In what appeared to be a shift from his recent messaging on affordability, President Donald Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Jan. 29, that he wants housing prices to increase — arguing that lowering them could unfairly help people who “didn’t work very hard.”
“People that own their homes, we’re gonna keep them wealthy. We’re gonna keep those prices up,” Trump said. “We’re not gonna destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn’t work very hard can buy a home.”
He then added that his administration would still try to make purchasing a home easier through lower borrowing costs: “We’re gonna make it easier to buy, we’re gonna get interest rates down, but I wanna protect the people that, for the first time in their lives, feel good about themselves. They feel like, you know, that they’re wealthy people.”
Trump later repeated the point more directly: “There’s so much talk about, ‘Oh, we’re gonna drive housing prices down.’ I don’t wanna drive housing prices down, I wanna drive housing prices up for people that own their homes, and they can be assured that’s what’s gonna happen.”
The remarks came just weeks after Trump posted that he planned to take steps aimed at improving housing affordability, including supporting an effort to ban corporations from purchasing single-family homes.
“For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream. It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans,” he wrote on Truth Social on Jan. 7.
“It is for that reason, and much more, that I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations,” he added.
The following day, Trump made another post focused on affordability, promising steps intended to bring down mortgage rates and monthly payments.
“I am instructing my Representatives to BUY $200 BILLION DOLLARS IN MORTGAGE BONDS,” he wrote. “This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable.”
“It is one of my many steps in restoring Affordability, something that the Biden Administration absolutely destroyed,” he added. “We are bringing back the AMERICAN DREAM that was destroyed by the last Administration. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s housing comments weren’t the only moment from Thursday’s meeting that drew attention. As he went around the table, he skipped over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and then ended the meeting abruptly without taking questions from reporters — a move some in the press corps described as unusual.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said afterward, “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a cabinet meeting covering the president, whether in this term… or in his first term, where he did not take questions from reporters at the end. It’s extremely rare.”
By not taking questions — and by moving past Noem — Trump avoided being pressed on a series of recent immigration-related controversies tied to Minneapolis, including protests following the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, an attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar as she criticized Noem, and recent detention center updates involving 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who drew widespread attention after he and his father were detained by ICE while returning home from preschool.
“There have been a ton of headlines generated around Minneapolis, what’s happening there… That did not come up at all during this Cabinet meeting, and we were there for over an hour and a half,” Collins said. “Not once was Minneapolis brought up, and obviously, no questions were brought up to the president because he did not take questions, despite talking during the Cabinet meeting about how he believes they are the most transparent administration ever.”
