It’s a lesson that we all should have learned many years ago: When Republicans tell you what they mean to inflict on you and your family, better believe them.

The most painful example in recent years of the public’s failure to comprehend what was coming -- despite dozens of announcements -- is the Republican right's successful assault on reproductive freedom. Donald Trump loudly and repeatedly promised a majority of Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, as did the Republican senators who confirmed them. And still many Americans seemed to be surprised when the high court ripped down principle and precedent to undo that fundamental right.

Now, in the final days of this election campaign, we are hearing from Republicans (and their billionaire masters) what they plan to do if Trump returns to the White House. They have a sweeping agenda to impoverish the middle class while pursuing power and privilege for themselves.

House Speaker Mike Johnson just issued a clear warning that they still yearn to cripple America's health care system in the name of their "free market" utopia. While he and Trump both deny that they will try again (for the 62^nd time!) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Johnson vowed that “health care is going to be a big part of the agenda” should Republicans win – and that their aim will be “massive reform” that “takes a blowtorch to the regulatory state.” This blather portends the end of the reforms that protect people with pre-existing conditions and allow the young to get coverage on their family’s insurance until age 26. Neither those nor other crucial ACA protections would survive those massive changes that neither Trump nor Johnson will specify before the election.

And that’s merely the opening gambit in the Trump Republican scheme to ruin their fellow Americans.

The far-right financiers surrounding Trump have realized that his obsession with tariffs can be repurposed to line their own pockets – so they’re suddenly eager to abandon the principles of free trade they once cherished. For billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, the tariff scheme is attractive simply as a form of regressive taxation, siphoning hundreds of billions of dollars from ordinary consumers in the form of far higher prices. Those tariff revenues could replace the proceeds of the progressive income tax – which the rich hate to pay -- while shifting the burden onto middle-class and poor families.

But Musk has even more nasty surprises in store, as he recently suggested on his X social media platform. He has invested vast sums – upward of $75 million or more – in Trump’s campaign, for which he expects to be named reichsmarshall of "government efficiency,” with unaccountable power to slash programs and fire employees. The world’ richest man breezily advised middle-class Americans that we should expect to suffer “hardship” in the early days of a Trump presidency, owing to the enormous cuts and layoffs he will dictate. (Of course he also promises a “sustained recovery” in the wake of economic disaster, although historically that isn’t how things work out under Republican administrations. You can look it up.)

According to Musk, his objective in a Trump regime would be to cut $2 trillion from future spending – even as Trump has promises trillions more in tax cuts for the billionaires. How does that math work? It doesn’t work at all unless, as J.D. Vance recently confided to a podcast host, Musk’s “government efficiency commission” sharply reduces Social Security and Medicare payments. “I’ve spoken with Elon a little bit about [the task force],” said the Republican vice presidential nominee. “And the thing that’s complicated about this, man, is it’s going to look much different in, say, the Department of Defense versus Social Security.”

We know Trump won’t cut defense spending, which he has always sought to increase with his Space Force and other boondoggles. The only alternative will be enormous cuts in Social Security and Medicare, which account for about $2 trillion in spending annually.

Optimists may imagine that Musk, who no doubt considers himself a “stable genius,” will come up with new ways to save trillions without harming the American people or the economy. Unfortunately his record as an executive is not reassuring. Upon purchasing Twitter (later renamed “X”), he dismissed about 80 percent of the staff and turned the site into a haven for neo-Nazis and the other extremists and conspiracy theories he apparently admires. The company's market value has never recovered and his investment has roughly the same value as if he had put a blowtorch to $44 billion in cash.

The truth about Musk as a businessman is that his profits have depended heavily on government subsidies from the beginning.

But that arrangement can still prop him up, so long as he and his cronies control the government. Musk, Thiel and the rest of the MAGA billionaires will tell you they are backing Trump because they want to “kill the woke mind virus” or “protect freedom” or some such cliched piffle. In fact they are driving a campaign to further enrich and empower themselves – and the rest of us are just road kill.