When President Trump is asked about the economy from now on it would be a good idea for him to simply refer back to one of his vice president’s interviews last month. J.D. Vance was able to talk about it then in ways that Trump is apparently incapable of now.
MAGA people are nearly in tears of rage this week for good reason after watching Trump repeatedly declare all is well on the home front while he gallivants around the White House grounds with foreign leaders, showing them his latest gold-trimmed renovations. It’s not that the president is tending to world affairs or trifling with his silly renovation projects. It’s that all is not well here in America, where the people who elected him actually live.
Asked on Fox News this week about enduring voter concerns on the obscene costs of living, Trump said, “More than anything else it’s a con job by the Democrats.” He then suggested the fact that “costs are up” is a talking point created by the news media, followed by a confounding assertion that “costs are way down.”
In that same vein, Trump said last week, “Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down.” He said that on camera, believe it or not. Oh, he also said, “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.”
It’s untrue that “everything is way down,” and it’s an insult to readers to have to prove it. But to be sure, car insurance is up 12 percent from last year, the president’s own Agriculture Department acknowledges that food prices are rising faster than usual, and even Amazon has increased it’s average price on stuff by almost 13 percent since the start of 2025. This comes after the country was sandbagged by a cry-inducing 20 percent increase in prices under Joe Biden.
The current president would be forgiven for the costs of basic needs not having dropped back to where they were in 2019 just one year into his second term. Getting even close to that is going to take time. But “I don’t want to hear about the affordability” is unacceptable to everyone who put him in office precisely because the last president blew off the same problem and, indeed, denied it even was a problem.
But, hey, how’s that new ballroom and Arc de Trump coming along? Meet with any more kings lately?
Again, Trump’s voters don’t care if he wants to indulge in the trappings of his occupation. But they expect a return on their investment, which was not cheap. We lost friends and family over it. Fortunately not everyone in the White House is so unbothered by middle- and working-class people having to constantly think up new ways to stretch a dollar.
Just two weeks ago Vice President J.D. Vance was saying all the right things as they relate to the economy. “We’re nine months into this thing, we’ve done a lot of good,” he said in an interview with the New York Post’s Miranda Devine. And then he asserted the administration’s proper ownership of the problem at hand. “There’s a lot more work to do because, I mean, look, the thing that I most worry about is that Biden left us a terrible affordability crisis,” he said. “We’ve got to make life more affordable for American citizens. Again, we’ve chipped away at that problem, but there’s a lot more work to do there.”
Obviously more is expected than just an acknowledgment that people continue taking on credit card debt and staking out second jobs just to keep up with their bills. But at a minimum, it’s demanded of the president to assure everyone that he isn’t just having a good time with dignitaries in his eternal quest to secure a Nobel Peace Prize.
If his vice president can do it, so can Trump.
