President Trump has begun to shift his focus to finance.

There are far less people paying attention to this issue, as his immigration policy has garnered a far more popular following, but I believe that this is what will most poignantly display Trump’s hypocrisy towards a very large portion of his supporters: poor people.

Much of Trump’s campaign was focused on him painting a contrast between himself and common politicians.

What drew a lot of Americans to him was the fact that he was financing his own campaign (though this was only toward the start of his Presidential run, he began taking corporate donations around the beginning of last summer).

This made him stand out as the only candidate that
was allowed to speak without being beholden to foreign influence. He was very proud of this, and regularly brought it up during his debates with the other Republican candidates, as well as with Hillary Clinton.

So, it is safe to say that many of the votes Trump received were in favor of a candidate who was either anti-Wall Street or willing to make decisions without the monetary influence of Wall Street.

He then proceeded to let his supporters down within a week of getting elected, nominating Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin, two Wall Street elites, to his cabinet as well as nominating extremely wealthy friends of his to almost every other cabinet position: Betsy DeVos, Linda McMahon and Rex Tillerson to name a few.

However, some who were extremely loyal to Trump thought that these nominations could be motivated by the potential economic expertise of the rich cabinet nominees (though being rich does not make one more knowledgeable about economics).

Many could not embrace the fact that Trump does not plan on remembering what he called the “forgotten people” of America because of his rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Now that he is president, however, we have begun to see his true colors, and it is not possible to justify his actions this time.

The President signed an executive order to begin reducing regulations on Wall Street, and has said he plans on getting rid of much of then-President Obama’s main piece of regulation commonly referred to as Dodd-Frank.

This regulation was put in place because of the 2008 financial crisis, in which banks acted recklessly by lying to their clients about the poor quality of their loans.

Since banks were then bailed out by Washington, it was necessary to put regulations on them so that they would be forcibly restricted from acting unethically and possibly worsening or causing another crisis. Dodd-Frank was about accountability for the betterment of our economy as a whole.

Trump justified his attempt to repeal this order by saying, “We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, because frankly I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses and they can’t borrow money. They just can’t get any money because the banks just won’t let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank.”

Friends of his.

I would argue that while these regulations are not perfect, they are also not arbitrary.

By repealing it, one would be risking allowing banks to act in the way that caused the financial crisis in the first place.

To be frank (no pun in- tended), the sheer number of banks that participated in selling subprime loans to unsuspecting clients suggests that they would behave this way again if given the chance.

Banks are in the business of making money, and they have already shown their willingness to disregard the well being of their clients in order to make even more money than they already had.

Bankers were not the victims of the 2008 financial crisis. Poor people were. They put their faith in Trump because they thought he would stand up against the people who caused them to lose their homes.

Trump is turning on them with this legislation and distracting them with his ludicrous foreign policy so that he can help them become even poorer as his friends become more wealthy.

It is commonplace for dictators and fascist leaders to distract their populations from their crumbling domestic policy with their “strong” foreign policy.

This is unethical and manipulative, and something more people should pay attention to, and they will have to once the consequences of this potential repeal begin to blow over.