Today's affordability crisis is rooted in Trump's insurrection

I ended yesterday's edition by saying there's a straight line between the J6 insurrection and the affordability crisis we are all facing. The corruption that went into Donald Trump's failed paramilitary takeover of the US government rolled into his second term, with the most recent results being persistent inflation, stagnant job growth and a war with no end in sight.

Not long after I made that point, the president illustrated it. "We will pass a truly great healthcare plan that will stop all payments to big insurance companies and we'll give the money directly to you, the people, so you can buy your own much better healthcare at a much lower price, and have a lot of money left over," Trump said during a rally last night.

That's the billionth time (give or take a million) in which Trump promised to do something about the extortionate cost of healthcare. His lies, however, only cover up his corruption.

Five million people (including me) lost their health insurance this year after Trump and the Republicans failed to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies. Another 760,000 people lost Obamacare coverage after the administration made up phony fraud claims to kick them off. As many as 10 million people are going to lose Medicaid coverage by 2028 thanks to GOP legislation that cuts the social insurance program to pay for tax cuts for the obscenely rich.

And what is Trump doing with the "savings"? Buying "Love Me" ads, building ballrooms, painting statues gold, doing a $14 million "renovation" of the Reflecting Pool, only to see it turned into a stinking puddle. None were done in the name of the people, but in his name, and if anything refuses to indulge his vanity, like the Kennedy Center, he threatens to demolish it using the same public funding that could have paid the healthcare of millions.

Not to mention wasting billions on a war no one asked for.

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Healthcare is one area in which it's clear that Trump's corruption is costing Americans, but the effect of his corruption is being felt across the board, according to Faith Williams, a policy analyst for Common Cause. Noting a new Gallup poll showing nine in 10 Americans believe corruption is widespread in the government, she told the Pennsylvania Independent that majorities of voters are making the connection between corruption and affordability.

“That number growing is more of an understanding of the public of how corruption impacts affordability for them,” she said. “I think that’s something that we’ve all been learning more about the last few years, and so maybe it was important before, but it felt super discrete from affordability issues, and now perhaps we’re better understanding how they fit together.”

But while the salience of corruption-affordability is higher than it was five years ago, it was nonetheless visible when Trump led an armed mob to sack and loot the United States Capitol. Special Counsel Jack Smith told the Senate this week that his investigation came to the same conclusion that anyone with eyes willing to see had already come to. "Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election," Smith said, "President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power."

This week, oil executives told the Financial Times that the price of diesel "will not" return to "normal" for another year. Inflation outpaced wages in April for the first time in three years. Wage growth fell last month, worsening what was already a de facto paycut. Mortgage rates reached their highest since 2023. Today's jobs report showed only 29,000 jobs were created in September, with most of those in healthcare and job growth everywhere else being flat.

What we are seeing is the consequence of electing a president who launched an illegal insurrection before launching an illegal war five years later, with the impact of corruption on affordability being felt by an increasing number of people over that time. Feeling pain, some are claiming to be shocked. "The no new wars thing is the one that fucked a lot of people," Joe Rogan said this week. "No one thought we were gonna go into this prolonged war with Iran."

No one, huh?

Things are almost certainly going to get worse.

Time reported this week that the president has become "increasingly in thrall to the tech executives surrounding him." In December 2025, Elon Musk introduced him to Grok. Trump asked the AI chatbot how Venezuelans would react to the US military kidnapping Nicolás Maduro. Grok reportedly said they would celebrate. After Trump ordered Maduro's capture, there was some dancing in the streets. Trump "came away thinking Grok was ingenious."

It is widely believed that the president thought Iran would be as easy as Venezuela. Did he consult artificial intelligence in the run-up to war. Did he privilege Grok's "genius" over the counsel of top Pentagon officials? Trump is an 80-year-old man who is in serious cognitive decline. Is he still using Grok? What is it telling him? That he's winning? That he's won?

If that's not bad enough, consider a new investigation by CNN that found a company owned by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, is the largest shareholder in "a massive Israeli firm" with ties to the Israeli military, providing equipment for its "wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, the same wars Trump sent Kushner to resolve." It's complicated, but the bottom line is this: Whose interests are served by this war? Those of the American people or those of his family?

Poised for victory, the Democrats are being given all kinds of advice on how to hold voters alienated by Donald Trump. The focus is on policies addressing cost-of-living issues, especially healthcare. But we have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis. From the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, to the grocery aisle today, there is a straight line. You can't fix one without fixing the other. The most Democrats can do without control of the White House is focus on exposing Trump's corruption, day in and day out.

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