BY MARTIN KICH

In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, President Trump seems very clearly to be telling rural voters in the “Rust Belt” that his solution to the economic decline of their communities is to abandon them for the closest metro areas. Based on this quotation from the interview, I am guessing that President Trump has never read The Grapes of Wrath, or even watched the film:

“’I’m going to start explaining to people when you have an area that just isn’t working—like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt—and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t—you can’t get people, I’m going to explain you can leave, it’s OK, don’t worry about your house. You know, a lot of them don’t leave because of their house. Because they say, gee, my house, I thought it was worth $70,000 and now it’s worth nothing. It’s OK. Go, cut your losses, right?’”

Perhaps Trump should have at least directed those whom he is advising to cut their losses to this video from Business Insider’s Tech Insider newsletter:

You Can Take This Transforming House Anywhere and Unfold It in Just 10 Minutes

by Kevin Reilly on Aug 3, 2017, 1:33 PM

Ten Fold Engineering, a UK-based company, has built an expandable-house prototype. The unit can be trucked to any location and set up in minutes.