Donald Trump Is Just the Front Man for a Massive Heist

Republicans are also poised to tax Americans on the income used to pay for state and local taxes, while allowing corporations to deduct those same taxes. Trump's major contribution has been to push for measures--elimination of the estate tax, elimination of the alternative minimum tax, lower taxes on "pass through" income--that will fill his own pockets.

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Trump has also turned his economic policy over to Goldman Sachs bankers who are propelling deregulation of finance and rollback of environmental and consumer protections. Trump's cabinet isn't a bunch of outsiders but made up for the most part 0f Republican politicians and donors eager for the assignment. Now they're plundering the executive branch. Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, is about to disembowel the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Scott Pruitt has neutered the Environmental Protection Agency. Jeff Sessions is leading a rollback of civil rights and criminal justice reform.

Beyond the economy, Republicans are busy rigging the system in other critical ways. Young, right-wing, pro-corporate ideologues are packing federal courts at alarming rates. Trump makes the appointments, but he mainly draws from lists prepared by the right-wing Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. After obstructing a record number of Obama nominees to the federal bench, Senate Republicans are now trampling over longstanding legislative procedures to get as many judges on the bench as quickly as possible.

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What we face in Washington and in statehouses across the country is a right wing that's ideologically committed to laying waste to the public sphere--the sinews of our economy, the comity of our politics, and the quality of our most basic public services. Trump isn't the exception; he's simply the sideshow. Right-wing populism was just the garb he donned for the campaign. What's left of it is largely limited to his incoherent trade posturing and the wall.