Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ is the ultimate betrayal of his base | Sidney Blumenthal

Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, which will eviscerate the living standards, healthcare and aspirations of his white, working-class base, conclusively draws the curtain down on his Maga populist conceit, the most elaborate charade in recent American political history.

The price will be staggering: $1tn in cuts to Medicaid; throwing 17 million people off health coverage closing rural hospitals and women’s health clinics; battering food assistance for families, children and veterans; the virtual destruction of US solar and wind energy manufacturing; limiting access to financial aid for college; and, according to the Yale Budget Lab, adding $3tn to the national debt over the next decade, inexorably leading to raised interest rates, which will depress the housing market. These are the harsh, brutal and undeniable realities of Trumpism in the glare of day as opposed to his carnival act about how he will never touch such benefits.

The president’s Maga populism has been a collection of oddities reminiscent of PT Barnum’s museum on lower Broadway before the civil war that exhibited a 10ft tall fake petrified man, the original bearded lady and the Fiji mermaid, the tail of a large fish sewn on to a bewigged mannequin. Trump attached plutocracy to populism to construct the Maga beast. But after the passage of the bill, the Fiji mermaid that is Maga has come apart at the seams, the head separated from the tail.

“I just want you to know,” Trump said as he signed the bill, “if you see anything negative put out by Democrats, it’s all a con job.” He claimed the law was the “single most popular bill ever signed”. It is, in fact, the most unpopular piece of legislation since George W Bush proposed partial privatization of social security, which he abandoned without a single congressional vote. A Quinnipiac poll showed 53% opposing Trump’s bill, with only 27% support – 26 points underwater.

At a meeting where Trump lobbied Republican House members to vote for his bill, he told them it would not cut Medicaid because that would damage their electoral prospects. “But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one Republican member complained to the publication Notus. In response to the obvious contradiction, a White House spokesperson issued a statement that the bill would “protect Medicaid”. Problem solved.

Even if Trump didn’t actually know what was in his bill, too bored to pay attention to minute details or even if he was pulling a con, he coerced the Republicans into walking the plank. If he didn’t know, they certainly knew what was in the bill and they hated it. But they feared his retribution if they did not vote for it, even though it would severely harm their base and trample their own principles. The Freedom Caucus of far-right House members who boldly declared that the debt was the hill they would die on simply folded.

The Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri strenuously objected to the Medicaid cuts he warned would devastate rural hospitals: “I am confident it will not be put on the floor as it is currently. Something will change.” Then, after some minor changes, he said: “I’m going to vote yes on this bill.”

The Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, up for re-election in 2026, decried the Medicaid cut to his constituents. Trump threatened to primary him. Tillis all but said: you can’t fire me, I quit. “Great News!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Tillis’s seat would likely be lost to the Democrats, but the offender was dispatched; another problem solved.

The final holdout, the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, teetered until the last minute as the decisive vote. “We are all afraid,” she said in April about the Republican senators’ fear of Trump’s retaliation. “Retribution is real … I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.” If she had voted against the bill, it would have failed. She used her exquisite position to gain some protection for rural hospitals and food assistance in Alaska, as well as tax credits to about 150 Alaskan whaling captains. Yet one-third of Alaskans receive healthcare under Medicaid and 35,000 would lose coverage, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Murkowski was willing to trade small pieces to lose the larger ones. “Did I get everything I wanted? Absolutely not,” she said. She voted in favor. “Do I like this bill? No,” she said, adding with a passive-voice euphemism that, “in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.” She acted like an alderman, exclusively focused on her tiny district, the rest be damned. Even then, her vote helped strip tens of thousands of her constituents of basic necessities, food and healthcare above all.

Murkowski’s capitulation affirmed Trump’s view of human nature, that in the end the narrowest selfishness will win out over everything else. At the signing ceremony, Trump singled her out for getting “something”: “Right, Lisa? … You are fantastic!” He had succeeded in getting her to betray her fundamental beliefs on his behalf. He harpooned her for a whaling crew.

Trump lies constantly, but has never concealed his intentions. Since 12 January 2016, at a rally in Iowa, Trump has recited a song dozens of times called The Snake, about a kindly woman who nurses back to health a frozen snake, who responds by biting her. When she asks why the snake has poisoned her:

Oh shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin

You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

Trump explained that the song is part of his demonization of immigrants and Muslims, initially aimed at Syrians, whom he suggested on a talkshow a few months later might commit a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. “Bad things will happen – a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now that are coming into our country, because I have no doubt in my mind.”

Trump apparently ignored a cease and desist letter from the children of the author of the song’s lyrics, an extraordinary artist, composer, music producer, playwright and civil rights activist, Oscar Brown Jr, who meant it as a parable for the danger of not recognizing evil for what it is. His poem was turned into a minor Motown hit by the soul singer Al Wilson.

Time and again, rally after rally, Trump told his worshipful acolytes that he would betray them. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. When they heard him recite those words, they interpreted them to mean that he would be their protector. But the story is of deception in plain sight. The snake will betray the one who takes him in, who does not understand that the snake’s nature is to be a snake.

Trump appears to believe everyone betrays everyone all the time. It is evidently his rule for living. If he didn’t betray, he would have to be trustworthy. For him to behave in a trustworthy way would undermine his apparent understanding of reality: everyone cheats, lies and steals. If they haven’t, it’s because they either would like to but are inhibited by foolish moral or ethical constraints, or they are too stupid or fearful to grasp that it is the only way to act in their interest. Those people are losers, chumps and marks.

The wrong question is: whom has Trump betrayed? The right question is: whom hasn’t he betrayed?

The story of Trump’s betrayals is an epic, covering his entire career, encompassing his private life and his public one. He betrayed the Polish immigrant construction workers who cleared the way for Trump Tower by underpaying them – or not paying them at all, just as workers have said he stiffed them on many other projects. He has betrayed his brother and nephew, cutting off the sick child’s health insurance. He appears to have betrayed his personal physician, after a bodyguard and Trump lawyer showed up at the doctor’s office to take Trump’s medical records, leaving the doctor feeling as if he had been “raped”. Trump University betrayed its students, who sued him for false advertising, resulting in a $25m settlement. The Trump Foundation was dissolved by court order amid accusations of self-dealing.

Trump’s betrayals of the law and the constitution are innumerable. Now, he appears to betray the emoluments clause rapaciously using the presidential office for self-enrichment to the tune of untold billions.

Who wouldn’t he betray? He cut off Roy Cohn, who taught him the tricks of intimidation, when he was dying of Aids. Trump, said Cohn “pisses ice water”. Once he betrayed Cohn, there was no one he would not and did not betray. It was inevitable that he would betray Elon Musk, the richest person in the world who thought he was also the cleverest.

Trump’s compulsion is to compound his betrayals. He glories in the humiliation of others as the proof of his domination. His fervent fans bask in his acts of degradation against the weak, the powerless, the Other. They cheer his cruelty, his calls for violence, his insults. They think he’s doing it on their behalf. But Trump does nothing on anybody else’s behalf. He has no benevolent, philanthropic or idealistic motives. “I hate them, too,” he said at an Iowa rally on 3 July about Democrats after his bill passed. “I really do. I hate them.” His Maga devotees may love him for the objects of his hatefulness. They don’t register that someone whose nature is to betray everyone will surely betray them. They may not even grasp that their betrayal has already happened. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

• Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast