"Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again," Donald Trump told rallygoers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in August 2024. "We’re going to make it affordable again." He said it over and over and over. "Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. We’ll do that. We’ve got to bring it down," he told a Wisconsin crowd that October.

Well. Guess what? Prices are up. And they’re not just up, at least in some cases, because of random, impersonal market forces. They’re up because Trump raised them, through his tariffs. But mostly, they’re up because politicians, even presidents, don’t have the power to lower prices quickly and unilaterally.

I thought everyone knew this. I thought everyone was at least sophisticated enough to understand that inflation is kind of complicated and has to do with a number of factors that can’t be easily erased or reversed. I mean, that’s not a particularly advanced political or economic concept. A president can’t just say, "Beef prices, I command thee down!" and beef prices go down. We live in the real world, not some fairy-tale land; there’s no legal limit to the snow here, as there was in Camelot.

And yet—apparently a lot of people did believe him. Well, you know what? I’m not in the habit of calling people idiots. Elected Republicans, yes. A lot of them are idiots, and hypocrites and liars and worse. But regular people—I try to stay away from calling them idiots. They have pressures, they don’t really follow politics, and even in the present case, I understand that a few million voters turned to Trump because Joe Biden seemed to be responsible for inflation (and was, to a certain extent), Kamala Harris didn’t plausibly explain how she’d do things differently, and Trump was the only other entrée on the menu. Those people, I sort of get.

But if you really, truly, deeply believed that Trump would lower prices quickly? I’m sorry. You’re an idiot.

To complement The New Republic’s January/February 2026 issue, "This Is Not America," our writers discuss Trump’s immigration policy and how communities are resisting, from refugees defying the administration’s orders to protests against ICE raids and the National Guard’s deployment in U.S. cities.

I keep wondering how people could have fallen for this. How could people not know, after living through Trump’s first term, that he’ll say anything—whatever works for him in the moment? Did people really just forget that? Apparently, they did. I have to keep reminding myself: There are a lot of people who pay attention to politics the way I pay attention to gymnastics—for a few weeks every four years. They’ve never understood that Trump is worse—far, far worse—than your average pol in the way he’ll just say whatever sounds good at the time.

Did they think he could fix things because he’s a businessman? You know—a businessman with six bankruptcies? Anyone capable of even a semblance of critical thinking who spent 10 minutes examining Trump’s business career could see that what he mostly did was drive companies into the ground, stiff contractors, fend off lawsuits, and skate through it all because he was a celebrity, which he figured out how to parlay into profit by selling the right to put his name on buildings.

And finally, I suspect a lot of people bought it because a lot of other dishonest people were pushing it. And here, of course, I mean the right-wing propaganda machine—from Fox News to podcasters to the algorithmic narcotics pushers on social media who are rapidly turning half the nation into a bunch of rage-baited nitwits—that helped elect him and that helps keep his poll numbers, anemic as they are, from being even worse.

It’s not as if it was some deeply held secret last year that presidents can’t just lower prices, or that tariffs increase prices. Plenty of people said so and warned that Trump had no answers. But the propagandists drowned the sane voices out.

Imagine that Kamala Harris had said she was going to lower grocery prices immediately, on day one. You know what would have happened? She’d have been laughed off the campaign trail. Mocked relentlessly. And not just by the right wing. By mainstream economic commentators. By liberal pundits. By me.

That’s because we—mainstream commentators, liberal pundits, and the millions of Americans who still do actually read stuff, weigh evidence, connect dots—would have known it was a preposterous and desperate lie. And we’d have said so. She’d have been savaged. She and her people no doubt knew this, which is why she didn’t talk like that.

She did address the issue. She did say she’d bring prices down. But she didn’t say silly things like "from day one," and she offered some specifics about how she’d try to bring them down. She vowed to go after corporate price-gouging. You’ll recall that she was attacked even for this, on the grounds either that such gouging was allegedly rare or that most states already had laws against it, or it was just more proof she was a not-so-secret Marxist.

Otherwise, her plan to lower prices consisted of the usual dreary, time-consuming, reality-based stuff: expanding the child tax credit to reduce the costs of raising children; expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, to give more money back to lower-income taxpayers; providing housing tax credits to make homeownership more affordable.

Oh, and one more thing: She proposed extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies—exactly the hammer that’s about to thwack 20 million Americans over the head because Trump refuses to do this and has ordered the Republicans in Congress to follow suit.

So she put forward some plans. But plans are so ho-hum. Trump, in contrast, promised he’d cut the cost of a new home in half. Half! How? By slashing regulations! What regulations? You know—regulations! The evil, very, very bad ones! Sing along with me, to the tune of "Camelot": "No regulation ever shall raise prices …"

So he goes back to Pennsylvania, as he did this week, and face-plants at the first MAGA rally of his second presidency by making fun of the whole idea of "affordabili-tee," even pronouncing the word in such a way as to make light of the idea. Of course he did. He has no idea what to do about all this. So he has to make it sound like a "Democrat" hoax.

