Over the weekend, Kentuckians from all across the state, joined by thousands of out-of-towners, gathered at Churchill Downs in Lousiville, Kentucky, where they dressed to the nines in their Sunday best, donned their big, wild, fancy hats, placed their bets, and sipped their Mint Juleps to mark the age’s old tradition of the Kentucky Derby.
Among those at the Kentucky horse race, an event steeped in tradition that was skipped over the last few years due to the COVID-19 pandemic was none other than disgraced ex-President Donald Trump.
But Trump wasn’t there to mingle among Kentucky’s “commoners.” Rather, the former guy was in his own private section where he was holding a self-serving fundraiser with a staggering ticket price of $75,000 a head, and $150,000 per couple.
In case you weren’t aware, Kentucky is a rather poor Red state. In fact, Mitch McConnell’s stomping grounds rank at a sickening 47th in the United States when compared to the national average, managing to just barely “beat” Louisiana, New Mexico, and Mississippi, respectively. The poverty rate in the state of KY is a sickening 18.3 percent, significantly higher than even the national average poverty rate of 14.6 percent. The median annual income in Kentucky is just a touch over $50,000 a year.
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And that’s why one local Louisville newspaper is not only absolutely sick to death with Donald Trump’s high dollar Derby fundraising event, they’re calling him out on it.
The Louisville Courier-Journal’s Carl Gibson penned a scathing column with regard to Donald Trump’s Kentucky Derby appearance, pointing out that the price of a mere ticket to the event was a staggering $20,000 over the median income of your average Kentucky citizen — which, in their opinion, just goes to show that es-President Donald Trump’s “‘man of the people’ image is a farce.”
“Consider, for a moment, that the former president — who won over nearly two-thirds of commonwealth voters in both 2016 and 2020 — is charging $75,000 for an individual to see him in the 40208 ZIP code, which houses Churchill Downs. Census records show that median household income in 40208 is less than $31,000,” Gibson pens before going on to further explain how many of Kentucky’s most vulnerable would be further inconvenienced and put out by a washed-up ex-president who doesn’t give a damn about them.
But, as he goes on to point out, “This sneering, elitist display of contempt for the working class is par for the course for Trump, whose campaign left hundreds of his supporters literally out in the cold on more than one occasion during his failed re-election campaign.”
Gibson fumes for the Courier-Journal:
The high cost of a Trump visit doesn’t just come by pricing out working-class Kentuckians from seeing him at the Derby; Louisville taxpayers will also be on the hook, whether they support him or not. In 2020, Orlando NBC affiliate WESH found that Trump cost the city nearly $93,000 in police regular and overtime hours for a one-day campaign stop. Louisvillians expecting Trump to reimburse those costs shouldn’t hold their breath – that same year, the Center for Public Integrity reported that 14 U.S. cities were still waiting on then-President Trump’s campaign to reimburse them to the tune of $1.8 million in security-related costs.”
As a life-long resident of Kentucky myself, I hope this serves as a wake-up call for the people of this state. When you vote for someone like Donald Trump, you are voting for someone who intentionally keeps you out of his “space.” What on earth would make you believe that this man cares whether or not you can feed your children or pay your light bill? He does not.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
