Apparently thinking “housewives” is an appropriate term to use outside of reality television, President Trump Thursday called on “Suburban Housewives of America” to band together against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden because… something about saving suburbs.
The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article. Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream. I will preserve it, and make it even better! https://t.co/1NzbR57Oe6
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2020
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without citing a source for the claim, that Biden wants to destroy suburbs. The New York Post columnist Trump links to refers to an Obama-era policy called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, a policy Trump dismantled early in his administration.
But the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program was designed to help make it easier to integrate neighborhoods and address inequities in housing practices. The original AFFH program was passed as part of the 1968 Fair Housing Act that banned practices like redlining neighborhoods.
All the Obama administration did was add a 2015 rider to the program that required municipalities receiving federal housing assistance to ensure that new developments had no barriers for people of all races, religions, sexual orientation or ethnicity to move into them.
Trump, however, has warped this Obama policy to mean that suburbs will be destroyed, apparently thinking that by allowing people of different races (read: non-white) and religions (read: non-Christian) into “cul de sacs” and suburban communities will somehow destroy them.
According to a Fox News poll issued last week, Trump trails Biden with women voters by 19 percentage points.