The President’s Speech

Following President Trump’s speech to the American people in the week before Christmas, several unfortunate rumors began to circulate. I can state with certainty that the speech was not written by President Biden’s speechwriter, nor did an earlier draft of contain the word, “Trumponomics.” So why was the speech so disappointing, including to those of us who support President Trump? As long-time readers of this column know, I have an arrangement with the White House mice. I send them an occasional wheel of Edam or Gouda cheese and they keep a watch for any stray papers I might find of interest. Well, this time they hit the jackpot. It seems several pages of President Trump’s speech fell into a wastebasket on their way to the Oval Office. That waste basket also contained some Cheeze-its, which drew the mice, who recognized the papers’ importance. The means they used to get the missing pages to me must remain clandestine; let’s just say it involved the baggage car on the B&O’s Cleveland Night Express.

Here’s what President Trump was supposed to say:

The problem of affordability is real, and I intend to do something about it. Here are some actions I will soon take or have already taken but which the fake news media have ignored:

o The price of gasoline has fallen sharply from a
year ago, as you all know. That is in part because of
my policy of “drill baby drill.” Restoring normal
relations with Russia after I end the war in Ukraine
will bring the price of oil down further, as will
a new government in Venezuela.

o The cost of an average new car is now more than
fifty thousand dollars. Americans simply cannot afford
to pay that much money for a car. When I was recently in
Japan, I saw a type of small car called a “Kei-car.”
Most American families will still want one big American
car, but many households need a car for every member of
the family, and Kei-cars, whose price starts at $12,000,
would meet that family’s drivers’ needs. A
Kei-car would also well serve people, including many
elderly, who only drive locally. I have already ordered
the Secretary of Transportation to clear away all obstacles
to the importation of Kei-cars into this country,
and I will talk with Japan about keeping the price of
base models at $12,000 dollars. I expect these Kei-cars,
which are really cute, will sell like hotcakes here, and
I also expect Detroit will soon make their equivalents
in price.

o The cost of housing is another major affordability
problem. There used to be a widely-available place to live that was between an apartment and living on the
street: boarding houses. Most cities and towns have
outlawed boarding houses, for no good reason. I have
directed HUD to work with cities to lift the restrictions
on boarding houses so people who cannot afford an
apartment can still get a roof over their heads and
meals on the table. Approving a return to boarding
houses will also allow people in the city to turn the
house they own or rent into a new source of income.

I am also starting a new program, which will
require the approval of Congress and new funding, to
create a revolving fund to help people buy a tiny
house. The tiny house movement is spreading and I
think it is a great idea. Many people who don’t need
much space but would love to owna house will be able
to buy a tiny house with money from the revolving fund.
They would then repay that money into the revolving fund
so more people can buy tiny houses. Tiny houses are
ideal for in-fill in cities that now have lots of open
space where old neighborhoods became slums and were
bull-dozed. Turning that empty space back into new
housing would benefit any city.

o The price of beef has gone through the ceiling. I
have ordered the lifting of all tariffs and other
impediments to importing beef from our good friends
Argentina and Australia. You should soon see
the effect of that in the supermarket.

In addition to bringng prices down, I also want to bring incomes up. As soon as Congress reconvenes, I will ask it to lift the employee’s share of the Social Security and Medicare tax for one year.

For the remainder of my term in office, I will be laser focused on the affordability problem, as will Republican Congress. The actions I have announced tonight are only the beginnings. I will have more proposals to bring prices down and incomes up.

Well, that would have been a very different speech wouldn’t it. Out of whose hands did these pages slip into the wastebasket? President Biden’s speechwriter’s perhaps.