Worried aides inside President Donald Trump’s White House are quietly pleading with him to stop pretending the economy is fine and to quit blaming Joe Biden for problems voters are clearly pinning on him.
According to a new CNN report, Trump’s advisers are concerned that he keeps brushing off questions about the cost of living crunch. Instead of acknowledging the pain, he has insisted everything is Biden’s fault, even though Biden left office in January and is not coming back.
“Joe Biden is no longer a threat to them because he’s out of office, he’s never going to be in office again,” one unnamed adviser told CNN, adding that Trump needs to “feel their pain” and “talk about it every day” if he wants voters to trust him on the economy again.
So far, the president has shown little interest in changing his tune. In a recent Politico interview, when asked what grade he would give the economy, Trump did not hesitate, awarding himself an “A plus plus plus plus plus” and insisting his policies are working. At a Cabinet meeting, he waved off talk of an affordability crisis as a Democratic “hoax” and “scam,” claiming that he actually “inherited the worst inflation in history” and that prices were already sky high before he returned to the Oval Office.
The numbers tell a different story, and aides know it because polling shows nearly half of Americans believe Trump has done more to drive prices up than to bring them down, with only a small share saying they think he has helped lower costs. A separate survey found that 46 percent of respondents see the current cost of living as the worst they can remember, including Trump’s voters during his second term.
Aides are trying to convince the president to take a more grounded message, one that acknowledges that groceries, utilities, and housing have become more expensive and are urging him to offer a concrete plan to tackle those issues. However, Trump keeps leaning into the fantasy version of the economy, the one where the economy is booming and anyone who complains is either lying or brainwashed by a Democrat hoax.
Trump’s talking points and the damning polls that show how voters feel are what are leaving his advisers worried. They told CNN they fear voters in swing districts, already skeptical after years of turbulence, will be turned off by a president who appears to live in a different reality than the one they encounter at the supermarket or gas pump.
Trump’s allies in Congress are also beginning to show signs of fatigue with the messaging. Some Republicans have started to quietly distance themselves from the “A plus economy” talk, focusing instead on promising relief on health care premiums and consumer prices, even as the White House continues to insist that nothing fundamental is wrong.
The president seems dug in, convinced that blaming Biden and celebrating his own record is still a winning message. His aides, reading the polls and hearing from nervous lawmakers, are not so sure.
