Opinionated summary:
- Despite Republican assurances, Trump called the CHIPS Act “horrible” and pushed for its scrapping, creating chaos for an industry already struggling with uncertainty.
- The Trump administration has already sabotaged the program by laying off key staff and considering changes to the projects, showing its disdain for U.S. industrial growth.
- Industry leaders, who have already committed billions to U.S. chip production, are now left in limbo, thanks to Trump’s shortsighted, destructive rhetoric.
He hates it because Biden is supposed to be the worst president in the history of ever and Biden signed the CHIPS act so therefore it must be bad because Biden is bad. It’s not more complicated than that.
I’ll go a little bit further than that, because this mindset started long before Trump came to power.
Mitch McConnell has been championing this mindset for decades. Anything, anything that Democrats are in favor of, Republicans must be against at all costs. How many times have we seen McConnell lead a charge for Republicans to suddenly be about-face on one of their own policies because it started getting Democrat support? The man once filibustered his own bill because it got Democrat support.
Trump is just the manifestation of that mindset brought to its logical extremes. It was always going to end up here. At worst, Trump just sped the process up. But this is where we are now. Any Democrat initiatives are bad by default must be dismantled solely on the basis that a Democrat supported it in the first place.
My favorite story from the Obamacare debacle:
The exchanges were meant for people without an employer who has health coverage to get that coverage on their own. Members of Congress and their staff are employees of the federal government, which obviously provides health insurance. They normally wouldn’t have access to the exchanges.
Enter Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who figures Democrats are setting up an awful system on purpose that they would never subject themselves to because they Hate America™. Thinking he’ll call their bluff, he introduces an amendment to specifically opt Congress into the exchanges.
Except it’s not a bluff, and Democrats think that’s a pretty great idea.
After the ACA gets passed, Republicans run against their own amendment, twisting the facts around to claim Congress opted themselves out of Obamacare.
You’re absolutely correct, and it’s important to point this out because people need to understand that Trump is not behaving in ways that are unusual for Republicans. He’s just an extreme manifestation of the mindset they all share.
He hates the Canadian milk tariffs but HE SIGNED THEM INTO EXISTENCE on his first term. (Also they’ve never been used)
You might be on to something there
We saw trump do the same thing to legislation signed into law by Obama. trump is just a petty man child.