Trump on Spiraling National Debt: I Won’t Be Here, Who Cares?

Donald Trump was born on June 12, 1946, which makes him one of the original baby boomers. Many of these baby boomers are good people who have made the world a better place, but the stereotype of the millennial-hating, bridge-burning boomer exists for a reason—it’s a generation that has put the rest of us on the short end of several major problems, the biggest of which is a dying planet. If there’s a generational credo to go along with this stereotype, it’s this: Not my problem, I’ll be dead.

Trump apparently echoed this motto when his staff “repeatedly urged” him to do something about the national debt, which is now at $21.8 trillion and getting worse. Per The Daily Beast:

The friction came to a head in early 2017 when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office.

“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.

Now, there’s a debate to be had about whether curbing the national debt should really be a priority—at a time of raging wealth inequality, it’s likely that any attempt to actually take care of American citizens will involve an increase in debt. All of which is to say that Trump may not be completely wrong to ignore it, and his position is squarely against prevailing conservative orthodoxy (and his own public statements). But it’s his reasoning that really raises an eyebrow, and hits those sweet Boomer notes right on the nose—if I’m not here for the consequences, who cares?