Pelosi just shredded Trump team for saying they don’t get why unpaid workers need food banks

President Trump still has no real accomplishment after two years in office, but he does have a long string of failures and embarrassing black stains on his record, with the longest government shutdown in American history being but the latest.

Roughly 800,000 federal workers are going without pay and have already missed a paycheck as Trump insists on holding them hostage in his idiotic campaign to squeeze funding for his border wall from the Democratically controlled House of Representatives. There is a profound lack of empathy emanating from the White House, as countless families struggle to find a way to put food on their tables until work and payments resume.

Now, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury Wilbur Ross has delivered a stunning statement that puts the administration’s callousness into stark relief and demonstrates just how out of touch they are with average Americans.

Ross appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box. After giving an incredibly coldhearted analysis of the 800,000 workers not getting paid in which he pointed out that it didn’t really matter because it isn’t enough workers to really affect the United States’ GDP, he was asked about federal workers who, due to the shutdown, are relying on homeless shelters to get food. His response was jaw-dropping.

“Well I know they are and I don’t really quite understand why because as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake say as borrowing from a bank or a credit union are in effect federally guaranteed so the thirty days that some people will be out, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be able to get a loan against it,” Ross said.

As disturbing as the comments are, they’re perhaps not surprising coming from Ross, a billionaire grifter ghoul who has been accused of massive amounts of fraud. He is so far removed from the reality that most people live that he can’t imagine a world without yachts and private planes, a world where feeding oneself is something to worry about.

Furthermore, even if the federal workers could all get some kind of loans against their paychecks — a dubious assertion at best— it doesn’t mean they’d be able to cover the cost of piling up bills and living expenses. On top of that, nobody should be forced to take out a loan to buy food in the first place.

These people are suffering because Trump wants to pander to his racist base by looking tough on wall negotiations, and Ross’s remarks are just salt in the wound.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) soon took Ross to task over his appearance. She compared his comments to saying “Let them eat cake” and assuming that most Americans can simply borrow money from their father’s, as Ross’s boss Trump did when he was starting out. As usual, Pelosi has nailed exactly what’s wrong with this administration. Ross and the rest of Trump’s cabinet should be ashamed.

They must end the shutdown. American lives are being destroyed.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1088469555368861696

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1088469555368861696

Natalie Dickinson

Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Press. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been freelance blogging and writing for progressive outlets ever since.