Progressives ignored high prices for years, mocked those who worried about inflation, and for decades have waged a war on consumerism, but suddenly, we’re supposed to believe the American Dream is measured in cheap plastic dolls.
Over the past several weeks, President Donald Trump has been heavily criticized from the left and some on the right for referring to the affordability crisis as a “scam.” In his detractor’s view, this framing demonstrates that he is both increasingly out of touch with the American people and is making the same mistake as his predecessor, President Joe Biden, when he repeatedly claimed that inflation was transitory even in the face of increasing voter frustration with obviously higher prices. As David Axelrod, former advisor and political guru to President Barack Obama put it earlier this month, “Donald Trump recaptured the White House in part by relentlessly exploiting Joe Biden’s failure to heed widespread concerns about the rising cost of living. Now, bizarrely, President Trump is walking himself—and his party—into the same perilous trap by denying the economic reality that working families are living.” After acknowledging that President Trump “has made intermittent attempts to address the affordability issue. ‘I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT. TALK LOUDLY AND PROUDLY,’ he commanded Republicans in a social-media post last weekend,” Mr. Axelrod continued, “But for the most part, he is making the same fundamental mistake as Biden did: blundering down a highway of defiance, denial, and self-puffery. In speeches, interviews, and Truth Social posts, he lavishly promotes his record as an unalloyed success—an ‘economic miracle’—even as he tacitly acknowledges otherwise by blaming Biden, out of office for almost a year, for the economic discomfort that Americans feel.” Others pointed to a recent interview where the President graded himself an “A+++++” on his handling of the economy. The Independent, for example, claimed “Prices are high, Americans are feeling the pain around the kitchen table and in their empty pockets — and President Donald Trump is hitting the road to convince skeptical voters that the U.S. economy is ‘A+++++’, as he told Politico. If this all sounds familiar, well, that’s because it is nearly the same game plan, executed to extreme imperfection, by the man Trump now constantly reviles as ‘maybe the worst ever’ at his job, Joe Biden, in the year leading up to his abrupt withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race. (And then again, by former Vice President Kamala Harris as she took the baton and mounted what would become a losing campaign for the presidency.)”
While there is some truth to this given the President’s well established penchant for exaggeration and stream of consciousness speaking style that refuses to be confined to traditional talking points, he has been far more detailed about his plans to address the affordability crisis, why he considers himself a strong economic President, and why he considers the framing of the crisis a scam than his detractors acknowledge. In fact, he addressed all of these items and more at a speech in Pennsylvania early last week, though not surprisingly the usual suspects in the mainstream media chose to focus on the other things he said. As President Trump put it in stark contrast with his predecessor, “Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety” because “under Biden real wages plummeted by $3,000 a year. Under Trump, the typical factory worker has already seen their wages increase by more than $1,300 and that’s in just a few months. And for construction workers, it’s $1,800 up versus $3,500 down. For miners, their wages went up $3,300 and we’re bringing back coal. ” Regarding the cost of living, he noted falling gas prices, “down lower than we’ve been in seven years and gasoline prices and oil prices, not just the three states that I talk about with $1.99 a gallon. How would you like to have $1.99?” Followed by rent prices, dairy prices, and even the “the cost of Thanksgiving turkeys was down by 33 percent compared to the Biden era.” Citing figures from Walmart, he continued to claim, “they came out with a big like sort of a numbers thing, a chart and they had a 25 percent less. So that’s pretty good. A Thanksgiving meal with all of the trimmings is 25 percent less under Trump than it was a year ago under Biden. That’s — that’s a good start.” Regarding the economy overall, he pointed to the record stock market, tax cut provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill, and more, noting also that it’s early in his second term and “Well, you know what, we have three years and two months to go and you know what that is in Trump time, three years and two months is called eternity. We have a lot — we have a long time. We have a long time. “ Ultimately, he summarized where he believes the economy is headed with “Lower prices, bigger paychecks. You’re getting lower prices, bigger paychecks,” which is not an unlikely scenario based on the data so far and the reality that policies take time to have their full impact. Not so long ago, the economy wasn’t even considered under the President’s control until their second year in office, for what many including myself would claim were obvious reasons.
