A Blue Revolution Is Brewing
King Trump's indifference to affordability will cost MAGA everything.
There is no universe, in this one or any alternate timeline, where “let’s lock up the economic data and build a shiny new ballroom” is a winning affordability message.
Yet here we are.
You saw Donald Trump’s 18th iteration of his affordability message yesterday, when he said of affordability, “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody…The word affordability is a con job by the Democrats.”
The vibe is late Bourbon decadence and indifference, King Donald the Corpulent in his palace, while the peasantry starves. I’m going long on pitchforks and tumbrels.
At the precise moment when Americans are standing in the cereal aisle doing battlefield math over whether the kids get brand-name or generic Wheat-os, Donald J. Trump is obsessing over chandeliers, parquet floors, and the sightlines in his new, ever-expanding plan for a White House ballroom with the square footage of a large Costco.
He is micromanaging the golf-leaf design for a ballroom that only the upper tier of the donor set will ever enjoy, while telling the rest of the country they ought to be grateful for the privilege of getting economically hit in the face.
Affordability is not a vibe.
We’ve seen the old, pure questions of economic distress increasingly bring a political edge that the GOP seems blissfully unaware is about to slit its throat. It is the question that eats at the minds of moms and dads in the real world: “Can I pay my bills? Can I feed my kids? Do I have a job?” Elon, Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and the private equity class are doing just fine under Trump, but the economic stresses that got him re-elected in 2024 are still crushing everyone else.
Trump is botching it in ways that would almost be comic if the consequences weren’t so ugly for the vast majority of Americans. But their pain is nothing like the brick about to land on the GOP’s head in 2026. A blue revolution is coming, and the wasted time and effort of the GOP to polish Trump’s ego over improving the economy has already crossed a line; they’re too late to even try to fix it.