The “Affordability President” Is Terrified You Know the Truth

“If this story is properly told, we should win the Midterm Elections in RECORD NUMBERS. I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT. TALK LOUDLY AND PROUDLY! President DJT”

Early this morning, the President of the United States was back on his personal state media channel, Trash Social, demanding that his followers “talk loudly and proudly” about how affordable he’s made America. As if repeating a lie often enough will make it true. But Americans know better. Groceries cost more. Rent is up.

Nothing became more affordable the moment he stepped back into power. It was a desperate post. Not just because the lie was so obvious, but because the fear was hiding in plain sight. Buried inside that one unhinged little paragraph is the truth he is already working to hide. He knows what’s coming. The midterms are fast approaching, and it doesn’t look good for Republicans. So he’s already laying the groundwork to explain away the losses, not as rejection, but as sabotage. And whether he admits it or not, he can feel that there is a very real chance his time ruling this country unchecked is coming to an end.

But this isn’t just about affordability. It never was. This is about narrative control. Truth control. And like every authoritarian before him, Trump is building the scaffolding for a government where truth becomes whatever he says it is. Today, we learned that his administration launched a taxpayer-funded “media bias tracker” hosted directly on the White House website, a searchable enemies list where Americans are encouraged to check if a news outlet is “anti-Trump” before reading it. CBS, Boston Globe, The Independent, all labeled threats.

It’s censorship disguised as transparency. And it’s straight out of the fascist playbook. The same playbook used by Goebbels in Germany. By Orban in Hungary. By Putin in Russia. Destroy trust in independent media. Feed state-run propaganda in its place. And convince your followers that they are the only ones with the real facts, making them question what they see with their own eyes.

And now he’s turning government property into personal branding, plastering his face on upcoming national park passes, replacing generations of national heritage with his own image. It’s textbook narcissism. But it’s also something darker. Authoritarian leaders have always done this. Hitler did it. Saddam did it. Stalin did it. They put their faces on currency, postage stamps, government documents, schools, and stadiums, embedding themselves into every corner of public life. They do this not just to glorify themselves, but to erase the idea of a nation separate from the man in charge. It’s not just vanity. It’s indoctrination, a deliberate attempt to replace civic identity with cult allegiance.

This war on truth keeps spreading beyond politics and is getting more and more dangerous. It’s spread to medicine. To science. To the very systems that protect the public from harm. This week alone, the FDA removed the requirement that talc-based cosmetics be tested for asbestos, despite decades of lawsuits linking these products to ovarian cancer, and despite the fact that they are still sold on shelves used daily by women and children.

And now they’re coming for the truth about vaccines. According to NPR, this week, FDA’s top vaccine regulator, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a vaccine skeptic, claimed in an email that ten children had died from the COVID vaccine, but provided no evidence. No peer-reviewed studies. Just a sweeping assertion that contradicts years of real-world data. Public health experts immediately challenged the claim.

Dr. Paul Offit, Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, warned, “All this will do is scare people unnecessarily,” adding that Prasad is “asking us to trust him on an important issue” without showing his work.

Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, PhD, MPH, Director of CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota, was even more direct: “Prasad’s email is filled with factual mistakes and misrepresents both the severity of COVID in children (1597 deaths in 2020-2022)”.

And yet none of this has stopped the Trump Administration from using the claim to attack vaccine safety. Not because they care about children, but because they care about control. This is how authoritarian regimes operate, not with better science, but with louder lies. They smear the people who saved us. They distort medicine. They bury public health in politics. Because once you destroy trust in science, it’s easier to rule with fear.

And that’s the part they never say out loud. When they politicize medicine, people die. It’s that simple. I once heard someone say, “What do you get when you mix politics with medicine? Dead children.” I can never unhear that. And now I can’t stop seeing it happen, in their attacks on vaccines, in the agencies they’re dismantling, in the programs they’re defunding. It’s not about science. It’s about control. And the cost is human lives.

That’s the point of all of this. Trump and his enablers aren’t just cutting corners, they’re cutting lives. His State Department just ended all federal support for World AIDS Day commemorations, canceling a 37-year tradition of honoring those lost to the disease and raising awareness about the ongoing fight. An internal directive instructed staff not to use any federal funding to support events or even mention the day on social media, in speeches, or through press engagement. They can attend events, but they’re barred from promoting them or speaking.

This isn’t just erasure. It’s cruelty. Awareness is how we remember. Awareness is how we honor those who were left to die alone. Awareness is how we say, “Never again.” As someone who grew up in the 90s and volunteered at an AIDS foundation during college, I remember what this fight looked like. I remember what it meant. People, mostly gay men, mostly ignored by those in power, were left to die in agony, alone, their bodies covered in lesions, their lungs filled with fluid, their hands untouched even in their final hours. We can’t forget that no one should be left to suffer alone.

And we can’t forget that no group of people should be left to suffer just because those in power decide they’re not worth saving. That’s what happened. AIDS was ignored for years because it was killing gay men, and the government didn’t care. They looked away. They let it spread. They let people die in silence. It wasn’t science that failed; it was compassion. It was humanity. And that failure can’t be erased just because it makes them uncomfortable now.

World AIDS Day isn’t just about grief. It’s about responsibility. It’s about teaching the next generation what happened, and making sure it never happens again. But this administration doesn’t want to remember. They want to rewrite. They are trying to erase entire chapters of American history and entire groups of people they’ve already decided aren’t worthy of dignity.

Every authoritarian regime starts by drawing a line between those who deserve compassion and those who don’t. Then they get to work erasing the ones on the other side. That’s what this is. A slow, deliberate attempt to decide who gets to be remembered and who disappears. And they won’t stop at World AIDS Day. This is a test. A way to measure silence. To see how far they can push this fascist project before we push back.

And while people suffer, Trump makes promises he knows he’ll never keep. He floated the idea of eliminating the federal income tax altogether, claiming tariffs would pay for it. The math doesn’t lie. Tariffs would need to increase by over 2,500% to make up for that lost revenue. That would drive up the cost of virtually every item imported into the U.S, from diapers to cars to medicine. This is not affordability. It’s economic sabotage. And it’s being sold to his most loyal supporters as a gift, when really, it’s just another scheme to shift wealth from the working class to the elite.

But here’s what Trump didn’t count on: people are watching. And they are not backing down. Protesters in New York physically blocked ICE agents from leaving a parking garage to conduct a sweep. Minnesota’s Governor, Tim Walz, told the truth out loud, demanding that Trump release his MRI results. A longtime Trump loyalist, Rep. Troy Nehls, announced he won’t seek reelection. Trump’s approval just dropped to 36 %, according to a recent Gallup poll, the lowest of his second term. Disapproval stands at 60 %.

And just today, something rare happened: bipartisan leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees launched formal investigations into Hegseth after credible reporting that he ordered a strike on a drug‑smuggling boat, then a second strike to kill survivors. That investigation comes amid public warnings from military‑law experts calling the strike a potential war crime.

And that’s why he’s pushing harder. Because more people see the truth through his lies and manipulation. And this is just the beginning. We should expect him to get more desperate and for more to stand up to him.

He cannot be reasoned with. He cannot be waited out. And he will not stop on his own. But he can be stopped by us. By truth. By resistance. By enough people refusing to be silent, even when it’s uncomfortable. That is how we win. That is how we reclaim this country.

I still have hope for America, and I hope you do too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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