By Robin Givhan / The Washington Post
Planes, dolls and pencils: How many does a person really need?
America’s children will have to make do with fewer pencils when they’re doing their schoolwork. And when play time comes around, they’ll have to be satisfied with fewer dolls. This is the observation of their president, who has been cranking tariffs up and down like a thermostat as he runs hot and cold on allies, antagonists and his own standing with the public.
President Trump offered this assessment in response to questions about the possibility of rising prices and empty store shelves and just how much financial uncertainty and pain Americans should expect. His answer targeted a kind of modest excess that might be considered part of the American Dream: The freedom of parents to buy their kids an abundance of toys and not have to worry about where their next No. 2 pencil is coming from.
“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,” Trump said during an interview with NBC. He’d upped his allotment from the previous count of two since he’d first used dolls as a measure of economic stability, in April. Within four days, he had become practically profligate with doll distribution. “I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. ”
“They don’t need to have 250 pencils,” he added. “They can have five.”
While that would be a fine argument against overconsumption, of which Americans are plenty guilty, it comes from a president who treats garish excess as a matter of both national and personal pride. (See: his redecorating of the Oval Office into a gilded lair.)
And now the president wants a new shiny version of Air Force One. He wants it now. Specifically, he wants the 747 that Qatar has offered to give him. The plane is worth approximately $400 million, was originally purchased for the country’s royal family and is a study in beige and caramel tones. Trump wants this plane so badly that he has been batting away concerns that accepting it violates the U.S. Constitution and using it poses a security risk. He has been doing so with the vigor and focus of a toddler swatting at boundaries.
He would be a “stupid person” if he turned it down, he said, even if it seems in direct violation of the emoluments clause in the Constitution, or at least the spirit of it, which prohibits the president from taking gifts from foreign entities who might demand favors in return. It is a “great gesture” from Qatar, which is the country that he once accused of funding terrorism. The president wants what he wants when he wants it. And what he vehemently desires is to fly in a plane that when parked alongside other planes is the best plane on the tarmac.
“You look at some of the Arab countries and the planes they have parked alongside of the United States of America plane,” Trump said. “It’s like from a different planet.”
The president does not appear to be in dire need of a plane, despite the delays by Boeing in delivering the two new ones for which the Air Force contracted and that were to be ready in 2024. The Qatar plane is a desire. It is a toy. It’s akin to the model of Air Force One that sometimes sits atop the coffee table in Trump’s Oval Office, the table that also displays the giant golden block etched with the president’s name and a stack of golden coasters.
There’s a lot the president has done to rile up his various detractors, the country and the world. Some of it has been rooted in policy disagreements; opposing world views; a unique relationship with truth, facts and history. Sometimes, Trump’s gestures seem aimed specifically at getting a rise out of people, such as when he insults a questioner from a media organization he disdains or when the White House posted an image of him as pope on social media. But the plane is different.
This doesn’t have all the markings of just another Trump business deal that will continue to enrich his own fortune. It’s not some high-tech version of panda diplomacy. It’s another reminder of the voraciousness of his appetites, of his desire to acquire things that serve little purpose other than to fluff the ego and to brag. His hunger for the plane underscores the ease with which his attention can be attracted by luxuries and riches that have nothing to do with making the country mightier, healthier or wealthier but could, instead, diminish its reputation and standing. He’s playing the show-off card to those who believe whoever has the best stuff is the smartest person, the strongest one, the best one.
The president wants the Qatari plane. And it seems as though he typically manages to get what he wants, whether it’s the Kennedy Center, immigration officials plucking people off the streets or white South Africans being wrapped in the warm embrace of American bureaucracy while refugees of color have their entry blocked.
When Trump was a candidate, he flew around the country on his private plane, his name emblazoned on the side. As president, he regularly has use of Air Force One; the big one and a smaller one that’s used when he’s headed to a location that can only accommodate more modestly-sized aircraft. That’s three planes that he has at his disposal. Three. Just about the number of dolls that he thinks a child needs. But none of them are bright and shiny enough for the president.
Robin Givhan is a Washington Post senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts.
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