ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: Former president Donald Trump, who has already announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race, on Friday suggested developing up to 10 futuristic “freedom towns” on unused federal land as part of a plan that he claimed would “create a new American future” for a nation that has “lost its glory.”
According to Trump, commuters may travel in flying automobiles, echoing the iconic cartoon “The Jetsons” about a family living in a future high-tech civilization. Major airlines, automakers, and other businesses are actively working on developing vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, while the technology is still commonly believed to be years away from commercialization.
“I want to make sure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air transportation,” Trump, who announced his third candidature for the presidency in November, said in a four-minute video describing his plan.
On undeveloped federal territory, he promised to hold a competition to charter up to ten “freedom cities” roughly the size of Washington, DC.
In the video, Trump claimed, “We’ll develop new cities in our country again. These freedom towns “will reopen the frontier, reignite the American imagination, and provide hundreds of thousands of young people and others, all hardworking families, a new chance at house ownership and, in reality, the American dream.”
The Republican presidential field for 2024 is starting to take shape. Trump’s speech comes the day before he is scheduled to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the Washington, DC, region.
The idea is the most recent in a string of early policy proposals from Trump, who has also recently stated his intentions to increase domestic energy production, take a more isolationist foreign policy stance, purge the government and military of “globalists and warmongers,” and undo a Biden executive order that will require government agencies to submit yearly plans to advance equity in the public eye.
The former president released his “free speech platform” in December, which included proposals to prohibit federal funding to identify communication as misleading or disinformation and to punish colleges that engage in “censorship activities” with reductions in federal funding.
Trump did not go into detail on how he would pay for his current proposal on Friday, leaving open what may be the most important topic when Republicans in Washington are trying to cut back on government spending.
However, he omitted to describe how certain aspects of his proposal vary from comparable Democratic initiatives. His strategy, which lacked specifics, also called for raising tariffs on goods imported into the country, giving families “baby bonuses” that he claimed would “help launch a new baby boom,” and starting a beautification initiative to get rid of “ugly” structures and revitalize parks and public spaces.
Trump did not define “baby bonuses” or specify who would be eligible. How his idea differs from the expanded child tax credit, which was not extended through 2021, needs to be made clear. Progressive activists and Democratic lawmakers attempted to include it in the $1.7 trillion funding bill in December but were unsuccessful. Republicans defeated that motion.
