Donald Trump would never admit that his base of loyal followers is shrinking, but he is behaving like he knows it is. As his people quietly sneak out the back door, following the likes of Ron DeSantis, Trump is playing an old card with a shiny new face on it in. He’s going big.
In 2016, that card was The Big Beautiful Wall. Now, in the runup to the Republican primaries for 2024, Trump has replaced that card with an even bigger one touting brand new “Freedom Cities” – up to ten shiny new metropolises built with streets named after American Patriots and flying cars navigating the skies above. Generous rewards, he tells us, will be doled out to couples who populate these cities with lots of new babies, preferably all white ones. Okay, the ‘all white’ part is strictly my interpretation, but I honestly think it’s there in the subtext. The rest of the concept is exactly as described by the ex-president himself at CPAC yesterday.
It’s almost as if the nonexistent Big Beautiful Wall is to be broken into ten smaller ones encircling these new cities, ensuring that the evil woke population, the Marxists that so viciously dominate our current cities, will be kept away, living out their sad final days in those failing, crime-infested swamps—wretched hives of laziness and debauchery like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.
The new utopian breeding grounds, Trump declares, will be built on undeveloped Federal land that he creatively calls “The Frontier.” Never mind that this would require massive new infrastructure where none exists today and would cost untold trillions. Never mind that the scheme smells pungently of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s proposed breakup of America into red and blue enclaves. And never mind that it would likely be attempted without the slightest regard for the natural environment. Oh yes, and the fact that it’s fundamentally batshit crazy.
Even not being much of a betting man, I’d be willing to lay odds that Mexico won’t pay for it. Ah, but here’s an idea that might appeal to Trump: let’s give all our dilapidated Marxist-dominated cities to Mexico in exchange for free labor building new ones for us. We can easily deport the workers after everything is done, either to Mexico or the old cities. MAGA! Of course, all construction work not manageable by the unskilled Mexicans would go through The Trump Organization. And any need for Federal funds to make up the slack would easily be offset by the trickle-down effects of huge new tax cuts for large real estate developers.
If you’ll allow me a momentary switch of metaphors that I just can’t help making… Like The Big Beautiful Wall before it, Trump’s promise of Freedom Cities is one giant piece of stinking bait. He knows this, but he hopes his followers won’t see the hook, just like last time. And more to the point, he hopes the intense smell will tempt some of the newly disloyal ones to come swimming back.
Trump is the king of hyperbole and flat-out lies, so it’s unlikely that any competing candidate will be able to outdo him at this game. His strategy can be summed up by the tired old cliché, “Go big or go home,” and it might just work in the primaries. But in the general election, we can only hope that the result will be more like “Go big AND go home.”