My Fellow Americans, We Are Richer Than Ever Before. Well, You Aren’t, But We Are
by Eli Grober
Happy Thursday evening, Substackajuggalos. For this Tendency Full Stack, let’s return to a couple of nights ago when our Former-Beauty-Pageant-Producer-in-Chief spoke for seemingly 17 hours about all the people he thinks suck before Congress and the rest of the world. Tendency-living legend Eli Grober does a bang-up job of getting to the heart of the speech.
“My fellow Americans, our nation is back—bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.” — Donald Trump during his State of the Union.
My fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight to make one thing very clear: we are richer than ever before. You aren’t, of course. But we are. My friends and I are just, like, incredibly rich and only gonna get even richer. So. That’s basically my announcement.
My fellow Americans, despite what everyone else says, we are living in the golden age of America. Not your golden age, though. My golden age. As in: I am very old, and everything I own is either solid gold or gold-plated or painted in gold to make it seem like it’s real gold.
My fellow Americans, the stock market has skyrocketed since I took back the office. It’s been very lucrative for us. Not for you, obviously. Because you didn’t know when things would go up and down. But it’s been very lucrative for us, because we get to decide when things go up and down.
My fellow Americans, when I last spoke to this chamber twelve months ago, I had inherited a country that was on the brink of economic collapse under the weight of all the jobs it kept adding. Too many jobs and you’ll collapse, folks. That’s why we’re getting rid of jobs. No more jobs. Why? Because jobs have to pay people, and that costs money. Instead, we’re gonna do a thing called “AI Does It.” Here’s how it works: Is it your job? AI does it now.
My fellow Americans, we’re no longer going to have to pay taxes. You will, still. You’ll have to pay a lot of taxes, actually. But not me and my guys. We’re done with taxes. We beat taxes. Taxes lost very badly, and now we don’t have to deal with them—you do.
My fellow Americans, we’re bringing money back to our country. We’re using a thing called tariffs. Here’s how it works: You have to pay more for things, and that money becomes the people’s money. (The people are my family and me.)
My fellow Americans, we are going to get even richer over the next three to twelve years of my presidency. And when I say “we,” I’m using the royal we. You understand? Not the grammar thing. The king thing.
My fellow Americans, we’re going to be able to afford a home. Not you—you will never own a home. But we will own many homes. Each of us will own a whole bunch of great big homes, so many that a lot of them will just be empty. That’s our American Dream. Not your dream, clearly. Our dream.
My fellow Americans, a short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. The hottest, and getting hotter and hotter until it’s too hot to live here anymore. For you, of course. Too hot for you. I’ve got a great, ice-cold bunker. The best bunker ever. I guess this one isn’t about money. It should be. So, the bunkers are also absolutely covered in gold.
McSweeney’s Internet Substackency is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
If you’d like to subscribe to McSweeney’s Publishing newsletter, which also features Tendency material every week, go here.
And we realize we are pushing our luck here, but we could really use your support on our Patreon. This allows us to help pay our contributors and keep the Tendency ad-, paywall-, and Ponzi-scheme free.
This article is great. It’s the best article ever written. The best article in the universe. Nobody could write an article as good as this one. It makes me want to bomb Iran. Or Iraq. Or Greenland. Or Canada. There are so many bigly places to bomb.
Hysterical. Well done.