Periodically throughout the speech, President Trump also addressed why he refers to affordability as a scam, claiming “they use the word affordability and that’s their only word” while pointing out that the rapid increase in prices occurred under his predecessor. “Look, Biden price increases and Trump price increases. Look at Biden, up 37, 24 percent, 22, 21, 30.7, 30.7 again, 10.4 percent, 49 percent. Trump, the price is down 5.1, 4.2, 0.5, down four percent, 2.9. Look at that. Oh, prices are coming down. Their prices — it’s a hoax. They’re just — remember they said, the Inflation Reduction Act, remember that? Billions and billions — hundreds of billions of dollars, the inflation. And after they got it approved, because we had a few Republicans that went along with that whole hoax. And remember, we’re going to pass the inflation — and I said, there’s nothing to do with inflation reduction there. There’s nothing to do with that, has nothing — didn’t even — it had nothing to do with inflation either way other than raising inflation, perhaps, because it was such a stupid — And then they admitted they fought it like, oh, no, this is inflation. After they got the thing passed, then they said, we agree, it has nothing to do with inflation, screw you. We don’t care. That’s what it is. We’re dealing with bad people. And the word affordability is the exact same thing. And I can’t say affordability hoax because I agree, the prices were too high. So I can’t go to hoax because they’ll misconstrue that.” For her part, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made a similar point later in the week, noting that “inflation is down from where it was, as measured by the overall CPI; it has slowed to an average 2.5 percent base, this is down from what the president inherited. The president inherited 2.9 percent in January; today it’s at about 2.5 percent, so we are trending in the right direction with more to come. And I would remind you when President Trump left office in his first term, inflation was 1.7 percent, and the previous administration jacked it up to a record high nine percent. So again, in 10 months, the president has clawed us out of this hole, kept it low at 2.5 percent, and we believe that number is going to continue to decline, especially as energy and oil prices continue to decline as well.”
When a reporter protested that “We are not saying it wasn’t high under Biden…” the Press Secretary insisted, “Well, nobody reported on it being high under Biden. My predecessor was standing at this podium, but now you want to ask me a lot of questions about it, which I’m happy to answer, but I will just add that there’s a lot more scrutiny on this issue from this press corps than there was…” When another reporter insisted that it was President Trump who’d argued that there’s been no inflation this year, “The previous administration said that too,” Leavitt replied. “My predecessor stood up at this podium, and she said, ‘inflation doesn’t exist,’ she said that the border was secure. And people like you just took her at her word, and those were two utter lies. Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real factual data, and you don’t want to report on it because you want to push untrue narratives about the president.” Sadly, Press Secretary Leavitt barely captured half of what went on under President Biden. In addition to failing to report the reality of inflation, with all of the experts and the Administration insisting it was “transitory,” they – including the mainstream media – went so far as to openly mock those who dared to express a concern. At times, they declared rapid inflation was a good thing. James Surowiecki, writing for MSNBC, managed to do both at once, rather incredibly First, he criticized one of the few times CNN actually covered the issue by focusing on a family struggling to pay their grocery bills, claiming “doing it the way CNN did is likely to confuse and frighten viewers rather than enlighten them” and that the “inflation hawks have been telling scary stories about impending inflation” for more than 12 years” before insisting “any discussion of inflation needs to include the context in which it’s happening.” The context back then was the coronavirus pandemic, which had left most people “better off, not worse,” at least according to his reasoning. “The result of all this was that Americans ended 2020 $13.5 trillion richer than they were at the beginning of the year…So lots of Americans came into 2021 with money in their pockets. And since then, we’ve seen the sharpest recovery from a recession since World War II, one that’s driven the unemployment rate down to 4.6 percent, and wages up almost 5 percent year-over-year.” Because of this, “consumers are, relatively speaking, flush with cash,” and therefore demand, not lack of supply or government printing endless money, was actually driving up the prices. In his view, the root cause was, “it’s taking manufacturers and food producers time to increase supply after cutting back production during the pandemic. When you have high demand, and relatively low supply, prices go up.”
