The Rationing Presidency

Trump launches another soft pitch right over the plate.

First, Trump take dolls and pencils:

Trump: "I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls ... they don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five."

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)2025-05-04T14:08:20.214Z

Now that we’ve established the pencil and doll rations for American kids under the new Trump austerity regime, I suppose it goes without saying that this is electoral poison and any party with sense would be making hay with it. Let’s see what the Democrats are up to:

Mark Warner on Republicans: "I do think we're getting close to them stepping up, but the problem is going to be, how much structural damage is going to be done before my Republican friends find their voice and voice publicly what they're already saying privately?"

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)2025-05-04T13:11:31.867Z

Yeah, that’s gonna happen. Instead of sitting back and waiting for a miracle, acting like little Leonard Cohens (“There’s nothing left to do / when you’re begging for a crumb”), perhaps the Democrats could try making some fucking hay from this one.

The politics here are dirt simple: Americans hate rationing. They hate austerity. I don’t know if it still happens today, but we had friends who had a serious taking-the-kids-to-McDonald’s habit, and they would have grocery bags full of plastic Happy Meal toys. Right or wrong, people want to give their kids plastic shit from China.

I’m not here to judge, because I belong to a political party that believes in freedom. Republicans are an authoritarian party that believes in imposing severe and inhuman restrictions on the children of America, depriving them of their god-given right to have 250 pencils rather than the dictator’s choice of 5. (And, seriously, you need quite a few colored pencils to do coloring. 5 isn’t enough.)

What’s next for these anti-American freaks? Are they coming after this?

I remember the sheer joy of having this kind of choice when doing my coloring.

Democrats need to take a page from Republicans and freak the fuck out when somebody comes after a basic American cultural signifier. I mean, shit, a 64 pack of Crayolas is just $10 on Amazon. It’s a tiny little splurge that will give a certain kind of kid weeks or months of fun.

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