PRAGMATIC ISSUES

Donald Trump says that 2026 will be the “year of affordability.”

Adorable, really, like watching an arsonist promise to start a fire department.

Because if there’s one thing Trump knows how to do, it’s drive prices up, gut safety nets, and then sell the ashes back to us as luxury condos. His administration’s latest slogan, affordability lands somewhere between tragic irony and a B rated horror movie. The man who turned the word “inflation” into a household trauma trigger now wants America to trust him as the nation’s bargain-hunter-in-chief.

Let’s review the receipt pile, shall we?

The Affordability Mirage

Trump says he’s focused on making life affordable.

Meanwhile, groceries, rent, and utilities continue their slow-motion strangulation of the American middle class. His solution? Cut housing assistance, defund food programs, and shovel subsidies into corporate pockets under the guise of “stimulating growth.” It’s as if Marie Antoinette looked out over a bread riot and said, “Let them buy luxury beef imported from Argentina.”

In Trump’s economy, billionaires get tax loopholes so wide you could drive a gold-plated golf cart through them.

Working families get an extra sermon about how “trickle-down” will save them any day now.

Affordability?

Only if you’re already loaded.

The Housing Hypocrisy

Trump claims he’ll fix housing affordability next year. Wonderful, perhaps after he finishes burning down what’s left of HUD.

His budget proposals have already slashed Section 8 and affordable housing funds, all while giving developers green lights to gentrify entire zip codes into uninhabitable art pieces.

The only housing market that’s thriving under Trump is the Mar-a-Lago Real Estate School of Eviction and Evasion  buy low, exploit high, declare bankruptcy, and call it capitalism.

The “Working Man’s President” Who Never Worked for the Working Man

Trump loves to tell the story of how he’s fighting for “the forgotten men and women of America.” Which is strange, considering he keeps forgetting them in every single policy rollout. His administration has fought against minimum wage increases, against labor protections, and against healthcare affordability but somehow insists that this time, he really, truly cares.

It’s like watching a casino owner lecture gamblers about fiscal discipline.

The Gaslighting Economy

Every time Trump opens his mouth about affordability, it’s not an economic plan it’s a gaslighting exercise in mass psychology. We’re supposed to believe that the same man whose fiscal policies supercharged inequality will suddenly wake up as FDR reincarnate.

Spoiler, he won’t.

This administration has spent more time rebranding failure than fixing it. And while Trump tweets about “making life affordable again,” millions of Americans are making impossible choices, rent or medication, food or heat, savings or survival.

The Decades-Long Fallout

Even if Trump suddenly got serious about affordability, the damage is generational. You don’t unbreak an economy overnight.

You don’t undo a housing crisis by staging a press conference.

And you certainly don’t rebuild trust in working-class America by trotting out slogans after months of your own Of the destruction you created and caused.

We’re staring down decades of repair work, rebuilding affordable housing stock, fixing hollowed-out supply chains, and recovering from policies that prioritized donors over doers. The idea that Trump, of all people, will fix the mess he created is like trusting a demolition crew to handle delicate pottery.

America Deserves Proof, Not Promises

If Trump is serious, if this isn’t just another golden-lettered campaign prop then we need proof. Like not taking credit for making this thanksgiving cheaper, we all have eyes we see the prices at stores nationwide and all of the media is showing just how much more expensive it will be this year.

If you’re going to falsify information try falsifying something else.

He might also want to try to provide real proof.

• Take accountability finally for the shutdown that he caused.
• Proof that wages will finally rise faster than rent.
• Proof that housing won’t remain a billionaire’s playground.
• Proof that the man who wrecked affordability can actually spell it.

Otherwise, all this talk is just another campaign con, wrapped in a Made-in-China hat.

Until then, America should take Trump’s “year of affordability” promise with the same skepticism one reserves for a “buy one, get one free” ad from a company that already overcharges by 200%.

Because this isn’t vision, it’s revision.

And no amount of gaslight can hide the burn marks.