The one thing that's almost as bad as Trump's cruelty: analysis

The New Republic's Michael Tomasky argues that President Donald Trump's inane ideas "sound great to people who know nothing," and that while his cruelty is a signature, his "sheer idiocy" is just as bad, if not worse, as seen in two ideas he floated over the weekend.

These ideas, Tomasky writes, "were both so stupid and unserious that they only serve to remind us: The less he attempts to think, the better off we all are."

The first idea was Trump floating the introduction of a 50-year mortgage, an idea Tomasky calls "ridiculous."

The bearer of this news was "Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency—best known for using his office to scour the mortgage records of people Trump wants to persecute," Tomasky explains.

Spreading out mortgage payments over 50 years instead of 30 years typically makes no sense, he write.s

"Could you imagine having to make mortgage payments until age 85—an age most Americans don’t even hit?"

Additionally, "a 50-year mortgage would mean tens of thousands of dollars more in interest payments for most people," he explains, adding that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) "nailed it," when she said "I don’t like 50-year mortgages as the solution to the housing affordability crisis. It will ultimately reward the banks, mortgage lenders, and homebuilders while people pay far more in interest over time and die before they ever pay off their home.”

Trump's other "terrible idea," Tomasky writes, involves ending the historic government shutdown.

“I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over," Trump posted on Truth Social.

This post, Tomasky says, "is totally unserious," and, as Senator Chris Murphy toldThe Washington Post: “Is he suggesting eliminating health insurance and giving people a few thousand dollars instead? And then when they get a cancer diagnosis they just go bankrupt?”

Tomasky says that "Trump’s real aim is to poke whatever holes he can in Obamacare," but that since 2015, he has never offered a healthcare plan of his own, despite his promises to do so.

"Trump has never offered a healthcare proposal of his own, and we all know why: Because his party believes that people who want healthcare coverage have to go out and earn it, and that people who don’t have it are lazy, and $30,000 surgical bills are their problem," Tomasky writes.

Both of these ideas, however, appeal to Trump's base, because "They sound great to people who know nothing. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of people," Tomasky notes.

However, Trump's "awful poll numbers" may indicate that "some of them are waking up and figuring out what a know-nothing conman the guy is. So maybe those famous swing voters are finally getting wise to the guy," Tomasky says.

Trump's other signature, cruelty, "continues in classic Bourbon-throne fashion," he writes, as seen at his Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar a Lago on the first weekend peoples' Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits expired.

"You might have thought the bad press that resulted from that would mean no more parties for the time being," Tomasky writes, but not quite. He threw another lavish gala a week later as "ICE continues its rampage."

"You’d have been wrong. It’s a trait of authoritarian regimes that they flout all such conventions and rules—they need for the public to know that there exists a favored elite class to whom the rules do not apply. It adds to both their power and mystique, in the eyes of the kinds of people who are fooled by things like 50-year mortgages," he notes.

The cruelty, Tomasky says, "is worse," but "the stupidity matters too, because it, too, is a marker of authoritarian depravity: total contempt for the needs of the people."