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millionaire and forbes Magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes once famously said that the person who “dies with the most toys wins.” But due to their tariff policies the price of Christmas gifts has increased this holiday season, President Donald Trump appears to be taking the opposite approach.
The President was two-thirds of the way through A explosive rally in Pennsylvania The intent was to highlight his economic record on Tuesday when he began defending his use of tariffs to protect the U.S. steel industry, even if it raises prices in other sectors.
“You know, you can leave out some products. You can leave out pencils. It’s under China’s policy… every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two… they don’t need that many. But you always need steel,” he said.
continues, Trump said that Americans “Don’t need 37 dolls” for your daughters. He said, “Two or three is good, you don’t need 37, so we are doing things right. We are running this country the right way.”
It was a surprising message of frugality from a man whose net worth is estimated at between five and seven billion dollars, and who has filled his cabinet and administration with millionaires and billionaires, while he is painting surface after surface in the White House with 18-karat gold paint – to say nothing of the $300 million gilded ballroom he is building on the site where the historic East Wing once stood. Earlier he had ordered its demolition two months ago.
Since returning to office, he has used never-before-claimed emergency powers to impose a series of import taxes by executive order on goods from America’s biggest trading partners, including China, where 80 percent of toys imported into the US are manufactured.
The result is a sharp increase in prices paid by consumers this holiday season, a reality that contradicts his claim that his administration has successfully brought the cost of living down from the levels that made inflation a major factor in last year’s election.
in an interview with politico Published Tuesday morning, he claimed his record on the economy should be graded “A-plus-plus-plus-plus”, despite polling showing that only about a third of voters approve of his efforts to bring down prices during his first ten months in the White House.
And when he spoke at a casino in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, that evening, he read canned lines about “the amazing … transformation of our country” since his return to the White House and claimed that “prices have gone down significantly” because of his administration greenlighting oil exploration across the country.
But in a way, his claim that “two or three” dolls would be enough for young girls is consistent with his view that things have improved when comparing his comments on Tuesday with what he said at an April Cabinet meeting, when he dismissed concerns that massive import taxes he disclosed at an event called “Liberation Day” on April 2 could lead to shortages or higher prices.
White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt attempted to defend the comments at a press conference Thursday. Told reporters what Trump intended when making the comments The idea of how many dolls a fictional young girl would need was intended to encourage parents to purchase American-made dolls.
“Maybe you’ll pay a dollar or two more, but you’ll get better quality, and you’ll be supporting your fellow Americans by buying American, and that’s what the president was saying,” he said.
While Leavitt declined to answer questions on the appropriateness of Trump’s comments, members of the U.S. Senate responded to questions by largely calling the comments irrelevant and heavy-handed.
A member of the upper chamber, GOP Senator Markway Mullin of Oklahoma, a staunch Trump defender, was not interested in considering the matter, he told Independent “That’s a stupid question,” he said as he entered the elevator to go to the polls.
When contacted upon his return to office he was asked to respond to the President’s call for parents to limit the purchasing of dolls. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a fellow Republican who has a 5-year-old daughter, quipped that he wished someone would have said the same to him.
Asked how many he has, Hawley replied: “It’s a lot more than three. I don’t know, I’d have to spend a lot of time counting.”
Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who is also the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, told Independent That “Parents in Georgia who are trying to improve their lives do not need shopping advice from the President of the United States.”
“He needs to do what he said he was going to do, and address the affordability crisis, which he now calls a fraud,” Warnock said.
Asked how many dolls her young daughter had, she replied: “You’d have to ask my daughter.”
Another parent of young girls, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, said Trump’s call for doll penance shows he is “completely out of touch with the American people and how they are struggling.”
He suggested that Trump was advocating “rationing” of dolls and asked: “What is this, the Soviet Union?”
Duckworth later said that her daughters “definitely have a lot of dolls” and added that “it’s up to the parents how many dolls they have, not the President of the United States.”
His Democratic colleague, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, was even more blunt when asked on Thursday to reflect on the president’s comments.
“Children don’t need dolls and presidents don’t need golden frickin’ jets gifted from Qatar,” he said.