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During his very loud and very long demagogic State of the Union speech, President Donald Trump railed about fraud in Minnesota, claiming members of the Somali immigrant community had “pillaged an estimated $19 billion.” That number, no surprise, was way off: Estimates for fraud in the state’s Medicaid program and other social welfare operations range between $1 billion and $9 billion over a number of years.

Announcing a “war on fraud,” Trump said he had tapped Vice President JD Vance to lead this effort. He also insisted that his administration could “find enough of that fraud” to “actually have a balanced budget overnight.” That was absurd. The deficit that Trump has helped to supersize is $1.8 trillion. Even if there were the same level of fraud in every state as Minnesota and every dime of the fraud were captured and sent to the federal treasury, the US government would be lucky to bank about $50 billion a year. That’s less than 3 percent of the deficit. Trump is not good at math.

But putting Vance in charge of this initiative is a smart move for Trump because no GOP politician does a better job of blending economic populism and racism. It’s Vance’s specialty.

Powerful interests, Vance says, deploy false accusations of racism to prevent people—white people, that is—from complaining about the economic hardships they face and from challenging the well-heeled who are playing them for suckers.

Look at his........

© Mother Jones