Ohioans are being tricked.
For years, Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party have leaned heavily on the same playbook: distraction. They take real, but often fringe social issues, and inflate them into political firestorms to divert attention from what really matters—the economic policies that directly affect your wallet, your healthcare, and your job security. At the heart of this sleight-of-hand is a fundamental truth: the GOP’s policies don’t actually serve the interests of Ohio’s working- and middle-class families. Instead, they benefit the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, leaving the rest of us holding the bag.
Let’s start with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), hailed by Trump as a “middle-class miracle.” In reality, the bulk of the benefits went to the top 1%. According to the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, wealthy households saw their after-tax incomes rise dramatically, while the gains for middle-income earners were modest and, in many cases, temporary. If you live in Ohio and work a regular job, you probably saw little to no meaningful benefit from these cuts. Meanwhile, the national deficit ballooned, setting the stage for future tax increases or cuts to the very services middle-class families rely on—like healthcare, education, and infrastructure.
And yet, Trump and his GOP allies, including U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, keep hammering away on cultural issues—race, immigration, gender identity—as if they were the only things that mattered. Why? Because it’s easier to get you riled up about who’s using which bathroom than it is to explain why Ohio’s manufacturing sector is still struggling. Trump’s infamous trade wars, particularly with China, were sold as a way to protect American jobs, but they’ve had the opposite effect. Retaliatory tariffs from other countries hurt key Ohio industries, including agriculture and manufacturing, driving up costs and costing jobs.
The end result? More pain for the working class, while corporate tax cuts leave CEOs grinning all the way to the bank.
In Ohio, the effects of these policies are felt deeply. Healthcare costs remain a major concern for families across the state. Yet Trump’s administration actively worked to undermine the Affordable Care Act, attempting to cut Medicaid benefits and weaken protections for pre-existing conditions. For many Ohioans, these aren’t symbolic policy debates—they’re “kitchen table” issues.
If you’re worried about affording your next prescription or paying that hospital bill, do you really care about Trump’s latest tweet about kneeling athletes? Probably not, but that’s the point.
The truth is, Trump and MAGA Republicans have become masters of misdirection. They don’t want to talk about economic inequality, stagnant wages, or rising healthcare costs because their policies have made those problems worse, not better. So they shift the conversation to social issues, knowing that cultural flashpoints are often more emotionally charged and easier to manipulate.
It’s a cynical strategy, and it’s working.
But Ohioans are smarter than that. We know what matters. It’s time to stop letting ourselves be distracted by the noise and start focusing on the policies that affect our day-to-day lives. Wages, healthcare, education, taxes—these are the issues that will define our future, not the manufactured outrage over the latest social media controversy. Let’s cut through the fog and hold politicians accountable for what they’re doing to our pocketbooks, not just our Facebook feeds.
Ohio deserves better than to be tricked into voting against its own interests. The question is: Will we wake up before it’s too late?
