Trump Is Sounding A Lot Like The Man He Considers A Terrible President

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump repeatedly labeled Jimmy Carter as one of America’s worst presidents. But with his recent insistence American children can make do with fewer toys, the billionaire real estate developer sounds a bit like the late peanut farmer who once asked Americans to sacrifice for a cause they don’t really believe in.

“Wasn’t there a president — he wore a sweater?” asked Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), referring to the one-term former Democratic president who wore a sweater in 1977 as he urged Americans to turn down their thermostats to conserve resources in the face of what Carter called a “permanent” energy shortage.

The sweater image and accompanying economic message fueled years of Republican backlash.

“How’d that work out for him?” Coons continued. “I’m just saying Americans in general don’t want to hear their president lecture them about austerity and how they should plan on being less generous to their children at Christmas from a guy who’s a self-described billionaire.”

Trump’s shocking statements defending the prospect of fewer, more expensive consumer products come as his approval slides thanks in large part to public dissatisfaction with his tariff policy, which is essentially a unilateral tax that will increase the cost of a broad range of consumer goods, especially toys and other products made in China, for families with young children.

Speaking about the prospect of his tariffs reducing the supply of consumer goods and raising their prices, Trump said last week on Air Force One, “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

In a follow-up interview with NBC News, Trump elaborated and expanded the universe of things children will have to do less without. “I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five,” he said.

And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that doll-deprived little girls can take solace in the brighter future Trump is building for them with his tariffs.

“I would tell that young girl, that you will have a better life than your parents, that you, your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents,” Bessent said. “Which working-class Americans had abandoned that idea. Your family will own a home. You will be able to advance. You will have a good education. You will have economic freedom.”

For Trump, implementing the tariffs is the fulfillment of a decadeslong wish built on a conviction Americans are being screwed by an international trade regime whose details Trump frequently gets wrong. He insists the tariffs will boost manufacturing, bringing back jobs making toys and all sorts of other goods to American shores.

But Americans, for as much as they have been skeptical of free trade at points in the past, do not share his deep-seated convictions. Polling indicates they believe the tariffs will raise prices on consumer goods, will harm the United States more than our trading partners and do not necessarily want jobs in factories making toys or anything else. Sacrificing dolls in order to change the balance of world trade, to them, simply isn’t worth it.

Polling analyst Lakshya Jain said Trump’s rhetoric “seems like something where he’s saying, ‘Your life will become worse and that’s fine, because you’ll understand.’ And, really, no voter is ever fine with degrading their quality of life for the president’s pet project.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Democratic president Barack Obama, said the tariff toy statements “might be the worst, dumbest, most politically damaging message I’ve ever heard,” arguing in his newsletter Trump can’t pitch a message of patriotic sacrifice while also seeking tax cuts for the rich and aggrandizing his own family with a corrupt crypto scheme.

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), one of several younger progressives advocating for an aggressive response to the Trump administration, said the administration’s defense of emptier shelves is nothing to celebrate even if they might be advantageous for Democrats.

“The whole situation isn’t helpful for us,” Frost told HuffPost. “I mean, we don’t want the economy to be bad. We want people to do well. We want our constituents to do well. I mean, I’m not here praying that things go negatively because Trump’s in the White House, but things are going negatively.”

The prospect of fewer, more expensive dolls is no empty threat. The toy company Mattel — maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars — told investors this week that in response to tariffs, it would try to move some of its manufacturing out of China, but that it would also likely be “taking pricing action in its U.S. business” —meaning price hikes.

In a statement to HuffPost, White House spokesman Kush Desai said “cheap Chinese toys” aren’t an important part of American prosperity.

“Real prosperity is American workers being able to support their families and communities because they have good jobs that pay well and provide dignity,” Desai said. “This what the Trump administration’s America First agenda of tariffs, deregulation, tax cuts, and domestic energy is focused on unleashing — not cheap Chinese toys.”

The president’s statements that children don’t need so many dolls have confounded some Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a vocal critic of Trump’s tariffs, compared Trump’s directive to that of Big Brother, the leader of a totalitarian sate in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

“I think how many dolls you have is up to the people who buy, not up to the president,” Paul told HuffPost. “It sounds like the government choosing for you what is a good amount of things to buy. … When it’s your own money, you decide. I don’t care if you have four TVs in your house or one TV or no TV. It’s none of my business. But for the government to tell you shouldn’t have so many TVs, that sounds like Big Brother.”

But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has also questioned Trump’s trade policies, said the media should quit fussing over Trump’s toy comments and focus on other issues like President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

“You guys want to talk about dolls? Give me a break,” Johnson said. “It’s a comment he made and now you guys are obsessing over it. Nobody cares about this other than anybody who wants to poke a stick in President Trump’s eye.”

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), meanwhile, said the president was essentially thinking out loud when he mused on the availability of toy dolls.

“I think the president is, he is so accessible that you’re hearing real-time conversations you might hear in a golf club or in a bar or in a church,” McCormick said. “That’s the president. He’s so accessible that you’re hearing things that most presidents don’t even talk about. That’s just his nature, and that’s why people like him, because he’s a guy who says things a lot of people think.”

Democrats have taken the remarks in stride, with several lawmakers saying it simply shows that the billionaire president is out of touch with everyday Americans. Some suggested it was weird for the president to assume American children have so many dolls in the first place.

“What average family gives 20 dolls on Christmas?” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said.

To Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), however, it makes sense that President Donald Trump is willfully increasing the cost of toys and telling the American people it’s for the best.

“In a way, it explains a lot, because I’ve often wondered if he had toys as a child. There was clearly something wrong there, and maybe that’s it. Maybe he was just never allowed to have toys,” Huffman told HuffPost. “What’s next? Are we going to be hoarding rubber and copper like in World War II? I mean, this is the Trump economic dystopia.”