Yeah. The disturbing thing is that it might work. He can just start sending out checks for thousands of dollars. The US can afford to do it, and the follow-on effects will be sufficiently hidden that he might be wildly popular for long enough to provide cover for quite a lot of the heinous shit he wants to do.
Hitler did the same thing. His jobs programs produced a modest improvement to punishing unemployment, which coupled with slow-acting improvements his predecessors had made starting to take effect, and the government simply turning on the taps to have millions of marks worth of handouts flow to people and businesses, helped people in visible ways which helped build him a groundswell of populist support.
Yeah. The disturbing thing is that it might work. He can just start sending out checks for thousands of dollars. The US can afford to do it, and the follow-on effects will be sufficiently hidden that he might be wildly popular for long enough to provide cover for quite a lot of the heinous shit he wants to do.
Hitler did the same thing. His jobs programs produced a modest improvement to punishing unemployment, which coupled with slow-acting improvements his predecessors had made starting to take effect, and the government simply turning on the taps to have millions of marks worth of handouts flow to people and businesses, helped people in visible ways which helped build him a groundswell of populist support.