VIDEO - Caller: 'The President Has No Plan For My Generation' | On Point

In this Jan. 9, 2017, photo, Andrea Ledesma spreads sauce on pizza dough at Classic Slice restaurant in Milwaukee. (Carrie Antlfinger/AP)

If you've noticed anything about this program during your time tuning in, you've probably noticed how important our callers are to the overall feel of our broadcast. This is perhaps made the most clear in our Friday Week in the News roundtable discussions, where the topics come fast and furious — and so do your calls. 

Today, during our busy discussion, caller Sarah from Brooklyn had a few words to say about how she sees the Trump Administration "ignoring" her generation. And our guest, USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page, agreed with her.

TOM: Sarah in Brooklyn, NY, Sarah thank you for calling. You’re on the air.

SARAH: Thank you Tom. I am calling because I wanted to mention something I don’t hear anyone else talking about. And that is that it feels the President has no plan for my generation, which is the millennials. Everything he is trying to appeal to is, sure it’s great that our parents can have coal mining jobs again, I mean we don’t love that, you know, but what is going to happen with the things that we want to do? I feel like we don’t have a seat at the table.

TOM: What do you want to hear him talking about that you don’t think he is?

SARAH: I work in technology in New York, in a tech company and we have Republicans too here that come from other states. We kind of have a consensus. Just because we are millennials, we are the same generation. We want to talk about the environment. We are going to have to deal with the consequences of all of these policies. We’re the real consequence bearers and we just don’t have a seat at the table. Baby Boomers still have a grip on everything. I feel like we need to start a Super PAC to get the baby boomers out.

TOM: Sarah, but the president says he wants the gleaming future, all new infrastructure, gleaming American Future. That would be for millennials I guess. Sarah?

SARAH: No not the way, the kind of stuff that he is talking about. It’s not technologically advanced. He’s talking about tunnels and bridges.

TOM: And coal.

SARAH: We’re trying to cut down on driving.

TOM: Sarah, I really appreciate your call. Millennial power there, the flag raised from Brooklyn. I mean Susan Page, we saw these interesting headlines this week. Sarah goes to environmental issues. And the reporting from out of the White House that Steve Bannon is pushing to take the US out of the Paris Climate agreement. The big agreement that was supposed to get us on track not to feel the worst effects of climate change, but that you’ve got Rex Tillerson, former head of Exxon for heaven’s sakes and Ivanka Trump pushing back on that. What do we know about where that stands and what might actually emerge, Susan?

SUSAN: We know that President Trump has not followed through on his campaign promise to pull out of that agreement and that’s been interesting because he’s followed through on a series of other campaign promises including some controversial ones. But let me just congratulate Sarah on her perception. Because if you want to look at the war between baby boomers and millennials, look at the budget priorities that President Trump outlined on Monday. He said he wasn’t going to touch Medicare and Social Security. Those are the biggest drivers of the federal budget, the biggest drivers of the expanding deficit and those are programs that of course, help people who are older, help baby boomers. And he’s going to cut in big ways programs like, not just environmental programs, although they’re included, but also education programs and childcare programs and school lunch programs and these are programs that of course help millennials and younger people. There is a big age divide and it fits with the divide among his own supporters because President Trump’s supporters, his supporters were disproportionally older, he did not do nearly as well among millennials.

TOM: We’re looking at a week in the news. I’m Tom Ashbrook. This is On Point.

This story aired on March 3, 2017.

View comment(s)

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/03/caller-trump-millennials