Donald Trump said yesterday that he’d soon ask Congress to pay to build a wall on the Mexican border, a seeming reversal from his campaign promise to build the wall at the expense of Mexico.
An outpouring of criticism promoted Trump to revise his Twitter post to say he’d get Mexico to pay for the wall later, something Mexican leadership has said will never happen. Trump hasn’t said how he’d coerce the $10 billion or so out of Mexico.
It is government by Tweeting buffoonery. And it hasn’t even officially started yet.
Many voters don’t seem concerned about this or any of the other gaps in what Trump says and what the facts say.
One of the most depressing stories I’ve read today was on Vox, which sent Sarah Kliff to a county in Kentucky that has had a 60 percent reduction in uninsured thanks to Obamacare. It voted 82 percent for Trump, including a woman who signed up hundreds of people to Obamacare coverage, despite his vow to repeal Obamacare.
The core of the disconnect seems to be this: The people who voted for Trump seem to think he’s so smart he has a way (if unrevealed as yet) to provide them cheaper insurance with lower deductibles at a lower cost to the government and, not incidentally, do something about all the unworthy poor people they believe are getting health coverage for nothing.
Better insurance for less for the consumer and government is not in the cards in a Trump administration or any administration that is reality-based. (Although I’d like to see the numbers on the holy grail — a single-payer insurance system.)