King Don went to a Pennsylvania casino last week to tell us that affordability is a new word created by Democrats to make us imagine we’re paying higher prices:
They say, oh, he doesn’t realize prices are high. Prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. So they look at the camera and they say, this election is all about affordability [Donald Trump, speech, Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, 2025.12.09, transcript by Roll Call].
Affordability is not a new word. Its first documented use was in 1910. Affordable has been in use since 1647. And those words have been in Donald’s vocabulary for years.
Trump used affordability three times at a rally on August 14, 2024:
We will target everything, from car affordability to housing affordability, to insurance costs, to supply chain issues…. To further address the housing affordability crisis, we will work with states like Nevada, a great state. …These areas will have low taxes, low regulation to stimulate rapid economic growth, maximum affordability, and the return of a thing called, which I always come back to, the American dream because we’ve lost the American dream [Donald Trump, campaign speech, Asheville, North Carolina, 2024.08.14, transcript by Roll Call].
He used affordable in a speech to Charlie Kirk groupies on July 27, 2024:
Starting on day one, we will end the Biden-Harris inflation nightmare and make America affordable again [Donald Trump, speech to Turning Point summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, 2024.07.27, transcript by Roll Call].
He heard the guy he picked to be his running mate use it at the Republican Convention on July 17, 2024:
Joe Biden’s inflation crisis, my friends, is really an affordability crisis [JD Vance, speech to Republican National Convention, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2024.07.17].
Trump used affordable repeatedly in his 2020 State of the Union Address:
A good life for American families also requires the most affordable, innovative, and high-quality healthcare system on Earth. Before I took office, health insurance premiums had more than doubled in just five years. I moved quickly to provide affordable alternatives…. We have approved a record number of affordable generic drugs… [Donald Trump, State of the Union Address, 2020.02.04].
The American Presidency Project at the University of California–Santa Barbara finds affordability in 40 other White House documents issued during King Don’s first term, including this transcript of a campaign speech on October 16, 2020:
My administration has fought to deliver greater security, affordability, fairness, economic stability to our Nation’s seniors [Donald Trump, campaign speech, Fort Myers, Florida, 2020.10.16, transcript from The American Presidency Project].
…and this executive proclamation on November 22, 2019:
We have fought for families by securing a doubling of the Child Tax Credit, preserving the Child and Dependent Care Credit, signing into law the largest ever increase in child care and development block grants—a major new investment in child care affordability—and developing a tax credit for employers who offer paid family and medical leave [Donald Trump, “Proclamation 9967—National Family Week, 2019,” 2019.11.22, transcript from The American Presidency Project].
…and his remarks on signing executive orders on October 9, 2019:
We’re also working, as you know—cars are very expensive. Far too expensive. And we’re going to be able to bring the price of cars down about $3,500 and, at the same time, make the car a lot more affordable and a lot safer. So we’re going to have affordability, safety, and we’ll also be getting some of the old cars off the roads, because people now have an incentive to buy a new car that’s a lot less of a problem from an environmental standpoint [Donald Trump, “Remarks on Signing Executive Orders on Transparency in Federal Guidance and Enforcement and an Exchange With Reporters,” 2019.10.09, transcript from The American Presidency Project].
…and the opening of Trump’s remarks on signing an executive order on June 24, 2019:
We’re here to announce new groundbreaking actions that we’re taking to dramatically increase quality, affordability, and fairness to our health care system [Donald Trump, “Remarks on Signing the Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First,” 2019.06.24, transcript from The American Presidency Project].
…and Trump’s weekly radio address broadcast on July 14, 2017:
The legislation working its way through Congress provides the choice and control people want, the affordability they need, and the quality they deserve in health care [Donald Trump, weekly radio address, 2017.07.14, transcript from The American Presidency Project].
Trump used affordability in a campaign promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on October 25, 2016:
“My first day in office, I am going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability,” said Trump on Oct. 25, a day after [t]he St. Augustine speech, in Sanford, Florida [“Fact-Checking Trump’s ‘Repeal and Replace’ Obamacare Timeline,” ABC News, 2017.03.24].
If the word affordability were a new word being used to propagate a hoax, the above texts would indicate that Donald Trump had been pushing that hoax since 2016.
Impeach, convict, imprison, annul.
What is sad is that all those reporters who know king don is lying like a rug just let him keep going. Fact checking later is meaningless. The next questioner needs to call out the lie to his face. Why not something simple like Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephone wire. That would break up the meeting. It might even get rid of the “piggy” name calling. He would type it later of course but he’s hardly fast on his feet in rhetorical situations.