In last night’s State of the Union address, Donald Trump described an America beyond recognition, one where prices are way down, wages are way up, jobs are plentiful, housing is affordable, war is over, prescription drugs are basically free, and violent crime is nearly nonexistent except when perpetrated by undocumented immigrants. During this extended fantasy of an alternate United States, rid of every pressing problem other than those pinned solely on Democrats, almost everything out of Trump’s mouth was shameless spin or a bald-faced lie.
But while the nation’s fact-checkers work overtime, it’s worth taking a step back and admiring the speech’s focus on affordability. Not admiring Trump himself, whose litany of grandiose claims insults the intelligence of Americans who know exactly what they’re making and spending, but observing with some astonishment his eagerness to play the economic populist.
Trump is no stranger to mimicking economic populist rhetoric. Just months after announcing his first presidential campaign in 2015, he admitted to CNN that he had watched Bernie Sanders talk about trade and decided to crib lines for his own speeches. He did much the same last night, at one point postulating that a worthy government “answers to the people and not the powerful” — strange stuff coming from a billionaire who flagrantly operates a patronage network of other superelites keen to exchange money for influence.
But Trump went beyond rhetorical flourishes in last night’s address, seeming to take the speech as an opportunity to aggressively occupy the populist lane. For one extended section, he even presented a series of preexisting progressive economic ideas as his own.
First, he touted his Trump Accounts idea, which is just a personally branded version of the “baby bonds” policy championed by Cory Booker and Ayanna Pressley and backed by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Elizabeth Warren.
Then he upped the ante by plugging…
Auteur: Meagan Day
