Jim Hightower: Augustus Trumpus:
"Get used to it — fakery is reality for America's next president. Unfortunately for us it is not just fakery that we will have to get used to, because President Trumpus happens to have a real knack for irony as well. Trump, who campaigned as populist champion of the working-class, promising that — by golly — he was going to take on Wall Street and the corporate elites. But the bitter irony for the working class is that they now see what he meant — he's literally "taking on" the moneyed powers by taking them onboard his administration. For example, he's brought in Wall Street billionaires to fill the three top economic policy positions in his cabinet! Then there's Betsy DeVos, the billionaire heiress to the scandal-plagued Amway fortune. Her life's work has been trying to defund and privatize the public schools that working-class and middle-class people count on and to eliminate the working-class and middle-class jobs of teachers and support staff. Her new job with Trump? Secretary of Education, where she'll now use our public money to try killing off our public education system. Add to the list Myron Ebell, the honcho of the Competitive Enterprise Institute — a corporate front group funded by fossil fuel profiteers like Exxon and the Koch brothers — where he pushed relentlessly to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. Where's he now? Heading Trump's EPA transition team. Also, more than half those making up The Donald's Department of Defense transition team have been executives or lobbyists for such military contractors as Boeing corporation. Overall, according to watchdog group Public Citizen, three-fourths of Trump's transition teams — which are organizing, staffing, and shaping his new government — come from CorporateWorld. Not a single working class populist has been allowed a seat at his power table. As America's working stiffs know, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. And now we know what Augustus Trumpus will be serving. Trump's no populist, he's a full-time corporatist."
