Amid the European debt crisis in the early 2010s, a Fox News pundit named Donald Trump warned about a backlash against leaders asking people to tighten their belts.

Amid the European debt crisis in the early 2010s, a Fox News pundit namedDonald Trumpwarned about a backlash against leaders asking people to tighten their belts.

“You can’t impose this kind of austerity on people when the people aren’t used to it,” Trumpsaidin the 2012 interview, unless you’re in a depression.

He added: “It just doesn’t work that way, from a human standpoint.”

Fast-forward 14 years, and now-President Trump and his administration are regularly talking about how people can pinch pennies.

Often quite awkwardly so.

From dolls to pencils to backyard chickens and now a $3 meal, the Trump team keeps stepping in it with their fiscal tips and other comments.

The remarks not only undermine Trump’s frequent all-is-well happy talk about the economy. (Why would you need to be so frugal if we’re in a “golden age?”) But they also give Trump’s opponents’ ammunition to paint him and his team as out of touch with the struggles of people who aren’t, like Trump and so many people around him, uber-wealthy.

The most recent example came Wednesday, during an interview Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins gave to NewsNation.

As the Trump administration has rolled out recommendations for a more protein-rich diet featuring more “real,” less-processed food, the host asked how people could afford such things in a time ofstagnant, 2.7% inflation.

Rollins denied the administration’s guidelines would cost people more.

“The answer to that is no,” shesaid. “We’ve run over a thousand simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla and one other thing. And so there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money.”

Part of the problem here is Rollins’ phrasing. What is the “other thing?” And “a piece of broccoli” surely conjures images of only a bite-sized floret. And “simulations?” What does that even mean? It sounds like the administration is doing scientific calculations about how regular people can live.

Soon, Democratsflooded social mediawith often-AI-generated images of small pieces of broccoli and corn tortillas, alongside sad-looking pieces of apparently boiled chicken.

But this isn’t entirely new territory for Rollins. It was just 10 months ago that she endorsed perhaps the first truly awkward bit of financial advice: suggesting that maybe people concerned about sky-high egg prices could getbackyard chickens.

Rollins didn’t bring up the subject – a Fox News host did – but she certainly ran with it.

“I think the silver lining in all of this is, how do we, in our backyards – we’ve got chickens, too, in our backyard – how do we solve for something like this?” Rollins said. “And people are sort of looking around thinking, ‘Wow, well maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard,’ and it’s awesome, I agree with you.”

In between those two comments have been plenty in the same vein.

Perhaps most infamous are Trump’s repeated allusions to how people who see rising costs due to his tariffs can just buy fewer dolls and pencils.

“Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know,” Trump said on April 30. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”

Hedoubled downtwo days later in an interview. Then, amid plenty of ridicule, the president seemed to drop the talking point for six months – only to rekindle it last month in a much-anticipated economic speech.

“You know, you can give up certain products,” Trump said while talking about his trade war. “You can give up pencils, because under the China policy, you know every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two.”

Trump added: “Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.”

“You can give up certain products” is probably not the platform the Republican Party wants to run on in 2026.

Trump and Cabinet officials have also regularly suggested Americans just need to tolerate some pain:

That last one is telling. Relatively few Americans support Trump’s tariffs. And many Republicans who do aremostly just tolerating them, believing they could turn out for the best over the long haul.

But that’s a long way from saying those policies are worth it even if there’s a recession. That’s an extremely difficult sell.

And yet, over and over again, Trump’s team has said things that could easily be used against them. The comments sound out of touch – and they often come from billionaires. Despite Trump’s reputation as a populist, there seems to be relatively little care given to how all of this might sound to regular people.

When Trump first lodged his pencils-and-dolls talking point last year, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro called it “a tremendous commercial for Democrats” and urged the president to reconsider his messaging.

But it just keeps happening.