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CNN
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The president wants to make two things clear: His tariffs are the most important reordering of global trade the world has ever seen. And his tariffs are not that big of a deal, if you’re man enough.
It’s just one of the many manosphere-coded talking points coming out of the White House and its right-wing media fans to defend radical tariffs that Trump claims will revive rugged, traditionally male-dominated jobs in factories.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, between rounds of congressional testimony, went on Fox News — where hosts have spun Trump’s tariffs as the “ultimate testosterone boost” — to reiterate Trump’s suddenly very pronounced opinions about the appropriate number of toys children should have.
Trump probably wasn’t supposed to admit on camera that his signature economic policy would cause prices to go up. But rather than spin it, Trump and Co. have doubled down.
“All I’m saying is that a young lady, a 10-year-old girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. Earlier, he told NBC News’ Kristen Welker: “I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable.”
But the administration’s emphasis on toys for girls is no gaffe. It is an attempt at misdirection that’s squarely in line with the MAGA right’s obsession with traditional, binary gender expressions.
“The reason they keep using dolls as their example is because they’re trying to frame caring about material stuff as feminine and thus inherently shameful,” wrote Leah Greenberg, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive organizing group Indivisible, on Bluesky.
By focusing on dolls and girls, Trump’s message of austerity becomes less about sacrificing for his trade war and morphs into more of a taunt: “What are you afraid of, your kid won’t have dolls to play with?”
And it conveniently leaves out all the other essentials — clothes, cars, homebuilding materials, fruits and vegetables — that will become scarcer or more expensive on his watch.
On Fox Tuesday, Bessent took the point further.
To any kids who are sad about getting fewer dolls, Bessent would say: “You will have a better life than your parents” and “your family will own a home” because of the “economic freedom” Trump is creating.
Ah, yes, the freedom to work in a factory, despite most Americans saying they do not want to work in a factory.
Even some Republican lawmakers are getting annoyed with all the doll discourse. According to The Hill, GOP members of Congress who have been largely in lockstep with Trump are grumbling behind closed doors that the message of sacrifice comes off as out of touch.
It shouldn’t be hard to see why the “two dolls” line is falling flat, coming from some of the wealthiest officials in American in history.
Bessent is a Yale grad who amassed his multimillion-dollar fortune on Wall Street. And Trump is a crypto-peddling hotel-and-casino mogul who’s planning to spend untold amounts of taxpayer money on a military parade for his birthday next month.
Is that something a 78-year-old man needs?
