David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, believes that President Donald Trump and his team are making the kind of political mistake not seen since the heyday of the late Sen. Howard Taft (R-OH).
Writing in The Atlantic, Frum recalls the presidential campaign-killing gaffe that Taft made when he suggested that the best way to bring down prices was simply for Americans to eat less food.
The one-time GOP insider was reminded of this gaffe recently when watching Trump administration officials downplay the importance of Americans' access to cheap goods imported from overseas.
Frum's take away from this messaging is that Americans under Trump should "get ready to Eat Less."
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What's more, Frum believes that the Trump economic agenda could actually be more poisonous politically than Taft's eat-less agenda because it combines steep taxes on imported products with massive tax cuts aimed at America's wealthiest individuals.
"Trump promotes tariffs as a way to shift the costs of financing the U.S. government from Americans to foreigners," he writes. "His commerce secretary suggests that tariffs might do away with the need for income taxes altogether. Income taxes fall most heavily on the affluent; tariffs fall most heavily on the middle class and poor. Trump has sold his party on tariffs as a way to redistribute the cost of government away from his donors to his voters."
Frum concludes by warning his one-time party that there will be a price to pay once voters fully catch on to what Trump is doing.
"Trump is a flimflam man who will promise anything to anybody and count on the suckers forgetting tomorrow what he said yesterday," he writes. "His Cabinet officers, however, are gradually revealing the true cost of the Eat Less scam... their real message of 'Less for you, more for us' is reverberating louder and clearer."