Mortgage Rates, Trump vs Biden
When Trump left office mortgage rates were 2.9%. When Biden stole the election they went as high as 7.9? We had a housing shortage because of regulations and people didn't want to leave their 2.9% and 3% mortgages for a
7+% mortgage. Young people can't afford a first home because of interest rates are so high. The Pic on the left is what a $300,000 home would cost you monthly under Trump. The Pic on the right is what a $300,000 home would cost you under Biden. However, I bet there are people that hate Trump so bad they will go for the HIGHER payment ... Trump Derangement Syndrome ...
$300,000 Home Payment Under Trump (2.9%)
$300,000 Home Payment Under Biden (7.9%)
The Price of Pride: How “Trump Derangement Syndrome” Bankrupted the American Dream
The American Dream was never supposed to be a luxury good. For generations, the image of a white picket fence, a manageable mortgage, and the dignity of homeownership represented the tangible reward for hard work. It was the baseline of the social contract. Today, under the weight of the Biden-Harris administration’s economic mismanagement, that dream has been converted into a nightmare of actuarial tables and despair, reserved only for the wealthy or the institutional investor. The starkest illustration of this betrayal isn’t found in the abstract jargon of the Consumer Price Index it’s found in a simple loan amortization calculator.
When Donald Trump left office, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate hovered around 2.9%. It wasn’t just a number; it was an economic revolver that gave working-class families the firepower to bid on life. Fast forward through four years of an administration that was installed under the convenient fog of a pandemic-altered voting system, and that same mortgage rate metastasized to nearly 7.9%. To the coastal elites sipping Chardonnay in their fully-owned brownstones, this might seem like a minor fluctuation. To the average American family trying to buy a $300,000 home an utterly average, non-luxury dwelling in most states the difference is between a manageable promise and a financial death sentence.
Under the Trump economy, a family financing a $300,000 home at 2.9% faced a principal and interest payment of roughly $1,000 a month. It was a figure that allowed a young couple to live without the constant thud of existential dread, a rate that permitted savings for a child’s education, a family vacation, or a broken transmission. Under the Biden interest regime, that same house, that same block, that same square footage, suddenly demanded a monthly toll of over $1,600. That additional $600 a month is not an abstraction; it is the complete liquidation of disposable income for the lower-middle class. It is the difference between nutritional food and processed filler, between a reliable used car and a dangerous clunker, between a secure retirement and a march toward insolvency.
How did we get here? The progressive class will reflexively bleat that presidents don’t control mortgage rates, that this is the work of the Federal Reserve taming the inflation that mysteriously ‘happened’ on Joe Biden’s watch. This is a shell game of causality designed to gaslight the voter. Interest rates are not a weather pattern. They are the market’s fever response to the virus of reckless government spending. The Biden administration’s multi-trillion-dollar “Inflation Reduction Act”—a title so cynically Orwellian it should be criminal—pumped jet fuel on an already overheating economy. When you flood the money supply while strangulating domestic energy production on your first day in office, you light the fuse on a price explosion for everything from gas to groceries. The Federal Reserve didn’t wake up and decide to punish working people arbitrarily; they were forced to apply the tourniquet of high rates to stop the hemorrhaging caused by Bidenomics.
And what of the housing shortage? The left insists it’s merely a supply issue, a vague problem of “greedy developers.” This, too, is a convenient lie that protects their regulatory regime. The housing shortage is not a natural disaster; it is a paperwork disaster, manufactured by zoning laws, environmental impact reviews mandated by the administrative state, and a labyrinth of federal red tape that makes it illegal to build affordable housing. During the Trump years, deregulatory measures and energy independence created a business environment where builders could actually afford to build. Under Biden, the bulldozers on starter-home communities have ground to a halt, choked by the dual serpents of regulatory costs and prohibitively expensive materials caused by inflation.
But perhaps the most diabolical layer of this crisis is the paradox of the “Golden Handcuffs.” There are millions of homeowners sitting on 2.9% and 3% mortgages the Trump-era refinancers and buyers who are now prisoners in their own homes. They didn't do anything wrong; they simply did the responsible thing and locked in wealth when the government was functioning correctly. Now, thanks to the Biden rate shock, these middle-class families cannot move. They can’t upgrade to a home with a yard for the new baby. They can’t relocate to a state with better job prospects. They can’t downsize after the kids leave. Selling their house and signing a contract at 7.9% would be an act of voluntary financial self-immolation. This paralysis has frozen the lower rungs of the property ladder the exact “starter homes” that used to be the launchpad for American prosperity. When a Boomer can’t afford to downsize, the millennial can’t afford to start. It’s a generational traffic jam engineered by bad fiscal policy.
Despite this catastrophic math, the post you shared highlights a psychological phenomenon more baffling than any Federal Reserve minute: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). It posits a chillingly plausible truth. The human mind, when sufficiently warped by partisan cable news and social media algorithms, is capable of voluntarily choosing a higher payment and a worse life simply to spite a man from Queens. The rational voter looks at the two side-by-side pictures—the $1,000 monthly payment under the “mean tweets” era versus the $1,600 payment under the “whispered public address” era—and sees a victory for their wallet. The TDS voter looks at the exact same numbers, feels the bile rise in their throat, and pays the premium.
What is the psychological pathology that makes a person dig into their own pocket, sacrifice their children’s stability, and condemn themselves to a lifetime of renting, all to align with a political tribe that wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire? It is a luxury belief. The progressive voter who claims to "hate the rich" is actually performing a status ritual. They are signaling to their peer group that they are moral, body-soul integrated beings who value "democracy" more than mere Mammon. But that $600 extra going to the bank every month isn't going to a charity for democracy. It’s going to BlackRock and the big lenders. It’s deepening the pockets of the very institutions the left pretends to despise during election years. Refusing to acknowledge that the Trump economy was better for minorities, the working poor, and the young is not a sign of moral clarity; it’s a sign of a deeply privileged, insulated existence.
The tragedy is that the pain is not evenly distributed. The affluent liberal in a gated community can handle 7.9% interest because they have cash reserves. The working-class voter of any color, who relies on the monthly paycheck-to-paycheck grind, cannot. By ensuring the defeat of populist economics because they are socially revolted by the messenger, the progressive establishment has essentially enacted a regressive tax on aspiration. They have made the first home—the great wealth equalizer—impossible to buy for the very demographics they profess to champion. We are witnessing the creation of a permanent serf class, locked out of equity and forced into the inflationary spiral of rent, all because a critical mass of the electorate hates a man more than they love their own families.
In their crusade to “own the cons,” they have abandoned basic math. They have looked at a 2.9% interest rate that unlocked freedom and a 7.9% rate that chains you to risk, and with a straight face, they have picked the chains because they came wrapped in a flag of propriety. The great tragedy of Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t that it makes people angry at rallies; it’s that it makes them willing to sign a $2,400-dollar mortgage payment with a smile, just so they don’t have to admit that the guy who triggered them on Twitter actually ran an economy that worked for the forgotten man. The bill is now due, and it is unpayable.
#Biden #Trump #MortgageRates #HomeBuyers