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Tuesday
I’m in full proofreading mode for my book (Better Living through Literature) so today’s essay will be short. I was recently struck by a Thom Hartmann substack article on the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Plan and how the billionaires backing it don’t care much for Donald Trump. They just see him as the means to make it happen.
A passage from the piece brought to mind a line from The Importance of Being Earnest. More on that in a moment.
If you don’t know about the plan, it’s essential that you should because it’s a systematic blueprint for ending American democracy, converting it into (in Hartmann’s words) “something like the old Confederacy.” Among its goals are ending public education, criminalizing most forms of birth control, firing thousands of federal civil servants, deporting 10 million+ undocumented immigrants, rolling back LGBTQ+ protections, slashing Medicaid, and on and on.
Step #1, of course, is reelecting Trump and, ideally, a GOP Congress. Hartmann’s column gets interesting when he moves on to step #2, however. To enact the Heritage plan, these billionaires need the right vice-president.
We talk of the V-P choice being Trump’s to make, but Hartmann makes a convincing case that the oligarchs will be doing the deciding. As Hartman observes,
To accomplish a major task like this is going to require a person who’s smart, well-educated, disciplined, wealthy, and utterly without scruples or a moral compass. In other words, JD Vance (or somebody very much like him: Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Elise Stefanik).
In his show The Apprentice, Hartmann points out, we are now learning that everything was scripted and that Trump wasn’t in fact using his (non-existent) business savvy to keep and fire people. Instead, he was provided names ahead of time. And so it will be the case here: Trump will be informed who his vice-president will be and, because he is so desperate for billionaire cash, will say yes to whomever. And here’s where Wilde comes in, with Trump as Gwendolyn and the Heritage folks as Lady Bracknell:
Gwendolyn: I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma. [They rise together.]
Lady Bracknell: Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone. When you do become engaged to someone, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.
So while we’re sure to watch several weeks of Trump teasing us as to whom he’s going to pick—like Gwendolyn, he thinks he has a choice—the script may already have been written. My money is on J.D. Vance, a favorite of billionaire Peter Thiel. Maybe Thiel will even be the one to inform Trump of the fact.
Perhaps over a plate of cucumber sandwiches.