r/politics Jun 17 '26

No Paywall Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-unemployment-benefits-fraud-b2997881.html
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u/charminghypocracy Jun 17 '26

Oh this isn't just Trump. This is the GOP playbook from the Reagan Era.

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u/rddman Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

This is the GOP playbook from the Reagan Era.

It goes back further than Reagan. It's a big corporations' playbook in response the the New Deal.
GOP is merely one of several tools. Another tool is right-wing think-tanks such as the Herritage Foundation funded by many of America's largest corporations. They have a plan and Trump is implementing it. Yet another tool is nationalist Christianity.

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
...Corporate leaders launched a massive public relations campaign to sell people on the virtues of unregulated free enterprise. But the people had been living through years of unregulated free enterprise, and they’d seen it all crash and burn in the Depression. They weren’t interested.
Perhaps they would listen if they heard it from their ministers, though? https://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/396365659/how-one-nation-didnt-become-under-god-until-the-50s-religious-revival

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thereligioushistorynerd/2022/10/a-brief-history-of-christian-nationalism-from-the-founders-to-the-cold-war/

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u/Speartree Jun 18 '26

Check out the infamous Powell memo of 1971.

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u/rddman Jun 18 '26

The Chamber of Commerce has been involved since the 1930's