Perhaps to distract from the fact that he now holds the record for presiding over the two longest government shutdowns in U.S. history, President Donald Trump unveiled a new mortgage plan this week.
The new offer would extend the 30-year mortgage option available now to a 50-year mortgage offer. There aren’t many details available, but lawmakers and journalists were able to quickly suss out that longer-termed home loans would do nothing to combat the epic affordability crisis facing the country.
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Naturally, like everything nearly else Trump does, this latest plan made it into the late night monologues on Tuesday night. Jimmy Fallon ragged on the concept of “mortgages until you die,” and Stephen Colbert pointed out just how unaffordable a 50-year mortgage actually was. But the star of the mortgage joke line-up undoubtably came from Josh Johnson on The Daily Show.
In part of Johnson’s Tuesday night monologue, he started giving Trump the teensiest, tiniest, benefit of the doubt.
“If Trump wants to focus on affordability right now, that’s great,” Johnson introduced the topic. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s too expensive. For example, houses. No one can afford a home. Everybody keeps waiting for them to show up on Prime Day, but it never happens. So maybe Trump could do something to bring down mortgages.”
Cut to a news clip announcing the 50-year mortgage plan.
“Or you can make them much longer, you know? Because you know where we’ll all be in 50 years? Dead, you know what I mean? This seems like a bad idea,” Johnson said. “And if Black people could get loans, I’d be worried.”
It was the first zinger in a joke-dense few minutes.
“But, hey, hey, maybe I’m just hating, all right. I mean, how much would a 50-year mortgage save people?” Johnson wondered. Like Colbert, we got a quick and dirty run down of the math on 50 year mortgages, courtesy of another news clip. They could save the average homeowner about $300 dollars per month.
“Oh, boy! $300 a month?” Johnson exclaimed. “See, it’s not a stupid idea. You know what? I’m going to apply for a 50-year mortgage right now.”
But then the news clip continues to play: “But over time, that savings is erased by a much larger interest bill. Because while the total interest on a 30-year loan would be about $463,000, the interest on a 50-year loan would total more than $860,000.”
Johnson takes the mortgage documents that appeared in his hands and takes another look. He rifles through them one more time before saying “Signed, Ronny Chieng.”
He concludes the segment by imagining a world in which 50-year mortgages create a generation of people clamoring to get out of their families wills.
“So you’re saying that after interest, a $400,000 mortgage is going to cost me $1.3 million,” Johnson said. “That is the opposite of affordability. This man is creating generational debt. They’re going to be fighting to get out of grandma’s will. Grandkids will be like, I barely knew her, all right. I wouldn’t even hug her at Christmas because her skin was too loose.”
We’re probably all headed for generational debt, no matter what. At least we’ll be able to laugh about.
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