billions of our tax dollars in new giveaways to billionaires (including to his own sons).

Far from “Making America Great Again,” Trump’s most tangible achievement is to have had the White House’s Lincoln bathroom remodeled. And, in a royal touch, Trump even had a chandelier installed above the toilet. Imagine how proud Honest Abe would be.

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