Oh—and that "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus" he gave himself on the economy in that Politico interview. That’s five pluses. I’ve noticed on cable news a lot of people reducing it to four. Understandable. Four has a more natural rhythm to it, as we know from the world of music. But Trump, of course, had to gild the faux-gold lily and add a fifth. That fifth "plus," for those attuned to the psychological trip wires that exist in that swampy brain of his, is his secret admission that he knows things aren’t good. Yet he had the gall to lecture his rallygoers: "You’re doing better than you’ve ever done." Imagine Joe Biden having said that in 2023.

So, to those who voted for TRUMP in the belief that he would "lower prices" on DAY ONE, I ask you: Do you think this man who lives in a Gilded Mansion gets what you’re going through? Do you think he’s EVER been to a supermarket in his life? Do you think he could guess the Price of a Gallon of Milk? A head of his beloved Iceberg Lettuce? I beg of you. PLEASE. WAKE UP!! He is Playing You. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

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Last week’s quiz: "Dear little girl and boy land …" With 20 shopping days till Christmas, a quiz on the history of toys.

1. The oldest one of these dates back to 3,500 BCE Iraq.

A. Yo-yo

B. Spinning top

C. Stuffed animal

D. Rattle

Answer: B, top. They were made of clay. Here’s the story. The yo-yo goes back only to 500 BCE (Greece). Baby rattles are older—4,500 BCE (Syria). Stuffed animals, they’re less sure about, but there apparently were ancient ones. 

2. This toy aimed at boys was the first toy to be the subject of a major national advertising campaign in the United States.

A. Erector set

B. B-B gun

C. Tyke-sized baseball bat, ball, and glove

D. Paddle ball

Answer: A, erector set. The year, which I should have mentioned in the question, was 1913.

3. The great toy explosion in America came after the war. List these five iconic 1950s toys in the order in which they were marketed on a broad scale (some were technically "invented" earlier): the Frisbee, the Hula Hoop, Mr. Potato Head, Barbie, Play-Doh.

Answer: Mr. Potato Head, 1952; Play-Doh, 1956; Frisbee, 1957; Hula Hoop, 1958; Barbie, 1959. Pat yourself on the back if you nailed this one.

4. Now do the same with these five classic toys that debuted in the 1960s: Lite-Brite, G.I. Joe, Easy-Bake Oven, Twister, Spirograph.

Answer: Easy-Bake, 1963; G.I. Joe, 1964; Spirograph, 1965; Twister, 1966; Lite Brite, 1967. This was my era. I owned all of these, except the Easy-Bake Oven, although I was kind of interested even in it, harboring as I did certain gastronomic aspirations even then, but moms didn’t buy boys Easy-Bake Ovens in those days.

5. What’s the standard retail price of an American Girl doll in their historical series (i.e., their most popular and best-known line)?

A. $80

B. $110

C. $135

D. $200

Answer: C, $135. As I know all too well from my daughter’s A.G. phase. Her favorites were Melody, the Motown girl, and Julie, the hippie chick.

6. Of the three major gaming platforms—Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2—which has the most sales so far in 2025? 

Answer: Nintendo Switch 2, and by a country mile. Of course, it is new.

This week’s quiz: "O Holy Night …" On Christmases past, present, and future.

1. In what month do most scholars think Christ was actually born?

A. March

B. May

C. July

D. September

2. Why, then, do we celebrate Christmas in December?

A. The Roman Catholic Church, under Pope Julius I, chose the date in the fourth century.

B. Charlemagne fixed the date in 770.

C. It was decreed by the Avignon papacy in 1348.

D. Because December 25, 1741, was the date on which Handel’s Messiah was premiered, and it was so popular the date just stuck.

3. Which historical leader banned Christmas?

A. Napoleon Bonaparte

B. Oliver Cromwell

C. Louis Auguste Blanqui of the Paris Commune

D. Adolf Hitler

4. In the United States, under which president did Christmas become a federal holiday?

A. James Monroe

B. Millard Fillmore

C. Abraham Lincoln

D. Ulysses S. Grant

5. According to OfficeHolidays.com, Christmas is an official holiday in most of the countries of the world. A few countries celebrate Orthodox Christmas, two weeks after Western Christmas; a few others Coptic Christmas (same day as Orthodox); and a number of countries don’t recognize Christmas at all. Place each of the following countries into one of these four categories.

Angola

Mongolia

Lebanon

Egypt

Libya

India

Iraq

Iran

6. A data scientist in Montreal has made an animated prediction of what areas in North America will have white Christmases through 2100. In that year, according to his model, will the following states have white Christmases, yes or no?

New Hampshire

Michigan

Idaho

Nebraska

Colorado

I’m going to give you the answers quickly now, because Fighting Words, alas, is taking an extended and richly earned holiday break, not to return until Friday, January 9. So, (1) D: Jesus was born in September; (2) A: Pope Julius and the Roman Catholic Church settled on December, for weird reasons; (3) B: Cromwell and the Puritans banned Christmas; (4) D: Grant made Christmas a federal holiday. On question 5, Angola, Lebanon, India, and Iraq celebrate Christmas; Egypt celebrates Coptic Christmas; Iran and Mongolia do not celebrate. On number 6, Idaho and Colorado will have snow in 2100, the other states will not. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com. Enjoy your holidays, and cross your fingers for 2026 being a very bad year for Sir Donald of Orange. 

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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