Sadly, the Biden Administration might’ve been the worst of all, denying reality and veering between openly ridiculing those who were concerned about supply chain disruptions as the “tragedy of the treadmill delayed” and laughing when asked if they were doing anything to bring down energy prices. Though inflation got worse and worse despite their claims, something of a cottage industry sprung up accusing those who they perceived as affluent for overstating the issue, culminating in a legendary interview on CNN where a shirtless guy drinking a beer absolutely destroyed a reporter for questioning his concerns about the economy. When the shirtless man, a veteran Joe Harner and a participant in a Trump Boat Parade, told the reporter that the “the economy” was his biggest concern, the reporter asked how that could be since he owned a boat and seemed to be doing well, what the reporter herself described as asking “slightly impolite questions,” Mr. Harner replied. “Listen, nobody gave me shit. I earned everything that I’ve got. I’m retired military (and) retired power plant. And I’m successful and retired – with boats and jet skis – because I did it right. Everybody has that chance. Whether they choose (that) or not, that’s up to them.” The intrepid reporter continued, however, claiming that Mr. Harner shouldn’t be concerned about rising grocery prices because they are a small portion of his budget and he can afford them. “Because I want my money to go further. I want inflation to go down, I want interest rates to go back down,” he replied. “I want all of that. That covers EVERYBODY in the economy. Not just me, not just the poor, not just the rich. It covers everybody.” At this point, the reporter attempted to change direction, claiming that she understood how rampant inflation can impact young people at least. The shirtless, beer-drinking dude had a reply to that as well, referencing his own children, “I trained my kids and taught my kids properly. They have great educations and they’re both successful in their careers. Actually, they’re doing better than me.”
If anything, the President came under even more fire later in the week when he told parents to stop buying their kids so much junk as a means to deal with elevated prices. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils…Every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two. They don’t need that many,” he said. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls,” he added. Though progressives have warned for years that excessive consumerism is destroying the planet and a threat to us all, as Earth Justice put it, “Plastics are everywhere. They are littering our beaches, choking marine life, poisoning communities at the fence line of petrochemical facilities, leaching into our food and water supplies, and ending up in our bodies. They are also major contributors to climate change. As a result, plastics are destroying our planet and harming our health,” meaning limiting the purchase of non-essential plastic junk is what they have been clamoring for for decades, critics immediately seized on the remark, claiming President Trump wants people to ration what they purchase as a result of his horrible, likely illegal policies. “Trump needs private jets and an Oval Office covered in gold but your kid only needs one pencil,” claimed Senator Ruben Gallego. “Thanks to various corrupt schemes, Trump’s wealth has grown by $3 billion over the last year, while his son’s has increased sixfold. His affordability agenda is for you to stop buying pencils and toys for your kids,” progressive influencer Matt Gertz post on X. “If prices are down and the economy is great, why is he recommending rationing your children’s pencils? Ballroom for me, two pencils for thee,” added another user. Some even compared it to President Jimmy Carter’s infamous malaise speech when he urged Americans to wear a sweater rather than heat their homes, claiming it was a threat to the American Dream, as though shivering in your own house was the same as stocking it with disposable dolls. Unfortunately, none appeared to engage with the obvious: Even setting aside the impact on the planet they have warned about for years, the American Dream shouldn’t be measured in cheap plastic shit from China. Anyone that has been to the home of a toddler recently – I have two young granddaughters – can attest to the reality that the entire floor of more than one is overwhelmed with garbage they don’t even play with to the point where there’s a danger of tripping and falling over it.
If money is a tool to acquire meaningful things in life, there’s little meaning to be found in cheap plastic and I suspect everyone knows it. Though I tend to agree with conservatives who feel the President urging Americans to purchase less isn’t a winning message, that doesn’t make it any less true or the affordability crisis any less of a hoax when you consider the sudden fixation from the left, after denying it for almost an entire presidential term.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 