In the 1920s, Republicans promised to put a chicken in every pot. In the 2020s, the Trump now vows to put no more than a handful of dolls in the bedrooms of America's children.
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This is satire… at least until something like it happens tomorrow.
Republicans on Sunday were eager to defend Donald Trump’s bold “two dolls per child” policy proposal. Earlier in the day, for the second time this week, the president stated that kids may need to tighten their tiny little belts this year to show their patriotism.
During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump suggested that American children will maybe “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls” as his tariffs take effect.
Then, the president on Sunday doubled down on his Soviet-style toy planning policy.
“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump said on “Meet the Press” using a disturbingly specific example. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified that the new doll apportionment policy would not only apply to 11-year-old “baby girls” that the president considers to be beautiful, but also to all other US children.
“This is all part of our ‘America First’ agenda,” Leavitt stated. “If you want to be a kid in Donald Trump’s America, First give up on the notion that you will have a lot of toys.”
The president later announced that he planned to appoint Elon Musk to a newly created Department of Limited Toys (DOLT).
“Allowing American children to have too many dolls is a threat to civilization,” Musk tweeted. “If you think about it, there are only so many toys a kid can play with. I know this because I have, like, a dozen of them. Anything beyond the three or four dolls that Donald Trump wants children to have is just waste.”
In Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would make a toy rationing plan a priority and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) indicated that she planned to introduce legislation that would nationalize Mattel.
“We need to secure the means of production to ensure that every child of European descent has access to an American-made toy,” she said.
Meanwhile, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) announced that he would hold hearings to get to the bottom of whether the “Biden crime family” is involved in any Chinese toymaking syndicates.
Trump’s plan also immediately became an issue in Republican primaries.
In Ohio, for example, gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy suggested that American children should not play with toys at all because that took away time from studying.
Finally, Trump’s immigration czar Tom Homan was quick to clarify that the new toy restriction would not apply to the American-born children of immigrants, whom he plans to deport.
“Where I want to send them, they will make the dolls, not play with them,” Homan told a reporter from Univision before asking to see her immigration papers.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
