Trump official goes viral for the worst reason - Another Day - Brian Tyler Cohen

[TexasTowelie]

BTC: Today, the Trump administration wants to help you save money on stuff you need so that they can spend it on stuff you don't. This is just another day.

Not an easy time to be an American. Wages are stagnant. The labor market's cooling. Leonardo DiCaprio isn't nearly as hot as he used to be. Seriously, what happened to our boyish Leo? Is he trying to get cast in JD Vance's biopic?

Still, while millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet, we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that Donald Trump cares about our problems and is doing his damnedest to fix them.

(cut to video)
Trump: You know, there's this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. They just say the word. It doesn't mean anything to anybody. You just say it.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Ah, right. Nothing says I feel your pain quite like being told that your pain is a political hoax being perpetuated by the Democratic party. For months, Trump has been denying the affordability crisis like it was a birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein. But I guess he finally realized the approach wasn't working for him because this week he started talking about fixing the actual problem instead of pretending that it didn't exist. And like most of Trump's big domestic plans aimed at improving life for everyday Americans, you can bet it is vague and meaningless.

(cut to video)
Karoline Leavitt: President Trump is making America affordable again through his proven economic formula of powerful tariffs, fair trade deals, massive middle class tax cuts, energy dominance, and aggressive deregulation.

(cut to video)
Trump: Today, I'm thrilled to announce my plan to lower health care prices for all Americans and truly make health care affordable again. We're doing things that nobody's ever been able to do.

(cut to video)
Leavitt: President Trump knows America is strongest when it's a nation of owners, not renters, and he is determined to unlock that opportunity for as many Americans as possible. That's why he will outline additional housing initiatives during his major speech in Davos next week.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Of course, what better place for Trump to launch his plans to make housing more affordable than from a ski chalet in the Swiss Alps surrounded by billionaires? I guess the rest of us will just have to catch it on live stream. What red-blooded American doesn't want to spend a Sunday night sucking down Bud Lights and channel surfing between the Steelers game and the World Economic Forum?

Honestly, call me cynical, but I'm not holding my breath for any plans from Davos for some great health care bill. Because this is what Trump always does. He makes a big show of promising something that is coming soon and is going to be great only to never deliver. Just ask Eric every time his birthday rolls around. You know what the sad part is, Donald? Eric never needed some fancy present. He just needed his dad.

I will say though, in spite of all the Trump administration's empty assurances that it's focused on addressing affordability, I was pleasantly surprised to hear one piece of concrete economic advice from Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins today as she outlined the federal government's new dietary guidelines.

(cut to video)
Brooke Rollins: We've run over a thousand simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, u you know, corn tortilla, and one other thing. And so there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Um, sorry, I I wish I could find the words, but my mouth is too busy watering. Do you see the grill marks on that cube of chicken and a single floret of broccoli? The definition of edible elegance. A floret more would be far too rich. And look at that corn tortilla stretched languidly across the plate like it's one of my French girls asking me to paint her. I think I need a minute.

{pause for deep breathing} I'm sorry, but are you kidding me?

First of all, given the all-out war on immigrants that Trump is waging right now, I find it a little bit rich that Secretary Rollins is telling everyone to eat a tortilla. Do tell, Brooke. While you're in the process of deporting every brown person in America, how might we go about actually making said tortillas?

Second, this is the best idea the administration's got? Let them eat half of frozen Lean Cuisine? And if you think comparing Trump's goons to the French aristocracy is hyperbolic, I shit you not. This is actual footage from a Mar-a-Lago party this past weekend.

(cut to video of partiers dancing at Mar-a- Lago)

(cut to studio)
BTC: I have so many questions starting with why the dog masks for people who were so vehemently against wearing masks when it could save people's lives? The MAGA crowd sure looks for any excuse to slap them on now. I guess they only like to use them for recreation.

Also, not for nothing, but while Trump is asking us to survive on what you sweep off the floor at Chipotle, here's what they were eating at the Mar-a-Lago party on New Year's.

(cut to video of servers giving caviar to guests)

(cut to studio)
BTC: To be fair to Trump, this is toned down after his Great Gatsby party. Maybe he is growing baby steps--after all, what's the saying? Noem wasn't built in a day.

But honestly, I don't know why I'm surprised by any of this. Trump has been asking the American people to shoulder the burden of his economic incompetence since he came into office.

(cut to video)
Trump: You can give up certain products. Uh you can give up pencils because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two. You know, they don't need that many. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don't need 37 dolls.

(cut to studio)
BTC: So, first we didn't need pencils, then dolls. Now it's food. What's next? You know, the average human body contains 10 to 12 pints of blood. It's a lot of blood. You don't need 10 to 12 pints of blood for your body. Two or three is nice.

But maybe it's not fair to take those comments out of context. Trump was actually talking about steel. He was saying, "You need steel. You don't need a bunch of pencils and dolls." So, I guess his point is that while we're all tightening our belts, we should only be spending money on things we need.

(cut to video)
MSNOW Host: The US could pay $700 billion to buy the 800,000 square mile island from Denmark.

(cut to studio)
BTC: I'm not sure we need the country that up until a few months ago most Americans could only identify as not Iceland, the other one.

Still, Greenland may be superfluous, but at least we're not spending money that could improve the lives of millions of Americans on something antithetical to our values as a nation.

(cut to video)
CBS News Minnesota Host: How much is this ICE operation costing? Somewhere between 150 and 170 billion dollars.

CBS News Minnesota Reporter: The numbers sourced from the Big Beautiful Bill passed in July. They allotted up to 170 billion for a one-time immigration enforcement boost in addition to the funding they were already getting.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Damn. And I can't even afford cheese on my tortilla. Still, government spending is full of conditions and red tape. I don't even know that we can ever know for sure whether the money going toward ICE could actually be spent on programs that I personally deem more worthy like oh I don't know healthcare.

(cut to video)
AOC: I want everybody to understand the cuts to your health care are what's paying for this. All that extra money that everybody's paying right now in their premiums, all that extra money that you're paying, it is paid for with it is all of that extra money that that the government and the ACA subsidies that was given to nearly a trillion dollars in healthcare was taken out and given to ICE. So, understand how these dots connect. You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Okay, so this is exactly as straightforward as it seems. So you're being asked to forego a second floret of broccoli, to ration your pencils and your kids toys, to take out a second mortgage, or I don't know sell your hair to pay for healthcare all so that Donald Trump can manifest destiny his way into the Western Hemisphere and fund Steven Miller's fever dream of giving the American Gestapo carte blanche to troll the streets.

Remember that the next time Donald Trump asks you to make a sacrifice because he's asking you to go without basic needs so that he can have more of what nobody wants. And you know what Donald Trump more than anyone needs to hear?

(cut to video)
Trump: You know, you can give up certain products.

(cut to studio)
BTC: Exactly.