Trump Is Bored to Death by the Affordability Crisis

But an equally big problem is that Americans’ struggles just
don’t interest him. That’s why he can’t stay focused on them. That’s why he rolls
his eyes when he says the word “affordability.” It’s also why in every recent
speech, when he’s not lying about the affordability problem, he’s changing the
subject. Trump raises the issue only to pivot to his preferred topics: tariffs
(which he said recently was his “favorite word”), immigration, his personal
beefs, himself, Ilhan Omar, Somalians in Minnesota, and so on. In
his December 17 speech on the economy, he opened with three sentences on
the cost of living, and immediately after saying the word “affordability,” he launched
a rant about immigrants, as if to wake himself up. Two days later, in a speech
in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he shifted
from affordability to his weird obsession with immigrants coming from insane
asylums (presumably he is equating those seeking “asylum” with mental
patients, a long-standing
Trumpian muddle) without even the pretense of a logical transition, just
because he couldn’t wait to get there.

Hardship bores Trump. And why wouldn’t it? He’s a rich guy
who likes to hang out at Mar-a-Lago with other rich guys. He doesn’t have any answers
to the affordability crisis because he doesn’t care—he really should borrow his wife’s infamous
jacket—and because some of the easiest and most obvious solutions to the
crisis involve rolling back his own policies, not to mention alienating
Republican donors. No wonder he’d rather rant
about Somalis in Minnesota—or reminisce about the good old days of his
attempted assassination.

Trump’s utter disengagement and mendacity on the
affordability crisis create a huge opportunity for Democrats, and some have
been running with it. On Thursday, democratic
socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as the new mayor of New York City. He
campaigned on making New York more affordable through universal childcare, free
buses, a rent freeze for rent-stabilized buildings, as well as increasing the
supply of housing for poor, working-class, and middle-class New Yorkers. He is backed
by a grassroots campaign to tax the rich to make all this possible. On January
20, Mikie Sherill, the Democratic governor-elect of New Jersey, will also be
sworn in. She too campaigned on lowering costs while also strongly opposing the
construction of new data centers, which will increase energy bills, line tech
billionaires’ pockets, and only flood the world with more slop.