Dear Editor,

The one thing that bothers me the most by the ardent Trump supporters is that their commitment to Trump is almost always against their own self-interests.

Polls show Trump strongly holding onto his core — mostly low income — supporters, which is about 30 percent of the voters.

Why in the world would anyone support Trump and a Republican Congress (including Capito and Portman) that want to take away their health care, especially Medicaid? All of the Republican health care plans provide for taking away Medicaid Expansion, from the thirty states that provide Medicaid Expansion, including Ohio and West Virginia. Also the Republican plans included starving Medicaid basic by allowing the states to use diminishing block grants to gut Medicaid basic. We are talking about 70 million Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Ohioans and West Virginians that depend on Medicaid.

What if a Trump supporter is diabetic or has a bad heart or has cancer or has MS or is pregnant or … ?

Trump and the Republican Congress don’t care!

We know Trump and the Republicans were trying to shaft us on health care in order to exacerbate the already gross inequality in our country by giving the super rich — a fraction of the population — a major tax cut. Why do Trump core supporters accept giving 400 families that own more than half of our country’s wealth a huge tax cut?

How else are Trump and his congressional allies shafting us? Well, what about the federal budget cuts to the SNAP program? President Trump’s proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, will be felt most in regions of the country with chronic high rates of unemployment. Trump has proposed cutting as much as 25 percent of the program’s funding over 10 years.

In the Trump/Republican budget there are draconian cuts to the housing assistance programs.

I could go on and on about their plans that will harm the most vulnerable.

Trump supporters can scream and holler for “repeal-and-replace” and “lock-her- up” all they want if it makes them feel better, but it won’t help people meet their basic economic needs a bit, instead it will help Trump continue to shaft his true believers in favor of his ultra wealthy, potty-talking rich.

Bill Bryant

St. Clairsville