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This is an adapted excerpt from the May 10 episode of “Velshi.”
Donald Trump is trying to sell a vision to the American people. As his chaotic tariff rollout continues to prove both damaging to the U.S. economy and unpopular among voters, the president has frequently brought up the hardships Americans will face, like his recent remark that children might have “two dolls instead of 30” this Christmas.
Perhaps Trump is using dolls as an example because it sounds frivolous and unimportant in the grand scheme of things — but make no mistake, what the president is trying to sell here has nothing to do with dolls and everything to do with austerity. And that is not what he campaigned on.
For ordinary American families who work hard for every penny, reducing financial hardship to a question of dolls is, actually, deeply offensive. It’s a dismissal of the daily struggle to make ends meet in a country where, for many, the cost of living keeps outpacing wages.
Trump, a man who surrounds himself with gold-plated everything, is trivializing real sacrifices made by working- and middle-class Americans.
Trump’s sweeping tariffs could cost the average household $3,800 a year, hitting working- and middle-class Americans hardest, according to a Yale report. When Trump talks about dolls, what he’s really saying is, “Get ready for hard times.” Trump is telling the American people to prepare for scarcity, to prepare for prices to spike, to prepare for the fact that they probably won’t be able to afford the life they’re used to.
But why do the American people need to do this? To bankroll Trump’s tariffs and tax cuts for the rich. Trump, a man who surrounds himself with gold-plated everything, is trivializing real sacrifices made by working- and middle-class Americans. Make no mistake; this isn’t about dolls or pencils or strollers, it’s about deliberately making life harder for millions of families under the false pretense that doing so is necessary for some greater good. But there is no greater good — unless you’re already pretty rich, and even then it’s not clear that tanking the global economy is beneficial.
Trump’s tariffs don’t just take a wrecking ball to Main Street, they put the U.S. dollar’s global dominance at serious risk of collapse. That’s according to Harvard University economist Ken Rogoff, who told Axios that Trump “is a catalyst and an accelerant … The rest of the world was already seeking more freedom from the dollar, and this lit a fire under it.”
America does not need austerity right now, for any reason. We certainly don’t need austerity so the ultra-wealthy can score another trillion dollars in tax cuts. We don’t need austerity so Trump can pass a cruel budget that guts Medicaid and dismantles the social safety net, all to fund those trillions in tax cuts.
You may remember that after the 9/11 attacks, then-President George W. Bush told Americans that the most patriotic thing they could do was to spend, to keep the economy moving. That was a Republican president encouraging consumer confidence and spending — not austerity — in a moment of real national crisis, because Bush understood what every president except this one does: that in America, consumer spending drives recovery.
But now? We’ve got a Republican president who caused the instability from which we would need to recover, and he’s asking ordinary, non-rich, working Americans to tighten their belts to fix it.
Let’s be clear: Austerity is a real thing that has, historically, in some specific instances, been used successfully. But it’s certainly not a growth strategy, which is what Trump campaigned on. Austerity is the policy of pulling back, two dolls instead of 30, five pencils instead of 250 pencils. Like tariffs, austerity only makes sense in certain, specific circumstances: for instance, during true emergencies, like war or natural disasters. Austerity asks people to sacrifice for the greater good. What’s the greater good here? To what true national emergency are we responding, other than the one Trump is manufacturing through sweeping tariffs that raise prices on everything from groceries to school supplies?
This is austerity without justification. Austerity with no purpose. It’s austerity by design, to make sure the wealthy remain untouched while the rest of the country is told to “make do.”
Let’s be honest, Trump never intended for the wealthy to share in the sacrifice. When Trump says your kid only needs two dolls, he’s not saying his grandkids will get two gifts this holiday season. He’s not telling billionaire CEOs to give up their private jets and fly commercial, or to sell their yachts and board a Carnival Cruise. He’s telling you — the teacher, the truck driver, the single mom, the small business owner — that your life needs to get economically smaller so his billionaire buddies’ tax bills can get smaller.
And while he’s at it, his foot soldiers in Congress are busy pushing cuts to Medicaid, the very lifeline families depend on when times get tough.
Trump is manufacturing a crisis, imposing austerity and then taking away the very tools Americans need to survive it.
It’s a betrayal of not just his base, but of all hardworking Americans, and it's a full-blown assault on the working and middle class. This isn’t economic policy: It’s a wealth protection racket dressed up as fiscal responsibility.
It’s austerity by design, to make sure the wealthy remain untouched while the rest of the country is told to “make do.”
Even the conservative Wall Street Journal sees through it. In an op-ed last week, Matthew Hennessey wrote, “In Mr. Trump’s America you get two dolls only, you pay more, and you be sure to thank the man in the handmade silk tie on the way out.”
“Presidents succeed by promising a chicken in every pot, and then delivering two or three. Up until last week I would have said that was Mr. Trump’s shtick. Now I’m not so sure,” he continued. “Mr. Trump has no standing to push austerity. His whole life has been a tribute to gilded, gaudy excess. Every room he enters is bedazzled and bedecked … He put his name on anything he thinks he can sell — sneakers, watches, steaks, golf balls. Nobody ‘needs’ any of it. Most of us live and work in the private sector of trade-offs. We make budgeting decisions for our businesses and families that have real-world consequences. We can decide what we need and don’t need, thank you very much.”
Trump ran in 2016 on a promise to strengthen the economy, to uplift the “forgotten man and woman.” But here we are in 2025, and he’s telling those same people to accept less, spend less and expect less while pretending it’s for their own good.
This isn’t a natural downturn, it’s not a war economy, and it’s not the result of some external disaster. It’s the fallout from one man’s economic choices and his refusal to change course. Austerity is for emergencies. This is economic gaslighting.
So no, Trump, we’re not buying the idea that Americans need to give up the things that keep daily life running just because you lit the house on fire and now want credit for handing us a water bucket.