Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Donald Trump told reporters on Thursday June 12, “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers. They’ve worked them for 20 years.

“They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that.”

He pointed out, “We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe not.”

While the near-incomprehensible utterances are startling — evidently he missed the “subject-verb-object” portion of his early education — what he was talking about was the situation regarding undocumented migrant farm workers — those people he has ordered ICE to deport.

According to study by the US Dept. of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (which has probably been DOGEd, because who needs facts?):

“The share of hired crop farmworkers who were not legally authorized to work in the United States grew from roughly 14% in 1989–91 to almost 55% in 1999–2001; in recent years it has declined to about 40%.”

The study found that in 2022 the number of crop farm workers with “no work authorization” (i.e., undocumented farm workers) was 42%.

That number of people simply isn’t going to be prest-o-change-o replaced by those who have lost their jobs due to manufacturing plants closing in the US.

Given the magnitude of that number you would have imagined that someone in the Trump Administration would have figured that rounding those people up and sending them somewhere beyond the southern border probably wouldn’t be a particularly good idea.

But that just shows how out of touch Team Trump is when it comes to people actually doing work. 

Let’s remember Trump saying back in April when he signed an executive order in support of coal mining: “One thing I learned about the coal miners is that’s what they want to do.

“You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of a job and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal, that’s what they love to do.”

While I have mined as much coal as Trump has (none), I’ve been a janitor, a dishwasher, and picked up trash in a parking lot with a nail on the end of a stick and I can tell you that when I got a different kind of job I was very happy. Those coal miners probably love a paycheck more than they love mining coal and would be perfectly happy living in a penthouse doing something else to earn money in ways not associated with cave-ins, explosions, and black lung disease.

Trump’s comment is like his Commerce Secretary-billionaire Howard Lutnick saying, “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month, my mother-in-law — who’s 94 — she wouldn’t call and complain.”

Arguably she could get good loan terms from her son-in-law.

Back to Trump’s comments about the undocumented migrant workers.

He admitted that some of them have “been there for 20, 25 years and they’ve worked great. And the owner of the farm loves them.”

But: “And then you’re supposed to throw them out. . .” — Well, isn’t that what he said is supposed to happen? This is his idea, not someone else’s. Not the farmers’, certainly -- “. . .and you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else.”

Think on that for a moment. No, not the “and everything else,” which is inexplicable. But the whole notion that the “murderers from prisons,” whom Trump has described in many instances as being the worst of the worst, likely insane, drug-addled and otherwise bad, are going to the Central Valley to pick tomatoes.

Again, evidence that there is little understanding of how the real world works. And I do mean “works.”

Another example of this is the necessity of rehiring people DOGE thought were unnecessary. 

According to a story earlier this month in The Washington Post: 

“Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. . . .

“A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated. . . .

“In February, the Agriculture Department launched a campaign to rehire bird flu response workers after avian influenza sent egg prices soaring. That same month, the Trump administration fired nearly 17% of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s workforce, temporarily imperiling the safety and security of America’s 5,000 nuclear warheads — before hiring them back after an outcry. . . .”

Clever, eh?

If there is any evidence of “waste, fraud and abuse,” it is primarily in what DOGE has done. Ask anyone who works in human resources and they’ll tell you it costs a hell of a lot more to hire someone than it does to keep someone.

And there are the tariffs. Remember back in April when Team Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro said, “So we’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days. It’s possible.”

Turns out those possibilities weren’t so good. How many “deals” have there been in 74 days?

One. (The UK. This is not counting the fuzzy claim of a deal with China. Just like everything having to do with Liberation Day there is a whole lot of bluster and little in the way of evidence.)

Trade negotiations are complex undertakings by people who have serious understandings of the implications and ramifications of tax policies on their countries.

This is not to go down the path of saying that Trump “chickens out.”

It is to say that Team Trump is mainly incapable of doing things that are hard. It is easy to whip out an oversized Sharpie and sign and executive order. It is something entirely else to structure and implement a useful policy.

Trump was going to end the war against Ukraine in 24 hours after taking office.

Nope.

Trump claimed he would put an end to the war in Gaza.

Not only has that not happened, but now there is a war between Israel and Iran.

What has he done on that front except bluster on his blog?

And so there is the “No Kings” pushback against Trump.

He probably likes the notion that he is being considered a king by those who don’t like him.

Yes, he is consistently overreaching the bounds — legal and traditional (funny thing how the so-called conservatives who don’t realize that, as Russell Kirk wrote, “the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity,” something they’ve cast off with reckless abandon) — of the Office of the President.

But arguably this isn’t as much because of some sort of monarchial mania as it is simply that he doesn’t understand things, despite the fact that he claims that during a recent cognitive test he “got every answer right” and that "One of the doctors said, 'Sir, I've never seen anybody get that kind of — that was the highest mark.'" Right. No one else has ever aced the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

While some may dismiss that claim as simply being silly, it is part and parcel of everything he does in office.

If he wasn’t 79 you might imagine he’s not unlike one of those boy kings who achieved the throne before they hit puberty. They don’t know what they’re doing, but they’ve got the gig. 

He’s big on claims. Not so big on getting things done that matters in ways that aren’t performative. 

The problem is that the consequences of his actions damage the people he has sworn to protect.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.