National Review Torches Trump for ‘Yammering’ About Dolls and ‘Spoiled’ Kids: He Never Had to ‘Make Do With Less’
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
National Review torched President Donald Trump over his “anti-abundance agenda” in an editorial published on Tuesday.
In recent days, Trump has defended his sweeping implementation of tariffs by suggesting that the consequence of his policies might be that “the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
“They don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five,” he remarked in another instance.
“Bizarrely, the man who for decades has been a symbol of unapologetic American excess is now defending his tariff policies by making a case against abundance,” observed the conservative magazine, which chided the president for “telling parents what their kids do and do not need.”
“Beyond that, the central justification for Trump’s tariffs has been the populist argument that free trade only benefits wealthy Wall Streeters at the expense of lower-income Americans. But it isn’t the super rich who will have problems buying things for their children under Trump’s tariff regime, but rather families who rely on access to cheaper goods to be able to afford any sort of toys (or other goods) for their children,” continued the editorial. “It’s hard to think of a greater gift to Democrats during a chaotic and expensive Christmas shopping season than footage of Trump (who never faced the prospect as either a child or a parent of having to make do with less) yammering about American children being spoiled.”
“Whether it was Jimmy Carter calling for national sacrifice in his ‘malaise’ speech, or former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki mocking people who might have their Peloton deliveries delayed by supply chain disruptions, dismissing the legitimate economic concerns of American consumers has never been a winning political strategy,” it concluded.
Trump’s approval rating has dropped precipitously since enacting his “Liberation Day” tariffs, and the president has faced criticism over them from a wide variety of conservative voices, including National Review, The Wall Street Journal, and legendary GOP operative Karl Rove.
