Trump MOCKS affordability concerns AGAIN in Las Vegas rally

[0:00] Let's go to President Trump, who is back at the White House this morning after delivering a speech yesterday in Las Vegas that was supposed to highlight his economic achievements. [0:08] Instead, the president gave his typical rally style remarks filled with false claims and political grievances. [0:14] The president also blamed undocumented immigrants for higher prices and again mocked the term affordability. [0:23] But right now it's one of the best things. I mean, it's one of the greatest things. [0:26] People are making a lot of money, no tax on tips, and it's great. [0:29] This past filing season, 440,000 tipped workers right here in Nevada saved an average of $10,000 on their taxes. [0:40] Think of that. Just on the no tax on tips. [0:45] More Americans are working in the United States right now than at any point in the history of our country. [0:53] I saw polls today on television say Donald Trump polls on the economy aren't good. [0:58] The economy is the greatest economy we've ever had by far. [1:03] The economy aren't good. They're fake polls, just like fake writers. [1:08] And as illegal aliens go home, the cost of rent, groceries and other staples is coming down very fast. [1:14] Our costs are coming way down. [1:16] You know, they talk about affordability. [1:18] I took over the country. [1:20] The prices were through the roof. [1:21] In my first day, the press said, what are you going to do about affordability? [1:26] It was a word they devised, affordability. [1:29] They never used that word before. [1:31] Man, John, they're trying to get him to talk about affordability. [1:35] They've had all these rallies. [1:36] They've designed these set pieces for him where he could just get to the idea that people are having a tough time affording the cost of living. [1:43] He just is incapable of it. [1:44] Look, you've got to admire the man's consistency. [1:46] He just won't do it. [1:47] No, no, no. [1:48] They could bring the horse to water, but yet he won't. [1:51] It is amazing. [1:52] Yeah, I mean, I talked to aides, you know, again, even yesterday, ahead of this West Coast swing here. [1:56] He was in L.A. and then Vegas. [1:57] And I look, we're going to have this centerpiece event on the economy. [1:59] We'll talk about no tax on tips, which is one of the few things he can say he's done for. [2:03] And that particularly resonates there in the surface economy in Las Vegas. [2:06] But yet he takes the idea of affordability, claims the media invented it or perhaps Democrats, and this utterly dismisses it. [2:14] And he just it goes to his inability to ever admit a mistake, to ever admit that things aren't perfect, that things aren't a golden age. [2:23] And I wrote sort of related to this a piece for The Atlantic this morning about how the reflecting pool embarrassment, how the Air Force One embarrassment, [2:29] how it wasn't secure enough for him to fly overseas, led to him lashing out, you know, and even using the levers of government to go after those that he blamed in those respective cases, [2:39] whether it's a canoeist or New York Times reporters. [2:42] In this case, he is embarrassed or at least humbled by the state of the economy. [2:47] And he simply can't admit that it's not going great. [2:50] Yeah, it is for those at the very top, no doubt. [2:51] But there's a reason why so much there's so much populist anger right now in the country is because most of the nation feels like they're being left behind. [2:58] And they look to the president, who seems out of touch. [3:00] It's not it's not that he's offering solutions that aren't working and maybe he'd get credit for trying. [3:05] He doesn't seem to be even trying. [3:07] And that, I think, is holding him and his party back at the polls. [3:09] We're concerned with billing billion dollar ballrooms and statues to himself across Washington. [3:14] You heard the president talk there about more people working than ever before. [3:17] It's a line he's been using a lot lately. [3:19] That number driven, though, by population growth, as we mentioned yesterday, not his economic policies. [3:24] You also heard him tout no tax on tips. [3:27] Labor unions and research groups have disputed the actual savings for workers, though they like the idea. [3:32] On top of that, tourism is down significantly in Las Vegas, leading to fewer tips for service industry workers. [3:39] The city drew about three point one million fewer visitors last year than in 2024. [3:44] That's a seven and a half percent drop. [3:46] The largest decline since record keeping began in 1970, leaving aside, of course, the pandemic. [3:52] Meanwhile, a gallon of gas in Nevada, about four dollars and 80 cents. [3:56] That's more than 70 cents higher than the national average, according to Triple A. [4:02] So David Drucker, again, the White House and staffers around the president are trying to get him to go out there and acknowledge at least the pain that a lot of Americans are feeling. [4:10] We know how this always ends up. [4:12] He's in front of a crowd. [4:13] He's in Vegas. [4:13] He gets frothy. [4:14] He gets riled up and he wants to talk about his achievements, which is fair. [4:18] But he can't zero in on the issue that is the top of every poll of people's concerns heading into these midterm elections. [4:26] Yeah. [4:26] And, Willie, he's not going to. [4:28] Right. [4:29] I mean, you know, the president is is is famously consistently inconsistent. [4:35] He will talk about what he wants, when he wants. [4:37] As the incumbent and we saw this during the first presidency, he does not accept the premise that anything is wrong. [4:46] Right. [4:46] He will talk about what was wrong as he took office. [4:49] And and then he