A Grifter Faking It

Recent Arrests of Foreign Students

Our Grifter-in-Chief  (GC) has recently had a number of foreign students and professionals arrested ostensibly because of their views on war in Gaza. The GC’s excuse is that their presence in this country is a danger to American foreign policy, but that excuse is so ludicrous that it can only be thought of as a fig-leaf to cover his illegal actions. In an earlier post on this blog, I said that the purpose of these arrests was to stifle dissent by showing that the GC can make dissent very expensive for any dissenter. That is true, but it is not the whole story.

To stifle dissent, the GC would not have had to focus on arresting foreign residents. Using appropriate, legal excuses, he could just as easily arrest American citizens, and doing so might have been even more effective for suppressing dissent. However, the GC chose to arrest foreign students because he has another motive: he wants to appear to fulfill his promise to deport aliens from the United States while not really deporting very many of them. 

The GC Made a Promise That He Can't Keep Right Now

In his election campaign, he promised to deport millions of undocumented people, but as president, he appears to be reluctant to undertake deportations on such a grand scale. There are two reasons for his reluctance. First, deportations of millions of people would be very expensive and would interfere with his goal of reducing federal income taxes. He won't be able to persuade the deficit hawks in Congress to accept the tax cuts unless he also cuts government spending, and he won't be able to do that while paying for the deportation of millions of people. 

The second reason for the GC's reluctance is that deporting millions of workers would generate strong opposition from some important supporters of the Republican Party. Farmers and owners of other agricultural businesses would not want to lose their work forces, and merchants in small towns would not want to lose their customers. 

The GC Pretends to Keep His Promise

So, the GC is in a bind. If he deports millions of undocumented workers, he will generate strong opposition among his supporters. On the other hand, if he fails to deport people, he will lose the support of many voters who voted for him because he promised to deport millions of people. His solution to this dilemma is to pretend to keep his promise. He arrests a few hundred Venezuelans and ships them to El Salvador, and he arrests a few hundred graduate students and professionals. He conducts a few raids in urban areas that usually vote for Democrats. In total, the government says that it has arrested about 30,000 people, but the GC has avoided arresting millions of people in factories, fruit fields or dairy farms. Thus, he can appear to be keeping his promise, and he avoids alienating his supporters.

At the same time, he furthers his progress toward his main goal, which is to lower income taxes for himself and other billionaires. He knows that the deficit hawks in his party won’t let him do that unless he can cut the cost of the federal government by trillions of dollars. So, Elon Musk is working as quickly as he can to fire thousands of federal employees, and the GC will propose a budget that includes big cuts to programs like Medicaid on which many of his working-class supporters depend. He knows that this is no time for him to propose the billions of dollars in new expenditures that deportation of millions of people would cost. So, he fakes it.

Maybe Later

If he succeeds in lowering the income tax rates for billionaires and if he succeeds in suppressing political dissent, he may get serious about deporting the millions of undocumented workers in the United States, but even then, I wouldn't count on it. Deporting millions of workers would be contrary to his policy of trying to revive American manufacturing. He will not be able to persuade people to build factories in the United States if there are not enough workers to staff those factories. I don't know whether the goal of deporting undocumented workers is more important to him than the goal of reviving American manufacturing. Only time will tell. In the meantime, expect him to continue to fake it.