Opinion
President Donald Trump’s con of working-class people is starting to unravel
LeBron Antonio Hill
Fri, April 18, 2025
President Trump played a con on working-class Americans during last year’s election that is being exposed now, only a few months into his presidency. It seems like every other time you saw Trump on the campaign trail, he was at a grocery store handing out money or a construction site with a hard hat on, selling the idea that he knew what it was like to hold these jobs. And the people ate this shtick up.
Even members of my own family.
I come from a long line of fast food workers. My mother is currently the general manager of a Krystal’s, a burger chain franchise found mainly in the southeastern United States. My sisters also work there and before that, my grandmother served those famous sliders for 20 years. When they saw Trump at a McDonald’s donning an apron while serving fries, they were struck by a rich man performing the same grueling task they do every day. It made a big impression on them. It was as if they thought, “Trump is a man of the people. I want to vote for him.”
Liberals can say what they want, but Trump connects with more voters than Democrats do.
His con worked. A Brookings Institution analysis of campaign exit polls found that workers voters without college degrees chose Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris by 56% to 42%. “The same polls tell us that white working-class voters favored Trump over Harris by 66% to 32%, and that Trump won a larger share of working-class Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020,” wrote John J Dilulio Jr of the Brookings Institution last December.
Seeing my family come around to Trump made me second-guess myself. Fearing that I was being too close-minded, I began to pay attention to his plans and policies in the hopes that I could rethink my perception of him.
After all, Trump’s a man of the people, right?
A rude awakening
In March, Trump’s administration began making radical changes to federal student loan programs affecting more than 40 million student borrowers. Some borrowers qualified for monthly payments tied to their income and family size, and even the possibility of student loan forgiveness after 20 or 25 years.
These aren’t handouts, it’s the government doing its job by helping people. But after Trump cut off applications for income-driven loan repayment plans and made it harder for loan forgiveness, people began seeing their monthly loan payments skyrocket.
I have student loans and have felt shocked about a huge increase in my monthly payments.
It started when I noticed over the weekend that my credit score had changed. I was suddenly downgraded. Because of the Trump administration, I took a credit score hit of 200 points and my student loans increased by $3,000.
Seeing this information stunned me. “Is this the same guy who went to McDonald’s to seem like a personable guy?,” I thought to myself.
Trump’s con was revealed. There is no hiding behind an apron or a hard hat for Trump now. We see him for who he is, a red tie-wearing bigot whose only focus is to keep the rich on top. He’s as working class as the sky is orange.
Yet, I continued to ponder how so many people voted for this guy. Whatever your political allegiances lie, we have to come to a mutual understanding on some issues, the working class being one of them. Trump is no friend of the working class.
Trump’s focus is on the rich
Trump was able to fool millions of Americans into voting for him because we’ve lost sight of the American Dream.
The American Dream is not obtained solely by the riches that some attain. It’s achieved by a life lived well.
For me, that means being able to take care of myself and my loved ones financially. It means having enough money after paying the bills to go out with friends. It doesn’t mean being some filthy rich investor or developer.
In Trump’s America, we are forced to believe that wealth is all that matters, and if you are struggling, it’s your fault. Increasing payments to federal loans and ending options for people to have their loans forgiven suffocates working-class people.
Are the rich paying their share? It’s flat out ridiculous that Elon Musk, the richest person on the planet, is leading the charge in gutting federal programs and institutions that help working people.
Why don’t Trump and Musk give money to the needy instead of taking away money that would help them?
If someone becomes rich, great. But my hope for a better future shouldn’t be the trade-off to keep that person rich.
I come from a family that made their living doing jobs most wouldn’t do, but it’s what kept the lights on and gave us a home.
Trump can put on whatever working-class uniform he wants, but when he takes it off, he is nothing more than a man from privilege who took advantage of hard-working people.
It shouldn’t be this way, and we are the only ones who can get us out of this mess.
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