I keep thinking about a thread I read back in 2016 about a Wall Street guy who said as long as Trump delivers on the economy nothing else matters and he’ll support Trump. He didn’t care about Trump’s racism, apparent incompetence, or dangerous disrespect for the rule of law. 1/13

Wall Street Guy was asked about all of it and his answer was consistently, “I don’t care as long as I’m making money.” The attitude is wrong and infuriating, no need to break that down, but what I keep thinking about is how “penny wise pound foolish” Wall Street Guy was. 2/13

Wall Street Guy selfishly only thought about his own wealth, his own money, his own opportunities to succeed and Wall Street Guy stupidly believed Trump was the best President to deliver that. Wall Street Guy believed Trump’s willingness to deregulate everything was good. 3/13

Good for markets and good for Wall Street Guy and for the first 3 plus years of Trump’s presidency I’m sure Wall Street Guy felt reinforced in his selfish choices, not seeing how short-sighted they were. What Wall Street Guy didn’t see coming was the crisis, the dismantling. 4/13

The pandemic has exposed what many- @sarahkendzior and @leahmcelrath -warned about way before Trump was even elected in 2016, that Trump isn’t about making America great. Trump doesn’t care about Wall Street Guy any more than Trump cares about coal miners or factory workers 5/13

Trump was put in power to strip America down the way corporate raiders would strip down healthy companies with good balance sheets, selling off those companies in pieces for a quick profit. Stripping these companies made a lot of money for a small minority of wealthy elites. 6/13

Most people, even a Wall Street Guy, would get screwed. That is what Trump is doing to America and the pandemic has exposed it bare. It is clear in how Trump has handled the crisis that it is nothing more than an opportunity to sew chaos while funnelling public money 7/13

into private coffers. The chaos and dismantling of American institutions is not going to make the stock market return to record levels, it is going to permenantly damage America. There will be a huge loss from the death, from the unemployment, from the hunger and food lines. 8/13

Other countries will get through the pandemic having minimized the damage to their people, society and economies. Trump will have maximized the damage to America because it provide short-term gains for a small wealthy elite. When the pandemic ends America will be weakened 9/13

And other countries will step in and fill that power vacuum in every sphere where American power has been withered by Trump. Wall Street Guy may still work on Wall Street, but Wall Street will no long be what it was, America will no longer be dominant economy in the world 10/13

And Wall Street Guy, assuming he survives the dismantling of America and isn’t disenfranchised himself, will be making less in a poorer country. He will have less buying power with his weakened American dollar. His life will be poorer because he saw destruction as good. 11/13

Because he selfishly voted for Trump and chose to ignore what was right in front of his face, blinded by his greed, with no respect for leadership or competence or fairness, Wall Street Guy will have hurt himself. People marvel at how working class Americans vote against 12/13

their own self interest. Well every American, rich or poor, except the very smallest minority, less than 1%, voted against their own self interests when they voted for Trump. 13/13

#pennyWisePoundFoolish