Cities and Counties Should Not Do Business With Trump

October 18, 2024
Jack R. Noel

It’s because of years of news coverage of peace rallies and civil rights rallies that we have come to believe that Congress responds to “civil pressure” but only in the form of demonstrations (which we know often turn into illegal riots when news coverage switches deftly to scenes of police beating violent rioters),

I think Donald Trump was told how he could use rallies to drum up support for his “ideas” which turn out to be Looney Tunes ideas. One immediately thinks of Elmer Fudd going after Bugs Bunny with an outsize shotgun and chanting, “Im going kill the wabbit… for you.”

Trump plays on people’s frustrations. A normal person seeks to explain how citizens have the power to get our political representatives to create laws that will deal with those frustrations, like the difficulty in getting a living wage. The problem is that this calls for actions people don’t have much faith in. It just seems easier to drive to a rallying point and make a lot of angry noises and gestures. “Now that’s really getting things done.”

But Trump is now making a mistake which may destroy his best tool, calling for rallies. He’s refusing to pay for city services as the sites of his rallies. We all saw the failure of police and Secret Service…