Bernie Sanders Definitely Doesn’t Think Trump Is the ‘Affordability President’
This is your TPM evening briefing.
Brutal Fact Check
President Donald Trump recently touted himself as the “AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT” and suggested this branding would help his fellow Republicans win in next year’s midterm elections. His comments clearly seem borrowed from the playbook of New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist whose upstart campaign was laser focused on addressing the affordability crisis in the Big Apple.
On Monday afternoon, TPM asked both Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), another Democratic Socialist who similarly homed in on income inequality during his two presidential campaigns, what they thought of Trump’s attempt to take the mantle of “affordability.”
“I will shock all of you in suggesting that the president of the United States is a pathological liar. He lies all of the time,” Sanders told us.
We spoke to Mamdani and Sanders as they joined striking Starbucks workers on the picket line in Brooklyn Monday afternoon. As the strike at the brand’s unionized stores enters its third week, New York City just announced that Starbucks agreed to pay a $38.9 million settlement for violating local laws requiring fair working conditions when it failed to provide workers with stable schedules.
Trump’s latest branding move came in one of his trademark all caps declarations on his Truth Social platform last weekend.
“I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote in the Saturday morning post.
Trump based that proclamation on his claim that “DRUG PRICES ARE FALLING AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, 500%, 600%, 700%, and more.” He also suggested that, “if this story is properly told, we should win the Midterm Elections in RECORD NUMBERS.”
Experts of all stripes have noted that Trump’s math doesn’t add up. If those numbers were true, it would mean that pharmaceutical companies were literally paying the government to distribute their drugs rather than charging anything for them. Furthermore, the policy Trump is touting that has led to some lower prices is one that was enacted by President Joe Biden.
In his comments to TPM, Sanders offered further Trump fact checking by pointing to rising health care costs stemming from the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and price increases tied to Trump’s tariffs.
“To tell the people of New York City and Vermont that you are the ‘affordability president’ at a time when legislation that you have passed will be responsible — if we don’t change it — in raising healthcare premiums for people on the Affordable Care Act on average doubling, in some cases tripling, and quadrupling … maybe Trump should go out to those people who are going to see a doubling and tripling of their premiums and explain to them how he is the affordable president,” Sanders said, adding, “Not to mention that his tariffs all over this country have driven prices clearly up.”
Mamdani, who met with Trump in the Oval Office last month and indicated affordability was an area where they found common ground, was decidedly more diplomatic.
“I would say that our focus is less on who is described as what and more that we actually deliver for the people of this city,” Mamdani told us, adding, “The focus always has to come back to working people and, when you ask these Starbucks workers what the consequences are of a company that refuses to schedule them with any predictability, of a company that refuses to pay them a wage that they can actually afford to live in this city, it is that they do not know if they can call themselves New Yorkers any longer.”
Mamdani, who promised to continue joining picket line protests after he is sworn in next month, stuck to his message of addressing affordability in New York and said he was “tired” of meeting workers who have to commute from out of state.
“They live in places that they can afford the rent, they can afford the mortgage. That place has to become New York City once again,” Mamdani said.
Neither Madani or Sanders responded to questions from TPM about whether they felt their affordability messaging had inspired Trump’s new midterms strategy.
— Hunter Walker
Has a Sidney Powell Conspiracy Theory Put Us on Course for War with Venezuela?
Back during one of several bizarre, late-2020 press conferences, Rudy Giuliani and conservative attorney Sidney Powell walked us through a set of conspiracy theories that were meant to explain how the election was stolen from Donald Trump. “The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized coding systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez,” Powell explained, rolling out a set of claims that would later be used by Trump in his push to overturn the election and would, later still, become the subject of defamation suits by the voting machine companies against various right-wing personalities and media outlets, including Fox News.
“Our votes are counted in Germany and in Spain by a company owned by affiliates of Chávez and Maduro. Did you ever believe that was true?” Giuliani chimed in, a long sweaty streak of hair dye running down his temple.
Five years later, defamation cases settled, Trump lawyers sanctioned, and Trump himself back in the White House, one might think this whole bizarre episode had been put to rest. But it has reared its head again. Consider:
In an interview with Bloomberg, Venezuela’s opposition leader and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado was asked whether the 2020 conspiracy theories might have anything to do with Trump’s aggressive focus on Venezuela. Machado replied that there’s “no doubt” that Maduro and others “are the masterminds of a system that has rigged elections in many countries, including the U.S.” She also stated that the U.S. was conducting an investigation into the claim, which was news.
Investigative journalist Aram Roston confirmed in a report for the Guardian that that investigation does, in fact, exist, and that federal agents have interviewed various true believers in the Venezuela theory. The investigation appears to be run out of the U.S. attorney’s office for the district of Puerto Rico.
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in support of the Venezuela claims.
Trump’s seeming desire for war with Maduro’s regime has never totally made sense; Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a longtime Venezuela hawk, and that goes some way to explaining it. A desire to substantiate some of the most out-there 2020 election claims may help complete the picture.
— John Light
Indiana GOP Senator Says ‘No’ to Redistricting After Trump Uses Slur
GOP Indiana state Sen. Michael Bohacek said on Friday that he will vote against redistricting when the Senate convenes to discuss President Trump’s gerrymandering maps after the president used a slur to describe Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
“The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last week, insulting Walz as he launched into an unhinged screed about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and elevated conspiracy theories about her family.
“This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences,” Republican state Sen. Mike Bohacek wrote on Facebook in a post explaining that his daughter has Down Syndrome.
“I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority,” he added.
Bohacek’s statement comes at a critical point for Trump’s larger redistricting pressure campaign, which appears to be losing steam in red states across the country.
The Indiana House will vote on a new map this week. The Senate will convene on December 8, but it remains unclear whether the Senate has enough support to approve a map. The map needs approval from both the state House and the Senate before the governor can sign off on it.
— Khaya Himmelman
In Case You Missed It
‘The Order Was to Kill Everybody’: A Savage Incident at Sea
Texas’ New Abortion Ban Aims to Stop Doctors From Sending Abortion Pills to the State
Five Points on the Gradually-Emerging Picture of the Post Shutdown U.S. Economy
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Two of Trump’s Second Term Agenda Items See Grim Convergence in Missouri
What We Are Reading
Indiana House releases draft congressional map that could net Republicans 2 seats
Trump Boat Bombings Suddenly on Shakier Ground as Damning Info Emerges
Costco sues the Trump administration, seeking a refund of tariffs