#28 Fair enough.
Picture a Republican House incumbent in a Biden-won suburban district trying to run on "We made life cheaper" while their constituents are staring at concealed inflation numbers, higher costs from trade shocks, and the footage of Trump's Marie Antoinette cosplay in the East Wing.
Every ad writes itself: split-screen of the new White House ballroom, dripping with gold and rich people, paired with a kitchen table where the bills are stacked higher than the food. The voiceover does not need to be clever. It just has to ask, "Are you invited to their party?"
Republicans will try the usual: blame immigrants, blame Democrats, blame "wokeness," blame the deep state. None of it answers the basic pain of a middle-class voter who knows damn well that their real wages are not keeping up with Trump's trade disaster and inflation.
When your entire brand is "I alone can fix it" and things feel more broken, it becomes very easy for voters to decide that you, in fact, cannot.
The GOP is already on demographic thin ice. Trump's affordability fiasco is the kind of slow-burning anger that melts what remains of their suburban support among moderates and independents, many of whom held their nose in 2024 solely because Trump promised to reduce grocery and gas prices. It accelerates the erosion with younger voters who have now lived through two Trump eras and a housing market that looks like a hostage situation.
They signed up for the myth of the businessman president. They got the guy who bankrupted casinos and decided the solution for a hurting country was to blow up the economy for a jacked-up economic theory from the 17th century, build a ballroom, and hide the books.
None of the culture war crap, the performative yelping about the Deep State, the liberal media, or whatever else tickles MAGA Twitter's happy place will work when America is locked in a deep recession caused by their Golden God.
In 2026, Republicans will discover the oldest rule in politics and business: eventually, the mark realizes he has been conned. And when that happens, it is not just the con man who pays the price. It is everyone foolish enough to stand next to him when the lights come up, and the check arrives.
Trump is too old to pay that bill ... and doesn't pay his bills in any case.
But the MAGA GOP sure as hell will.
That sound they hear in the distance is a mob, hungry and furious, approaching their palace.
I hope that's fair enough, Lamp.
Trump needlessly caused the deaths of 600,000 people so far this year, 2/3rds of them children, when he cut off food and medicine aid suddenly rather than allow time for other nations and orgs to make up the difference.
He did so so that he could say he was cutting spending... and give the money to himself and his friends in tax cuts.
Comparing him to other Presidents is like comparing apples and orangutans.