When I served in President Joe Biden’s White House, we had good economic news to report: robust job creation, rising wages, low unemployment and a manufacturing jobs revival. Yes, inflation spiked early in his term, but by the time he left office, it had come down considerably.
Mr. Biden wanted his team to highlight his domestic agenda. His policies were working, and he wanted the country to understand what he was doing and why. But the polling was clear: Our economic message didn’t land.
Senior White House advisers, myself included, would meet for hours, day after day, trying to get a handle on the mismatch between the strength of the data and the flagging public confidence. There were differences of opinion and long discussions about the best way to move forward. We pored over the numbers, worked through different messaging options and kept looking for a way to break through.
But Americans weren’t feeling it. Too many people were struggling with the prices of groceries, rent, child care and gas. Their lived experience did not match the encouraging economic news, and that disconnect shaped the entire public conversation.
We believed that if we laid out the evidence clearly enough, people would see what we saw. They didn’t, and we didn’t adjust to meet them where they were.
Some of Mr. Biden’s advisers worried that too much emphasis on the very real challenges people were facing would undermine the case we were making. Others argued that failing to acknowledge those challenges upfront made us sound out of touch. Every day that we failed to reach consensus, the public mood hardened.
The truth is, we had a stale message and outdated models for delivering it. It cost Mr. Biden and, eventually, Vice President Kamala Harris dearly. President Trump is now making a mistake even more damaging.
The economic indicator that hurt Mr. Biden the most, inflation, is higher today than it was when Mr. Trump returned to office. The bond market has been roiled. The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates. Mr. Trump’s trade wars and his war with Iran are hurting the overall economic picture. All of which helps explain his sinking poll numbers.
Mr. Biden repeatedly talked of growing the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up,” but that mantra ultimately didn’t resonate. Mr. Trump’s refrain that we’re the “hottest country anywhere in the world” is a no-sale, both because the facts really aren’t on his side and because he’s barely acknowledging Americans’ legitimate economic worries. By and large, people aren’t buying his assertions that “affordability” is a “fake word” or his insistence that higher gas prices are “a very inexpensive price to pay” for his war aims.
When leaders neglect lived experience, the message collapses.
Why? To start, facts and figures alone no longer carry the weight they once did. There was a time when people would absorb accurate information presented clearly through official channels, like the White House press briefing. They might disagree on what it meant, they might challenge certain points, but it wasn’t automatically treated as spin.
Today, anyone can be a content creator, producing videos, podcasts and memes with subjective, sometimes bogus interpretations of the news. Many Americans now get their news only from outlets that confirm their political leanings. Social media algorithms clearly favor outrage and certainty, not accuracy.
In that environment, official charts and summaries rarely break through. While I was the press secretary, the Biden White House often operated as if we still had a media ecosystem built for accuracy and process, rather than one built for immediacy and vibes.
A TikTok about high prices, filmed with a phone in a grocery store aisle or in front of a gas pump, could garner more attention than anything I said at the daily White House briefings or any interview given by a cabinet secretary on the Sunday morning talk shows. And once a narrative rooted in daily life takes hold, it is almost impossible to dislodge.
We learned that lesson with the economy and again with the debate around Mr. Biden’s age. Looking back, we misread the public mood, thinking the age conversation would fade. At best, my responses from the podium about Mr. Biden’s age failed to put out the fire; at worst, they fueled it.
The Trump White House should realize that over the next two years, there will be only more, not less, scrutiny when the president appears to drift off during meetings, is cagey about the results of his medical exams or goes on one of his erratic, late-night social media screeds. His communications team should know by now that the prices at the pump and the self-checkout line are undefeated.
When people don’t believe what their government says, institutions lose legitimacy. Conspiracy theories flourish. Urgently needed legislation stalls. Elections are lost.
Part of the challenge is that Americans no longer share a single information space: Media fragmentation has created separate realities. And when a government cannot establish shared facts, democratic decision-making becomes harder.
In some ways, Mr. Trump’s style — direct, emotional, repetitive and unmediated — fits the incentives of the current environment. But it has limits. A decade ago, his bluster, so unlike traditional politicians, grabbed ears and eyeballs. Now even many of his fans can see that he’s frequently just seeking attention. Look at just about any poll and you get the sense that voters increasingly don’t trust him.
That tension, the ability to dominate the conversation while struggling to earn trust, defines this moment.
Once people believe their government is not speaking to their reality, it becomes incredibly difficult to earn that trust back. I felt that tension every day in the White House briefing room. I see it happening again now.
Karine Jean-Pierre is the author of “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.”
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