Donald Trump is preparing to launch his new “affordability tour,” heading to Pennsylvania early next week to revive the worn pledge: “I alone can fix it.” It’s the same nostalgia-driven promise that powered his 2016 ascent. But something has shifted for MAGA. Not only is the economy still grinding under the strain of inflation, high housing costs, and rising bills for energy and insurance, the messaging around those issues is starting to crack — even in places that once functioned as Trump’s best bulwarks.
This hurried sales job, notably, follows shortly after the president’s rhetoric turned sharply dismissive on “affordability” concerns, so much so that even his most loyal surrogates have been scrambling to explain it.
Trump called the affordability crisis a “scam” and a Democrat-crafted “con job” during a Cabinet meeting last Tuesday (in between his apparent naps), telling reporters that “affordability … doesn’t mean anything to anybody.” Vice President JD Vance, attempting a clean-up job the next day, insisted that any expectations that the Trump administration could fix all affordability problems within the first year were a hoax. “The hoax is the idea that it’s our fault and not the Democrats’ fault,” he said.
Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, are waking up to a grim political reality that many of them can no longer afford to ignore: When people cannot pay rent, fill the tank, buy food or keep a roof over their heads, they’re likely to take out their frustrations on the party in power, no amount of rhetoric or red-meat culture-war fodder can paper over the electoral risks.
November’s off-year election blowout has begun to shake up elements within the Republican Party, reinforcing how risky it is to ignore continued inflation and cost-of-living pressures. In a slew of contests — in states and districts that had once reliably swung Republican — Democrats rolled to unexpected wins or strong showings one year after Trump’s election by focusing on so-called kitchen table issues.
In turn, as Media Matters notes, right-wing media figures have begun to acknowledge an affordability crisis they had previously dismissed or ignored. Now Trump’s own supporters are starting to blame him for high prices, according to a new poll that found 37% of those who supported Trump in 2024 reported that the cost of living is “the worst” they “can ever remember it being.” Another 25% of Trump voters polled said they believe the president is either mostly or entirely responsible for higher prices.
Right-wing media figures have begun to acknowledge an affordability crisis they had previously dismissed or ignored. And now Trump’s own supporters are starting to blame him, not Joe Biden, for high prices.
Despite unified control of the federal government, Republicans have only managed to pass one piece of substantial legislation this year. Since the rushed passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, the chasm between Trump’s campaign promises and reality has grown ever wider. The BBB was sold as part of Trump’s grand plan to stabilize the economy by extending the corporate tax cuts of 2017, this time including tax breaks for overtime, tips for service workers and interest on auto loans. Trump promised those tweaks would somehow boost take-home pay and ease living costs.
In fact, that bill, by design, funnels its major benefits to wealthy individuals and corporations, while cutting or gutting the safety net programs that millions rely on. It slashed federal support for health care and food assistance, curtailed Medicaid and food-aid programs, and undercut decades-old social supports, all in the name of “tax relief.”
“We hopefully learned a lesson that while the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill [Act]’ doesn’t poll well by that name, if you change it to the ‘Working Family’s Tax Cuts Act,’ it polls much better,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, recently admitted. “So we need to go back to Marketing 101, I guess.” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., told the Hill that the president’s interest in other matters has “left a vacuum.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are reportedly planning to jump on every negative inflation data point “as proof that Trump isn’t focused on Americans who are struggling,” pushing their “Making America Affordable Again” message in next year’s midterm elections.
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The White House, for its part, is telling Americans one more time that they should really blame Joe Biden for anything and everything that feels off in American life. Meanwhile, the media ecosystem that once served as Trump’s megaphone is notably less willing — or at least less able — to carry his tune.
“There seems to be an issue with the way Republicans are handling this affordability issue,” Fox News anchor Sandra Smith noted Friday.
Kevin Hassett, the director of Trump’s National Economic Council, couldn’t even catch a break on Fox News, where host Martha MacCallum grilled him this week about polling that places responsibility for the economy squarely at Trump’s feet. “When we have ‘Who is responsible for current economic conditions, President Trump or President Biden?’ We have Trump at 62 percent.… What would you say to people who are answering the survey that way, Kevin?” When Hassett claimed that wage growth was now higher than inflation, MacCallum corrected him, saying, “inflation is at 2.9 percent.”
In another recent Fox News segment, Jesse Watters admitted bluntly: “It’s Trump’s economy now … he owns it now.”
Even when trying to prop up Trump on the economy, Fox accidentally highlighted the strength of Biden’s policy. One recent Fox segment credited Trump’s tariffs for creating 400 factory jobs at an Alabama cabinet manufacturer — even though that factory had announced the new jobs during the previous administration.
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Of course Trump hasn’t been abandoned by everyone at Fox News. Fox Business analyst Charles Payne tried his hand at some optimistic spin on Friday, arguing that “ironically, the media may be overplaying their hand because all of this affordability stuff, as it fades next year when the economy takes off … they are going to have to find a different story.”
That sounds suspiciously like wishful thinking, especially considering that 71,321 job losses were announced in November, taking the total to 1.17 million in 2025. Put simply: the politics of denial isn’t working anymore. Trumpian smoke and bluster just isn’t enough when a majority of voters feel that inflation, housing costs and food prices are out of control. At least for the moment, right-wing narratives about a whopping “economic recovery” that’s supposedly about to start any day now, are doing nothing to lift Trump’s sinking White House.
