After struggling to find a message that resonated with enough Americans nationally to stop Donald Trump from regaining the presidency, Democrats are listening to old school wisdom from strategist James Carville (“It’s the economy, stupid”) and the Watergate scandal’s evergreen advice (“follow the money”).
Failing to sufficiently characterize Trump, during the election campaign, as a “threat to democracy,” Dems are now uniting behind the idea that the President and his top MAGA advisors are instead a threat to everyone’s financial well-being — a threat Trump pinned effectively on Democrats in November.
(Democracy — endangered or not — is an abstract and nuanced thing, while the amount in people’s savings accounts is more concrete, measurable and important to them.)
The Dems are even using the kind of colloquial language that Trump is so fluent in — and the phrase they’ve landed on is “rip you off.” Trump and his enablers in Congress and oligarchic advisors, Dems say, intend to “rip you off.”
Below is U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) using the “rip you off” terminology to describe what he says are Congressional Republicans and the new administration’s plans to transfer wealth from working class Americans to the “wealthiest individuals who have ever walked this planet.”
Schatz: The drumbeat below all of this has to be, not just that prices aren’t going down, but specifically that the policy of the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans is to rip regular people off. They’re transferring wealth from regular working people, the elderly,… pic.twitter.com/mVTGrLuf7H
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 27, 2025
Shatz decries Trump’s alleged plans to cut “from Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, Social Security—all of that” and transfer, through tax breaks and other maneuvers, that money to the rich. Shatz tries to get the simple “rip off” mantra into the national dialogue, saying: “On some level, we want to keep it extremely simple — They’re ripping you off.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is using the same language to assail what she characterizes as Trump’s fake populism, which while promising price reductions for working class people, instead promotes policies to move wealth to the top of the food chain.
In a recent email to constituents, echoing statements she made on Jon Stewart’s podcast, Ocasio-Cortez wrote:
“All these people who were scared before about being associated with him, from the most common, basic level to the most elite level: they’re all in because this is now a billionaire feeding frenzy.
“What’s really important for people to understand, now and every day of this administration, is that you’re being ripped off.
“Everyone is being ripped off. He goes up there and he says what he wants to say.
“He’s just the quintessential New York con man.”
.@AOC on the dangers of a newly normalized Trump and his billionaire feeding frenzy.
— The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart (@weeklyshowpod) January 23, 2025
New pod out now! #JonStewart #TheWeeklyShow pic.twitter.com/vUPJzin77F
Ocasio-Cortez points to another avenue whereby she alleges Congressional Republicans are enriching themselves via the new administration’s anti-immigration positions.
The Congresswoman says private prison companies that will be critical in Trump’s mass deportation plans are part of the investment portfolios and donor bases of some in Congress who are using their votes to enrich themselves.
AOC: Private prison companies are going to get flooded with money. I want folks at home to look at what members of congress are invested in private prison companies who receive this kind of money and look at the votes on this bill. pic.twitter.com/4KfEKXRk7V
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 22, 2025
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