The Affordability Con Job
Plus: Tennessee election results, Three Mile Island controversy, immigration enforcement will hit Somali community, and more...
Trump off record: Affordability "doesn't mean anything to anybody," said President Donald Trump during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting at the White House, saying it's a "fake narrative" and "con job" that Democrats manufactured to hoodwink the public.
"They just say the word," Trump added. "It doesn't mean anything to anybody. They just say it—affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything."
"The word affordability is a Democrat scam," he said. "They say it, and then they go on to the next subject. And everyone thinks, 'Oh, they had lower prices.'"
In classic Trump fashion, this is an about-face. Just a few days prior, he declared on Truth Social, "I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT" when touting falling drug prices.
It's true that he inherited super bad inflation, which hovered at 9.1 percent year over year in June 2022—a 40-year high—when Joe Biden was in office. (When you compare, say, grocery prices today with 2020 numbers, they're up about 30 percent, so many people don't exactly feel the relief.) And Trump's tariffs have driven prices up even as inflation has been tamed. Now he seems to be flailing around trying to figure out how to message on cost-of-living issues, which voters consistently say are of great importance to them right now.
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"The November 4 election results are a reality check for the Trump administration. Democrats didn't just run up the score in deep-blue enclaves. With power prices soaring, they flipped two Georgia utility-regulator seats in rare statewide victories. In New York City, more than half of voters told exit pollsters that their top worry is the cost of living. Seven in 10 Americans say their grocery bills have gone up this past year. Six in 10 say their utility costs have increased," wrote Veronique de Rugy for Reason last month. "At steady 3 percent inflation, a dollar is worth only 74 cents after 10 years. Consumers experience this as a permanent increase in the cost of living. That slow erosion is what voters feel whenever they buy groceries, pay rent, or renew insurance." Not to mention, "erratic, day-to-day tariff rate changes—whether it's 35 percent on Friday, 45 percent on Saturday, or 25 percent with exceptions on Sunday—add another hidden cost in the form of uncertainty. We pay it through increased prices and reduced investment."
We're being hit from all sides, and Trump doesn't know how to spin it.
Affordability as an election buzzword: In Tennessee's seventh district, Trump–endorsed Republican Matt Van Epps beat therapyspeak Democrat Aftyn Behn who formerly made news by talking about how much she hates Nashville (the city is split between the fifth, sixth, and seventh congressional districts, so not an amazing idea to talk about how much you dislike it) and how she has a recurring dream in which she stands in a cafeteria full of women and says she doesn't want children, she wants power. But headline news that should give Republicans pause: Behn overperformed.
"Even though Van Epps won, the Republican significantly underperformed Trump's 22-point rout in the district last year as Behn lured voters with a well-funded campaign focused singularly on affordability," notes Politico. Democrats "quickly highlighted the thinner-than-usual margin as a sign of their strength heading into next year's midterms, when they must net three seats to seize control over the House" while Trump declared, "Another great night for the Republican Party!!!" ("Running from Trump is how you lose. Running with Trump is how you win," said Van Epps in his victory speech. Well then.)
Over in Jersey City, right across the river from Manhattan, 41-year-old James Solomon—a Democrat father of three, also focused on affordability, who has served on city council since he was elected back in 2017—handily defeated Jim McGreevey, the former governor of the state who resigned from office amid a sex scandal in which he had an affair with a male staffer (and left his second wife as a result).
Scenes from New York: "Once tap-and-ride is fully implemented, we're going to move to European-style fare payment enforcement, where you'll have fare agents, not cops, who can go up to people and say, 'Can you show me your phone or your OMNY card and I can validate that you paid?'" said Janno Lieber, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, on Tuesday at the New York Law School. Lieber said the crackdown will come right as incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani takes office and will be much easier to orchestrate now that paper MetroCards are almost fully phased out.
QUICK HITS
- Today is the second day of Reason's annual webathon! PLEASE SUPPORT OUR JOURNALISM. Truly, if you get anything out of Reason Roundup—if it's a useful coffee companion for you, that leaves you better informed; if you sometimes get a chuckle; if you hate-read me every darn day with delight—please consider donating, and mention why in your comment. There aren't many folks out there who are fiercely libertarian, attuned to the many ways the state is trying to screw us all over, who advocate for your right to live how you want (and to keep more of your hard-earned money). And to those who have already donated: Thank you for your generosity. It means so much to us.
- "Three Mile Island's nuclear revival pits those who fled against job seekers," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The reopening marks a significant moment in the mini boom that the artificial-intelligence sector is driving across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa and Illinois. Major tech companies, including Microsoft and Amazon.com, are hauling nuclear reactors back to life for their energy-hungry data centers."
- "Federal authorities are preparing a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that would primarily focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the planning," reports the Associated Press.
- "Whether or not the I.R.S. tries to come up with its own definition of 'pornographic activity,' enforcing the exclusion would most likely still involve auditing taxpayers who report tips from sources like OnlyFans," reports The New York Times. "An I.R.S. agent would have to view a taxpayer's content, decide if it was pornographic and then deny the deduction for tips, which is capped at $25,000." (So you're telling me tax collectors get guns and watch porn at work? Insane job.)
- True:
one thing I feel like conservatives grok better than liberals is if you create an honor code based rule that gives someone an advantage ("don't enforce fare collection, most people pay") eventually even honest people feel compelled to cheat to avoid being cheated https://t.co/3GDrMizgZZ
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) December 2, 2025
- The divergent red state/blue state trajectories. Excuse the NPR link:
"Several studies suggest that people in red states have more babies than those in blue states. A new report from @FamStudies says that could have implications for politics and culture." @NPR pic.twitter.com/1sOaByYJkM
— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) December 2, 2025
- Love Megyn, but I'm not sure this is the tack to take:
Megyn Kelly on alleged war crimes: "I really do kind of not only wanna see them killed in the water, whether they're on the boat or in the water, but I'd really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out." pic.twitter.com/yvIWczKS5L
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) December 2, 2025
