The Trump Administration may have ended, but the press’s attempts to excuse Trumpism as “economic anxiety” haven’t.
And today it’s not coming from the NYT, it’s coming from the usually more sensible WaPo:
Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.
The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.
The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.
OK, so how to interpret that information? The rest of the article seems to operate under the assumption that these specific financial troubles cause Trumpism, while failing to entertain the thought that maybe it’s the reverse: people who like Trump have certain underlying characteristics that also lead them to be in financial trouble.
Does it really make sense that people in financial trouble turned to Trump because of their financial trouble? It’s not like Trump supported policies of debt forgiveness, easy loans for the bankrupt, eviction waivers, etc.
It’s probably far simpler. The January 6th insurrectionists love Trump because they feel Trump is just like them: a pathological narcissist with poor impulse control. Or to put it less charitably: an idiot asshole grifter who does whatever the fuck he wants, thinking he won’t have to face consequences. And someone with those characteristics is, like Trump, more likely to get into financial difficulties than a sensible person.
A sensible, decent person facing financial difficulties and wanting to alleviate those difficulties would not travel all the way to DC and then join a riot trying to overthrow the government, which puts zero money in their pockets. But would an idiot asshole grifter who does whatever the fuck he wants, thinking he won’t have to face consequences? Absolutely.
And that also explains why the insurrectionists took private jets they couldn’t afford, wore easy to identify clothes, posted their crimes on social media, etc.
