American voters are stressed about the high cost of groceries, gas and housing, yet heading into the final weekend before the midterms, here’s President Donald Trump’s closing message: Everything is rosier than people say.
It’s true the unemployment rate remains low. The stock market has been surging, thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology. Overall, the economy grew 3.4 percent last quarter, better than many economists had predicted.
But voters don’t live on economic indicators. Poll after poll shows Americans feeling intense anxiety about stagnant wages, high prices and the fear of not getting ahead financially.
“Unfortunately, right now, Donald Trump wants everything to run hot because the stock market is what he is juicing to make it look like the economy is doing well. It benefits him,” said James Zavaleta of Brownsville, Texas, a 40-year-old teacher. “Republicans are not willing to acknowledge that affordability is the key part of this election.”
Zavaleta is a longtime Republican who said he plans to vote for Democrats this fall for House and Senate seats in Texas, typically a conservative state.
To vote Republican “is a vote for telling Trump he can do whatever he wants,” Zavaleta added, and he wants to see Republicans do better at taming inflation.
Inflation gets few mentions in Trump’s closing message in this high-stakes midterm election, in which both parties are vying for control of the House and Senate. Instead, at campaign rallies, Trump rattles off favorable statistics — some accurate, others made up — on wages, employment, investment and the poverty rate and then tries to scare voters on what would happen if Democrats took back power.
“If Democrats win, you will have a 1929-style economic depression because that’s how bad their policies are. You’ll end up in a depression if that happens,” Trump said Thursday at a rally in South Carolina for Sen. Darline Graham.
By not addressing voters’ concerns directly about rising prices and dismissing the talk of “affordability” as a hoax, as Trump sometimes refers to it, the president risks repeating the same political error that upended Joe Biden’s presidency.
Biden and his team tried to do this for more than a year by downplaying inflation as “transitory,” a term his officials leaned on heavily. Voters didn’t buy it. Then, Democrats lost the 2024 election because Trump made it a referendum on Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s handling of the economy.
Now, Democrats are running the same playbook against Trump, with the results to come due Tuesday night.
“For five years, voters have identified the cost of living as their top concern, yet Trump’s most visible actions — tariffs and the war with Iran — have concretely raised prices across the board,” said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council under Biden. “The problem isn’t his economic message. It’s his economic agenda.”
Democrats are gleeful about casting aspersions on the real estate-developer-turned-politician’s handling of the U.S. economy, especially as Trump is forced to hold rallies in red states such as Iowa and Kansas where the GOP usually dominates.
“Hope undecided voters tune in to hear the president’s closing message about how the economy is doing great, gas prices are low, he is building championship golf courses in DC, and most people are too poor to eat at Mar-a-Lago,” longtime Democratic strategist Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, wrote on X.
In a statement, White House spokesman Matthew Middleton said Trump “has delivered on his promise to provide relief to hardworking families, securing more than $82 billion in individual tax relief from No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, the Enhanced Senior Deduction, and No Tax on Car Loan Interest.” The statement touted “77 record highs” for the stock market under Trump, as well as Trump’s trade deals, a reduction in the poverty rate and growth in jobs.
“This administration is committed to rebuilding the American communities left behind by previous administrations and will continue fighting to lower costs, expand opportunity, and make life more affordable for hardworking American families,” the statement said.
Trump’s aides and advisers have long wanted the president to stick to a more economically disciplined script like that one.
Trump does mention those points, but he has always had a hard time sticking to this type of wonky message, which he sometimes publicly will call boring. Often, in interviews or rallies, he veers off into discussions about immigration or tariffs. (His hot topic now is admiring the physique of male, Republican candidates, which allies say is a new way to shock and delight the MAGA faithful who’ve been listening to his shtick for more than a decade.)
At this point, White House allies say, there’s not much the president can do to appease voters’ individual economic worries. There’s even less he can do to lower prices. Instead, he is trying to make voters afraid of a possible Democratic agenda while playing up the economic goodies the Trump administration is doling out in competitive states.
Democrats liken these giveaways to bribes for voters in competitive districts.
So far, the administration has promised money for rural hospitals in Texas, roughly $100 million to help a pharmaceutical company revitalize a drug manufacturing plant in Kentucky and removal of the ban on summertime sale of fuel blended with ethanol — that is, provided Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall wins reelection.
Republicans were heartened this week by a raft of economic data that showed strong business investment and economic growth, coupled with consumers who keep on spending despite the high prices.
That should be a major thrust of Trump’s closing message; “the economy is getting better every day,” said Stephen Moore, one of the president’s informal economic advisers, who pointed to the recent GDP report as evidence.
“The Reagan line from 1982 is true here: Stay the course. We are doing fine.”
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