Trump is a magician whose only magic trick is convincing a group of backwater racists that he shares the same values as they do. Trump has mastered the art of tapping into their racist beliefs, thereby convincing them that he’s one of them, when in fact, he’s never been one of them. He grew up rich, dodged the Vietnam War and inherited the majority of his wealth. Trump’s true allegiance has always been to Trump and his willingness to maintain that allegiance is not rooted in American values. Trump will sell himself to the highest bidder no matter where they are from.
The magic of Trumpism is that his followers actually believe that the huckster is a true patriot, just because he hates what they hate. So, because he’s willing to rip migrant children away from their parents at the borders or rage against black NFL protesters who want to see an end to police violence against African Americans, he’s one of them.
Except when it comes to Trump’s businesses. For years, Trump—whose wife Melania is an immigrant whose parents are also permanent, legal residents and yet no one knows how this happened—has used labor outside of the United States to make his shitty wares (remember the historic television moment when David Letterman called Trump out for having his ties made in China?)
So the news isn’t shocking, although it should be, that while the Trump administration and their zero-tolerance border policy left some 3,000 migrant children in custody with no idea how to reconnect them with their family, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, in Palm Beach, Fla., is looking “to hire 61 foreign workers to serve as waiters and cooks during the winter social season,” the Washington Post reports.
And yet, Trump’s base is not screaming about jobs being taken from Americans!
There aren’t any Trump supporters talking about how this goes against the fabric of what America was built on. There have been no segments on Fox News exploring the shift in Florida economics when foreign workers take jobs from Americans. Because it’s all bullshit—all the faux outrage and drummed-up drama; all of Trump’s rants about murders and MS-13 and Mexican rapists is all bullshit and that’s the magic of Trump—his ability to say one thing while doing another and never losing his connection to the base. They don’t hold him accountable for anything. In fact, Trump has made following a Trump news cycle an Olympic event. What he says Monday holds absolutely no weight on Tuesday and no one who supports him cares.
So Trump’s shitty elitist club with tons of health code violations is looking to hire 21 cooks and 40 waiters and waitresses all from overseas to work October to May and then, once their work is finished, they will be asked to return home. And no one inside the Trump administration thinks this is a bad look? Just the optics of this would be jarring for any other administration, considering how unwavering this one has been on immigration, except when it concerns the president’s family or business interests.
“The postings show that—despite Trump’s insistence that immigration is holding down wages and crowding out native-born American workers—his club believes it cannot find any Americans in South Florida who are qualified to hold two very common restaurant-industry jobs,” the Washington Post reports.
The Mar-a-Lago Club is not only looking to hire workers from overseas, they’re looking to pay them less than they did just a year ago. Here’s how the Post breaks it down:
These postings give some hints about the business Trump’s company expects at Mar-a-Lago this year—and also about what it is willing to pay workers, in a time of slowly rising wages.
This year’s postings show Trump’s club wants to hire one more foreign cook than last year. But it is seeking to pay those cooks slightly less than in 2017: the posting says Mar-a-Lago’s pay for cooks starts at $13.31 per hour, down 3 cents from the year before.
The posting for waiters shows Trump wants to hire five more foreigners for those jobs than in 2017. The base salary his club is offering to waiters is higher in 2018: It rose from $11.88 per hour last year to $12.68 per hour this year.
The Post notes that after Trump noted that tiki-torch-wielding white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., were “very fine people,” many longtime charity clients quit hosting events at Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has called his “Winter White House.” Now the club’s ballrooms have been rented out by “Young Republicans, the Christian Broadcasting Network and a group of superfans called ‘Trumpettes USA,’” the Post reports.
I guess the one really shocking thing here is that nothing is shocking here. Trump will continue to do what he always does, which is speaking out of one side of his ass while being spanked on the other with a rolled-up Forbes magazine. And no one: not a Republican, not his followers, not the 53 percent of white woman who voted against their self-interests, can explain how any of this makes sense.