“Survival of the Richest”— How this one philosophy explains all the policy decisions of Trump’s second term

In the Marvel movie Avengers: Infinity War, the arch villain Thanos attempts to justify eliminating half of the world’s population this way: “While you were going to bed hungry? Scrounging for scraps? Your planet was on the brink of collapse, I'm the one who stopped that. You know what happened since then? Children born, knowing nothing but full bellies and clear sky's. It's a paradise!”  This is a superhero movie, so one can pardon it for not exploring the consequences of such an action beyond the obvious loss of billions of lives. But despite the horror of Thanos’ hubris, I felt a sneaking sympathy for someone who could see the problem clearly but was just terribly misguided about the solution. 

I feel no such sympathy for Trump. While Thanos decided who would live or die by random selection, the policies of the current administration are decidedly weighted in favor of one class of people—the uber wealthy. It is easy to make sense of the harsh, disconnected, and short-sighted decisions in Trump’s second term if you stop thinking of them as isolated choices.

My theory is that they are expressions of a single governing philosophy: The wealthy are naturally superior—as evidenced by their success—and deserve to make the decisions that impact the rest of (lesser) humanity. The corollary to that is that the government’s (limited) role is to preserve and protect the power of this elite group so that they can continue to operate with impunity and independence. If ordinary people fall through the cracks in pursuit of this philosophy, that is unfortunate, but acceptable.

Once the pieces come together, the pattern becomes unmistakable.

“Don’t be dramatic”

When asked directly about Americans struggling with affordability—rising costs, expiring health insurance subsidies, and everyday economic pressure—President Trump’s response was blunt. “Don’t be dramatic.”

That was his answer in December 2025 when a reporter raised concerns that millions of families could see health insurance premiums spike as enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expired. Trump insisted costs were coming down and waved away the anxiety as overblown. In Trump’s worldview, affordability is a perception problem, not a policy failure.

This attitude is reflected in concrete decisions—particularly the refusal to extend ACA subsidies that had made coverage affordable for millions of middle- and lower-income Americans. Independent analyses projected that millions would lose coverage or face sharply higher premiums if subsidies were allowed to lapse. But Trump, who campaigned as a populist, has threatened to veto the extension if it passes the Senate (it has already passed the House thanks to House Democrats).

Trump’s preferred alternative of letting people pay for their own care abandons the collective bargaining power that made coverage affordable in the first place—leaving individuals to navigate a private insurance market where prices rise fastest for those with the least leverage.

EPA: when saving lives becomes optional

The same logic—certain lives are negotiable—has now surfaced at the Environmental Protection Agency.

In early 2026, the EPA announced it would no longer prioritize “lives saved” in cost-benefit analyses of air pollution regulations, focusing instead on compliance costs to industry. Health benefits that had justified stronger clean air rules for decades were downgraded or excluded.

Public health experts have warned the change could result in tens of thousands of additional premature deaths from pollution-related illnesses but the philosophical shift is clear: if protecting health interferes with business profitability, profitability comes first. 

Shrinking government by design

This philosophy is most openly articulated by Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director. Vought has been explicit that the goal is not merely efficiency, but a fundamental weakening of the federal government’s capacity to act. Vought has said he wants federal workers to be “traumatically affected” by funding cuts and reorganization.

This is not accidental collateral damage—it is the objective. A government that cannot act cannot regulate, cannot enforce, and cannot protect. That vacuum disproportionately benefits those with private resources and power, while leaving everyone else exposed.

Pushing privatization of public goods

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has framed the administration’s economic agenda in similarly market-centric terms. Bessent has argued that the solution to what he calls a “brittle economy" is not public investment or expanded social support, but a commitment to “re-privatize” the economy by cutting government spending and regulation.

The assumption is consistent: markets, not public systems, should absorb risk—even when that risk involves healthcare, housing, or disaster recovery.

Public health as a personal choice, not a collective responsibility

Nowhere is the “survival of the richest” philosophy more evident than in public health.

Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the administration has cut CDC funding for disease surveillance and prevention, terminated grants to state health departments, and altered long-standing vaccine recommendations. Several routine childhood vaccines have been removed from the CDC’s recommended schedule—a move public health experts called unprecedented and unsupported by evidence.

As vaccination rates have declined, measles and flu outbreaks have increased, with hospitalizations and deaths rising in multiple states. The administration’s response has been to emphasize “individual choice” and transparency—language that shifts responsibility away from institutions and onto individuals, regardless of unequal access to healthcare or information.

FEMA, disasters, and conditional compassion

The same mindset governs disaster relief. FEMA assistance has been delayed, reduced, or withheld following major disasters, with aid increasingly framed as conditional rather than automatic. Communities already struggling—often poorer, rural, or politically disfavored—have faced prolonged recovery delays. Disaster relief, once considered a core federal responsibility, has become another area where help is rationed and moralized.

ICE gets billions while safety nets shrink

While public health, housing, food assistance, and global aid have been cut, immigration enforcement funding has surged.

The 2025 budget dramatically expanded ICE’s budget—funding new detention centers, tens of thousands of new agents, and large-scale deportation operations. Analysts described it as the creation of a “deportation-industrial complex.”

This expansion occurred alongside cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and global humanitarian aid—programs that overwhelmingly serve children, seniors, and working families.

The contrast is not subtle: money flows freely for punishment and control, but becomes scarce for care and protection.

The pattern is the point

Taken individually, each of these decisions can be defended with technocratic language: efficiency, choice, deregulation, fiscal discipline. Taken together, they reveal something else.

A government that shrugs at affordability, that treats preventable death as a cost variable, that weakens public institutions by design is not accidental. 

This is a philosophy.

A system that favors and protects the wealthy and influential and is largely apathetic to the needs of the common man? A system where knowing the right people gets you to the head of the line? A system where there is a privileged class and a servant class? A country where you can live like a king but can’t breathe the air or drink the tap water? 

Sound familiar? 

It’s not too late. They See Blue is a community that believes in equity, justice, and the rule of law, the values that attracted many of us to this country that has given us so much. Join the good fight to restore America to the ideals that define it.