December 27, 2019 Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’m very pleased that NPR has cited Bourbon for Breakfast and AIER in a report on low-flow toilets and faucets.

On the night that the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump, he delivered a two-hour campaign rally speech that took a detour — into the bathroom. His long riff about plumbing, household appliances and lightbulbs had the crowd in Battle Creek, Mich., cheering and laughing along.

“I say, ‘Why do I always look so orange?’ You know why: because of the new light,” Trump said in a complaint about energy-efficient lightbulbs. “They’re terrible. You look terrible. They cost you many, many times more. Like four or five times more.”

Trump has long railed against clean-energy-producing wind turbines, but recently he has added lightbulbs and other household items to his repertoire. It’s an unusual political rallying cry, but it’s one that fits with Trump’s deregulatory agenda….

When Jeffrey Tucker first heard Trump complain about faucets, he was overjoyed. “I thought, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting,’ ” said Tucker, with the American Institute for Economic Research. “I’ve never heard a politician talk about this.”

A decade ago, Tucker wrote an an entire book, called Bourbon for Breakfast, bemoaning how the slow creep of efficiency and government regulation had made American homes not function like they used to. He is no fan of Trump, but he’s all-in on the “make toilets and dishwashers great again” ethos.

“I’ve never been in a social situation where everybody didn’t agree,” Tucker said. “My shower’s terrible. My toilet doesn’t work. I’m tired of plunging. And so on and so forth. Everybody is really annoyed by it. Trump sees it and talks about it, and gets everybody riled up because it is an infuriating problem.”

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey A. Tucker served as Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research from 2017 to 2021.

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