President Donald Trump spoke to a crowd of families in late July at a high school in Marietta, Georgia.
He talked about Venezuelan oil and the war in Iran. He ticked off investment commitments. And he touted provisions in the Republican tax bill — or tried to.
“This past filing season, 130,000 tipped workers right here in Georgia saved an average of more than $7,000 on their taxes. And that’s because of no tax on tips. You know, we’re building a tremendous military facility at the White House,” Trump said. “And they’ve been working hard, a lot of overtime.”
The speech in a state that will be pivotal in November was one of a handful Trump has delivered this year, part of what White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in January would be weekly trips across the country to talk to voters ahead of the midterms.
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Last month, the Pew Research Center asked voters what they most wanted to hear about from candidates. The answer was overwhelmingly cost of living, wages and affordability. More than half of voters think the economy is getting worse, according to a July Quinnipiac University poll. And 58% of those polled disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy.
A March report found that nearly half of families do not make enough to cover the basic cost of living in their communities. Only 13% of Americans aged 18-29 believe the country is headed in the right direction, according to Harvard’s youth poll that was conducted last November.
But despite overwhelming evidence that affordability is defining the current political moment, the president is often reflexively dismissive of the issue.
“‘What are you going to do about the prices?’” Trump recounted in Georgia of a question he says he’s often asked. “They used a word — first time I heard it — it was a word made up by the Democrats: affordability. They said affordability.”
This is overwhelmingly the context in which Trump mentions affordability, a NOTUS review of Trump’s speaking events this year using Roll Call’s Factbase found. Republicans across the board say that Trump is instrumental to any win in November. But he rarely acknowledges the issue that will decide the election.
Trump’s mentions of key economic terms are rarely in the context of affordability. When the president uses the word “prices,” it is often to say that his administration inherited high prices and has worked to lower them.
“You know, and they have this term. So here I am, I’m one day in office and the fake news goes, ‘affordability, affordability.’ I said, ‘What’s that all about?’ ‘Prices are too high,’ I said, ‘I’m here for less than 24 hours,’” Trump told a crowd in Milford, Michigan, in July. “But we’ve brought down prices. Last week, it was announced that inflation has gone down faster than at any time in the last six years.”
A superlative almost always precedes Trump’s mentions of the economy — Trump frequently refers to the economy of his first term as “the greatest economy ever” and similarly praises his second-term economy.
“I proudly signed the largest tax cuts in American history for the second time, because in my first term, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump said in Michigan. “Didn’t get credit, but that’s OK. But we had the greatest economy in the history of the country. And we’re blowing it away this time.”
While the economy may look broadly good on paper — the stock market is performing well and unemployment is low — Americans across the country are struggling with high housing costs, soaring grocery prices and wages that aren’t keeping up with inflation. For many households, the disconnect between economic indicators and their personal finances has continued to worsen.
Anne Hamming, the communications manager at Feeding America West Michigan, told NOTUS that her local branch of the hunger relief organization is seeing a higher rate of childhood food insecurity, which she said indicates that higher costs are squeezing families.
In lower-wage households, Hamming said, small increases in grocery costs or a trip to the gas station “make an impact.”
“They add up,” she said. “We hear all over the place that people are just really struggling.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Wednesday paints this same picture in numbers: An increase in prices wiped out wage gains. Inflation and high energy prices, a result of the war in Iran, have added to the squeeze and worsened the cost-of-living problems plaguing many Americans.
In a statement to NOTUS, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales did not acknowledge NOTUS’ questions about the frequency of cost-of-living issues in the president’s statements.
“President Trump can walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said. “As a result, the Trump Administration continues to deliver on the President’s affordability agenda by lowering drug prices, reshoring American jobs, and cutting taxes while simultaneously touting a historic drop in violent crime nationwide and the most secure border in history.”
The White House signaled an intention to focus on affordability and the midterms late last year.
“The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living,” former White House deputy chief of staff James Blair told Politico last November.
But for much of this year, other issues have captured a larger share of the president’s remarks — most notably the war in Iran and related foreign policy issues. The war is unpopular: A Politico poll conducted by Public First found that support for the war is slipping even among Trump’s most ardent supporters.
“With the economy, the biggest issue is two things. Number one, the discipline and consistency in talking about the wins that you’re having in the economy. The administration lacks a certain discipline that you get from mainstream administrations,” Cory Ruth, a Republican strategist, and industry consultancy company CEO in Georgia, told NOTUS. “The second thing is, there are people in his administration that are highly politicized, and the media is never going to take them at face value. And then there are people in the administration who the media does respect and does listen to. They’re less politicized, and he doesn’t do a good job of putting those people up front.”
The White House has undertaken efforts aimed at answering the affordability question. For example, it rolled out TrumpRx, a prescription drug website designed to offer deals on medication. But NOTUS found that Trump has only mentioned TrumpRx at eight speaking events since the platform launched in February.
While Congressional Republicans refer to last year’s tax bill as the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act,” Trump continues to call it the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” While he talks about its provisions like no tax on tips, which Republicans acknowledge are more popular than the legislation as a whole, he mentioned them in less than 20% of all transcribed speaking events this year.
“He ended taxes on overtime. If you are a sort of blue-collar worker or a working-class person, and you … are allowed to get overtime, that’s gone. And so there are things that he’s doing,” Ruth said, adding that the drumbeat of that messaging “is just not consistent enough.”
Before departing on a trip to China in May, Trump was asked whether he was taking into account Americans’ financial situations as he tried to negotiate an end to the Iran war.
“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation, I don’t think about anybody,” Trump said. “I think about one thing. We can not let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that matters.”
Republicans previously told NOTUS that they were frustrated with that response, and with the way that he talks about the economy broadly. Democrats, on the other hand, said they have every intention of capitalizing on Trump’s perceived lack of concern.
“Americans’ financial situation is dire, and Republicans don’t think about anyone other than Donald Trump,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the next day.
Note: Sampled words may represent a combination of multiple terms. For example, “affordability” includes instances where the president said “afford,” “affordable,” and affordability. Others are as follows: costs (cost/costs/cost of living), wages (wage/wages/paycheck/pocket), economy (economy/economic), price (price/prices), and families (Family/families).
Some statements were omitted based on context. For example, Trump saying on Feb. 20 that some Supreme Court justices were an “embarrassment to their families” was not included in the count for the term families, as families in that context is not related to affordability.
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