Trump: Let them eat cake.

 On Halloween night, Trump threw a lavish party at Mar-a-Lago with a Great Gatsby theme. The Great Gatsby, of course, set during the Roaring Twenties, was F. Scott Fitzgerald's picture of the moral decadence of the very rich -- what a theme for a party when 42 million of the lowest-income Americans are about to lose SNAP benefits that Trump's administration is withholding.

For those who haven't read the book, I asked ChatGPT to summarize it.

Summary of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925, is a novel set in the Roaring Twenties, a time of wealth, excess, and social upheaval in America. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota who moves to West Egg, Long Island, to learn the bond business. His neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is a mysterious and fabulously wealthy man known for throwing lavish parties. As Nick becomes drawn into Gatsby’s world, he learns that Gatsby’s wealth and lifestyle exist for one purpose: to win back Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin, whom Gatsby loved before she married the wealthy but unfaithful Tom Buchanan.

Through Gatsby’s obsessive pursuit of Daisy, the novel explores themes of love, illusion, class, and the corrupting influence of money. Gatsby’s dream of recreating the past and achieving happiness through wealth ultimately proves impossible. When Daisy accidentally kills a woman named Myrtle Wilson in a car accident, Gatsby takes the blame. Myrtle’s husband, misled by Tom, kills Gatsby and then himself. In the end, Daisy retreats into her world of privilege, untouched by the destruction around her. Disillusioned by the moral emptiness of the wealthy, Nick returns to the Midwest.

At its core, The Great Gatsby is about the American Dream—its promise and its failure. Gatsby embodies the dreamer who believes that through determination and material success, he can transform himself and attain happiness. Yet Fitzgerald reveals the dream’s darker side: beneath the glitter of the Jazz Age lies moral decay and the impossibility of recapturing an idealized past. The novel is both a portrait of an era and a timeless meditation on ambition, love, and illusion.

Trump is no longer even trying to conceal his contempt for ordinary Americans. Paul Krugman says that too many commentators are brushing this off as being "tone deaf"; Krugman says no, Trump knows that he is rubbing people's faces  in it and taking pleasure in doing so. He posted in his article entitled "The Great Smirk":

During Trump’s first term Adam Serwer wrote a justly celebrated article for The Atlantic titled “The cruelty is the point.” He argued that cruelty, and the joy some people take from inflicting cruelty, are what bind Trump’s most loyal supporters to him:

Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united.

 Further, Krugman says in his article: 

So, to repeat, the party at Mar a Lago wasn’t a case of tone deafness, living it up despite others’ suffering. It was in large part a party held to celebrate others’ suffering.