will just say it's been fixed. [4:53] And it's it's a trap that many presidents, not just Donald Trump, falls into because presidents do not like to accept any sort of blame. [5:02] And, you know, as a political matter, that's somewhat understandable. [5:05] But one of the worst things a president or any elected official can do is not acknowledge voters pain and meet them where they are. [5:14] So let's just quickly take out the economic metrics for a minute. [5:18] And we can have a debate about that. [5:19] We can have economic experts about that. [5:21] What the polling tells us is that voters do not believe the economy is as great as Donald Trump says it is. [5:28] And they do not believe, according to the polling, that he's sufficiently focused on the thing that they care about most, which is the economy. [5:36] And so it doesn't really matter whether Trump is right or wrong. [5:39] Voters don't think he's right. [5:40] And that's costing him and his party heading into the midterm elections. [5:44] And also he's talking about gas prices that will drop down to the floor. [5:48] As he said yesterday, once this war in Iran ends, most people at this point don't see an end to the war in Iran, at least for the moment. [5:55] In that speech yesterday, President Trump also spoke about that race in Michigan and had this to say about now the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. [6:06] And the polls were wrong again last night when they thought it would be a landslide victory for a hater of Jews and a hater of Israel. [6:13] This guy hates Jews. [6:16] Somebody said, oh, that's a little strong. [6:18] No, he hates Jews and he hates Israel. [6:21] Abdul El-Sayed. [6:24] Can you believe this? [6:28] This could only happen to me. [6:31] Abdul El-Sayed, lovely gentleman. [6:34] He's a man of hate. [6:36] Unclear what could only happen to him there, John. [6:38] But as I mentioned, I mean, you can look at the front page of The New York Post. [6:41] You can look anywhere in conservative media right now. [6:45] This is the candidate that they wanted in Michigan, but also nationally so that they could make the claim that the Democrats, whether it's here in New York City, in the state of Michigan, potentially with the governor of Wisconsin, are making a turn far left. [6:59] Yeah, right turn on red, the headline here. [7:01] And this is the subhead, though, that I think Republicans are seizing on. [7:04] GOP midterm prospects improve as Dems nominate socialist radicals. [7:09] I mean, obviously not actually a socialist, as Ali pointed out, doesn't actually consider himself part of the DSA. [7:14] But we're seeing this is the Republicans' closing argument here, is that they think that the Democrats, you know, that there's energy on the left, they're communists, they're socialists, they use those words interchangeably, even though, of course, they're not actually the same thing. [7:26] It's the red scare. [7:27] And they feel that, you know, and whether those labels actually work or not, at the very least, there is a sense from both parties, Michigan, because of this result yesterday, Michigan is now perhaps more of a toss-up than it would have been previously. [7:40] I think that is possibly true. [7:42] And we had the nominee on our air yesterday. [7:45] We interviewed him. [7:45] We asked him a lot of questions, including those around Israel. [7:47] And he's going to have to keep facing those questions. [7:49] And I think his answers are unsettling to some voters. [7:52] That said, we also shouldn't downplay some of the energy that's on the left right now. [7:56] He is a political talent. [7:57] Yes, there are some things, surely, he will need to adjust here in the next couple of months. [8:01] But I think it would be a mistake to suddenly say, oh, this seat's going into the Republican column here, Ali, when I think, you know, polls suggest, yes, a tight race, to be sure. [8:09] And I think that, you know, there is an onus on him, as well as some of the others in Michigan, to bring that party together in that state after a particularly bruising fight. [8:18] But one thing that he can do is point to Mike Rogers, who seems like a somewhat normie Republican, but tie him very effectively to Donald Trump and say, this guy has been a loyal foot soldier for this president whose poll numbers are in the low 30s. [8:31] Yeah, I mean, that is definitely the backdrop and the case against Rogers, right? [8:36] And midterms are referendums. [8:38] But I think Michigan voters are going to have, on the one hand, Rogers didn't have to go through a primary. [8:44] He just lost the last election to Alyssa Slotkin by 0.3 points. [8:48] I mean, it was close, right? [8:49] So they feel good for that reason, as well as the fact that El Sayed, I think, has some healing to do within the Democratic coalition and might have a harder time bringing along some disaffected Republicans. [8:59] I think that is going to be one of the big tests here. [9:02] On the other side of it, when I was out there, I was meeting voters who were telling me, even if they still supported Trump, they connected the Iran war to gas prices and they were questioning, why wasn't this war ever just explained to me? [9:15] Because I think their inclination is to back Trump, to give him the leeway, to give him the patience that Republicans on the Hill are giving him. [9:21] And I think that's going to be one of the true tests is they are making that connection. [9:25] And it underscores why Republican strategists that I talk to consistently say the Iran war is the biggest and I think most unpredictable thing that keeps them up at night about the midterms, because to voters, it is a direct connection between a Trump decision and the affordability costs that they were already feeling.