President Trump on Tuesday night gave the first of a series of speeches intended to alleviate Americans’ concerns about the cost of living, but spent most of the time mocking the term “affordability” and insisting that Americans were doing better than they had ever done before.
Speaking to an enthusiastic group of supporters in a casino in Mt. Pocono, Pa., Mr. Trump plunged immediately into the case that Americans, and Pennsylvanians in particular, were actually doing very well, gliding by the evidence about reduced spending power for the middle class.
In a winding presentation that ran for 90 minutes, he episodically talked about economic initiatives, but also wandered into discussions of shutting down immigration, at one point comparing the country’s sealed borders to North Korea’s.
He also boasted of saving U.S. Steel, which was sold to Nippon Steel, the Japanese giant, last summer under a deal that gave a “golden share” to the government and Mr. Trump an outsized voice in the running of the company.
The president repeatedly confused slowing inflation down with bringing down prices — which would be deflation, with its own risks. “Our prices are coming down tremendously,” he insisted, before wandering off topic. Later, he said that “inflation is stopped.” His own Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that as of September, inflation was running close to 3 percent, almost exactly where it was at the end of the Biden administration.
Mr. Trump’s political advisers are clearly concerned that merely telling voters they are doing well could repeat a mistake made by Mr. Trump’s nemesis and predecessor, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Trump came armed with a raft of statistics carefully selected to make his case, and blamed Mr. Biden for leaving him “the highest inflation in history.” But then he acknowledged that Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, told him recently, “We have to start campaigning, sir.” (Inexplicably, the president called Ms. Wiles “Susie Trump.”)
Mr. Trump was supposed to focus entirely on the economy, but he often ignored the script flashing before him and returned over and over again to his favorite targets.
He attacked transgender Americans, repeatedly blamed Mr. Biden for inflation and illegal immigration — “he’s a sleepy son-of-a-bitch who destroyed our country,” he said — and roused the crowd by demanding that Representative Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, leave the country.
Later in the speech, he attacked electric cars and revived the call to “drill, baby, drill.” He praised himself for saving coal mining, even though coal mining jobs declined during his first term.
He brought with him a number of cabinet members, including Chris Wright, the energy secretary, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whose predecessors usually avoided showing up at heavily partisan events. When Mr. Trump introduced Mr. Bessent, he did not talk about Mr. Bessent’s economic initiatives, but instead said, to applause, “He is in charge of the investigation of Somalia and the billions of dollars they have robbed” from Minnesota.
“If they don’t go to jail, Scott Bessent is toast!” he later told the Treasury secretary, laughing.
Mr. Trump was not wrong about the scandal: Federal prosecutors have charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program designed to feed children during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the prosecutions were underway long before Mr. Trump seized on the topic.
He raised the possibility — without evidence — that Mr. Biden signed the appointments of members of the Federal Reserve board with an autopen, suggesting that he may argue that they are not legally in their posts.
“I’m hearing that the autopen could have signed maybe all four, but maybe a couple of them. We’ll take two,” he said to muted applause.
Mr. Trump’s performance raised a fundamental question: More than a year after he defeated Kamala Harris, who replaced Mr. Biden on the Democratic ticket, can he still blame his predecessor for all the nation’s ills?
As the evening wore on, he began to use increasingly dubious statistics, at one point saying that under Mr. Biden, “100 percent of new jobs were going to migrants,” but that “since I took office, 100 percent of all net job creation has gone to American citizens.”
There are no government numbers that support his argument.
As the evening wore on, Mr. Trump unleashed a list of other unsupported arguments, including repeating his argument that every boat full of suspected drug-runners struck off the coast of Venezuela saves 25,000 lives in the United States. In closed testimony, military officials have acknowledged that most of the boats were going elsewhere in the region, including Suriname, and ultimately to Africa or Europe.
“Now we are going to do land,” he said, repeating for the second time in two days the threats to attack unspecified facilities inside Venezuela. Along the way, Mr. Trump praised Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as “young, strong, smart.”
Mr. Trump sensed that he had drifted off topic, but decided to enjoy the moment. “I haven’t read practically anything off this stupid teleprompter,” he said midway through his speech.
Mr. Trump spoke not far from Luzerne County, a once solidly Democratic industrial manufacturing hub that swung hard toward Mr. Trump after voting twice for Barack Obama. Mr. Trump won the area three times by double digits, including 2020, when he defeated Joe Biden, who grew up in Scranton.
But there are signs that Luzerne County is starting to swing back. Republicans, who a little more than two years ago owned 10 of the 11 seats on the county commission, now hold just three, after Democrats swept four of five seats last month.
Greg Buzinski, a salesman, and his wife, Edie, a nurse, raised three children near Wilkes-Barre on a combined $45,000 salary. Now the couple is struggling to stretch their retirement savings. Edie cuts out coupons to take grocery shopping, something she never used to do. Greg buys whatever beer is cheapest.
“Everything is climbing,” Mr. Buzinski said. “Utility bills are going up. The electric bill has gone up. Water bill has gone up. Rents and home prices are way too high. We don’t see any break. For someone who campaigned on bringing down prices on day one, that obviously hasn’t happened.”
He added of Mr. Trump: “He comes up with plans that are grandiose and good. But we’ve seen the prices go up and stay up. No matter how many times he says different, we know the reality.”
Donna Beny, a tailor and seamstress in the suburb of Kingston, recently went to buy a zipper from China on Amazon that she said normally costs $8-10. She was shocked to see a new sticker price: $24.99. She is debating whether to raise prices across the board.
“I don’t want to, but everything is more expensive — utilities, insurance,” she said. “Affordability is out of control. It’s painful to go to the grocery store. I could stop eating, I suppose.”
She added: “I’m offended that he finds the affordability crisis a hoax. He’s probably never paid an electricity bill or shopped for groceries in his life.”
Billy Witz contributed reporting from Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
The post Trump Says Americans Are Doing Great, Even as Views on the Economy Sour appeared first on New York Times.
