Washington Examiner’s chief political correspondent Byron York said Thursday that President Donald Trump risks his work on the economy and inflation by praising it, suggesting most voters don’t share the same sentiment.
Trump addressed the nation on Wednesday night to tout the progress he has made since returning to the White House, saying that the cost of living and various goods rose under former President Joe Biden, while these costs are now going down. Included in Trump’s speech was the unveiling of the $1,776 “warrior dividend” checks for service members, something York expects to be received with “huge approval,” and a preview of the tax refunds coming next year.
Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked York about a poll Fox News conducted, which found that 72% of 1,001 registered voters rate the economy’s condition as either fair or poor. What Kilmeade found “interesting” is how 3 out of 10 Republican voters say they are “slipping behind financially.”
“You know the danger for President Trump, and because he likes to talk about how great the things he’s done have been, the danger for President Trump is that people perceive that he’s telling them that the economy is better than it is,” York said on Fox News’s Fox & Friends. “They know how bad it is for themselves, the ones who say they’re falling behind certainly know how bad it is.”
“So they don’t want the president saying, ‘Hey, things are great! You know, if you just had a few million dollars in stock, you’d be doing fantastic!’” York said. “They don’t really want to hear that; they want to hear about how things are going to get better.”
York also noted that the poll showed the current level of concern about inflation is “almost exactly” the same as it was in the summer of 2022, when Biden was president. As such, York said Trump needs to realize inflation concerns haven’t gone away, and are still “very, very strong.”
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Inflation unexpectedly dropped three-tenths of a percentage point to 2.7% for the year ending in November. Forecasters had expected that inflation would rise to 3.1%, and the lower inflation reading suggests that the price pressures from Trump’s tariffs were not as strong as originally feared.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the Washington Examiner the Trump administration should “absolutely” be held responsible if electricity prices don’t go down. He added that he should be fired if prices don’t come down, since he would have failed to deliver on Trump’s agenda.
