Donald Trump has never cared about the people of the United States.
He has always concerned himself with the richest of the rich, the upper 1% on the financial scale. He has given massive tax and regulatory breaks and other favors to the tech oligarchs and relegated the rest of the population to the ranks of the undeserving.
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His administration has taken away affordable healthcare and food supplements from millions, and he will not commit to funding for childcare or parental leave benefits to workers who are wrestling to make ends meet.
His closing of the United States Agency for International Development has resulted in more than 700,000 deaths from starvation and disease. Overall, Trump has been indifferent, and in most cases hostile, to people’s struggles.
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Though Trump has exposed himself as the pathological liar that he is, on rare occasions the truth manages to slip from his distorted lips. At a Las Vegas campaign rally in June 2024, he quipped, “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote.”
He claimed he was joking, but as this year’s midterms approach and most polls show Republicans are likely to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate, Trump has been bribing voters with promises of $5,000 checks if Republicans maintain majorities in both federal legislative chambers.
When reporters asked Trump about the spike in gas and oil prices and overall inflation rates from his illegal international tariff policies and from his chosen war in Iran, he waved off the question by stating: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situations. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
The Director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, echoed Trump, asserting that the potential consumer hardship from the Iran conflict is “the last of our concerns right now.”
In the summer of 2025, Trump also downplayed the financial impact when he claimed the U.S. and Israel had conducted a series of bombing sorties and then dug deeply into the ground, allegedly decimating Iran’s nuclear program.
Taking public lands away from the public
After already eliminating most regulations that previously placed limits on polluters of our ground, water, and air, the Trump administration has since gone further by diverting the management of tens of millions of acres of public lands to private industrial developers for the extraction of oil, natural gas, minerals, lumber, and wildlife.
The Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute, describes the United States’ long bipartisan history of conserving our lands, waterways, and wildlife.
“From President Theodore Roosevelt’s establishment of national parks and monuments to congressional legislation such as the Wilderness Act and Endangered Species Act (ESA), the United States has set itself apart as a global conservation leader.”
“Yet as the country marks its 250th anniversary, this legacy is being dismantled and erased. Despite attempts by his own administration to compare him to “Conservation President” Roosevelt, President Donald Trump has proved to be the most anti-nature president in the country’s history. “
On May 11, 2026, the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management rescinded the Public Lands Rule, the policy that categorized conservation and wildlife habitats as having equal status to oil, gas, and mining.
During Trump’s second term, the administration removed protections from approximately 86 million acres of public lands for private industrial extraction.
The Trump Interior Department initiated reviews of selected national monuments – including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante – to determine whether it would change or entirely revoke their current monument status. In June 2026, a Trump executive order lifted commercial fishing prohibitions at multiple Pacific Ocean national monuments.
Trump also exempted Arctic winter oil and gas drilling from standard environmental practices, and the administration is considering numerous proposals to allow private data center infrastructure on more than 17,600 acres of public land in several western states.
During Trump’s time in the Oval Office, he has allowed or considered several private-for-public land swaps, and on September 17, 2026, Trump signed an executive order significantly expanding hunting access on public lands.
Much of Trump’s reclamation of public lands for private exploitation not only endangers our environment and restricts public health and access, but it also further desecrates Native Americans’ sacred grave sites and other spiritual places. The United States government has a history of unilaterally canceling treaty obligations to Native Americans, and the Trump administration’s policies add to the country’s legacy of careless disregard for Native people.
So, yes. Trump has shown in both words and policy directives that he does not care about the people. Rather, he gives credence only to the well-situated corporate elite who buy his favor.
Right now, the story of our nation depicts the worst of times for the 90% and the best of times for the top 10%.
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