The White House billionaires have no idea how Americans live (and don’t seem to care)

Having mega-rich guys run the government invites all kinds of concerns about the potential for corruption, which is certainly a real (and well documented) concern surrounding the Trump administration, given the president’s crypto side hustles, a cabinet stacked with billionaires and the administration’s general lack of regard for the rule of law.

Having mega-rich guys run the government invites all kinds of concerns about the potential for corruption, which is certainly a real (and well documented) concern surrounding the Trump administration, given the president’s crypto side hustles, a cabinet stacked with billionaires and the administration’s general lack of regard for the rule of law. But beneath those lofty questions of ethics lies a more basic problem: These guys are out of touch. Especially with the voters who made clear their No. 1 concern was the cost of living in America. The world got a peek inside the administration’s gilded bubble Wednesday, when President Donald Trump glibly brushed off concerns about his tariffs leading to bare store shelves and shortages: “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30, you know?” he said at a Cabinet meeting. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.” That message of austerity is coming from a golf-club-and-casino mogul who is so obsessed with opulent decor that he reportedly has a “gold guy” slathering finishes on the fixtures and furnishings of the White House, all while spending taxpayer money on regular weekend trips to his private Floridian social club. The doll comment was notable, too, because it was a rare acknowledgement of a reality the president has long denied: His tariff policies will create shortages and raise prices. Children’s toys are particularly vulnerable, as nearly 80% of all toys sold in the US are manufactured in China, my colleague Elisabeth Buchwald reports. Most US toy sellers are grappling with two stark choices: raise retail prices to offset the 145% tax Trump is forcing them to pay on Chinese goods or stop importing and potentially go out of business.