Before Trump criticized the urban poverty he uses to attack Democrats, he profited from it

Before Trump criticized the urban poverty he uses to attack Democrats, he profited from it
The president's transparently dishonest attacks on cities in Cincinnati conveniently erase the role played by greedy, cheating developers like himself.
Alan Pyke
Aug 2, 2019, 3:44 pm


Cities are the problem, President Donald Trump told a typically riled-up crowd Thursday night in Cincinnati, and their problems are Democrats’ fault.

The latest iteration of the president’s evolving attack on urban — and specifically majority-black — communities expanded past Baltimore to encompass Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. In each case, he said, “these communities have been run exclusively by Democrat politicians” whose tapping of federal programs amounts to “stolen money and…wasted money.”

But Trump’s caricatured version of city life is especially cynical given the fact that he’s mounted a considerable effort during his time in office to cause the very dereliction for which he blames others. He’s proposed eliminating the main federal grant program that cities use to build new public resources and refurbish old ones. He’s repeatedly plotted to evict millions of the most vulnerable people from their existing housing. He’s asked for roughly a trillion dollars in cuts to health care programs for the poor and elderly.

And when his budget cuts have been largely stymied by congressional Democrats, Trump has slipped punishing austerity in through the side door. His agencies are using their regulatory authority to kick millions of working people off of food stamps for daring to save a bit of money, to kick millions of other citizens off Medicaid for the crime of being unable to find work, and to rip down safeguards that protect them from the greed of developers. Where he’s been unable to punish inner-city communities by shutting off the funding faucet, he has introduced new barriers in the form of paperwork and bureaucracy.

But the hypocrisy of his new heel-turn against the cities where most Americans reside also long predates his time in office.

The president made his wealth on business practices that hollow out urban cores, exacerbate inequality, push low-income residents out, and relocate social problems rather than ameliorate them. Trump’s habitual exaggeration of the crime, drug, and public health challenges facing various cities notwithstanding, to the extent that cities do have such problems they are the byproduct of the shameless wealth-hoarding behavior of developers like him.

Economists have a fancy term for the bad things a business venture causes for others during their pursuit of profit: “negative externalities.” The civic struggles Trump is now lambasting for political gain are in fact negative externalities to the rich fancy-lad class of goons from which he sprung. Trump’s celebrity and wealth were built on depriving cities of the resources they need for sustained success, in both raw economic terms and at the less tangible level of social fabric.

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-goes-to-war-with-americas-cities-3280500fd3e4/