Donald Trump spent years publishing assorted messages to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, but he literally never wrote a tweet that included the word “affordability.”
On his own platform, however, the president has taken a sudden interest in the term.
On Tuesday morning, as Election Day 2025 got underway, he wrote online, “If affordability is you [sic] issue, VOTE REPUBLICAN! Energy costs, as and [sic] example, are plummeting.” (In reality, energy costs are climbing, not sinking.)
The day after Democratic election victories, Trump assured the public, “Affordability is our goal.” That was followed by a related online rant: “2025 Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving dinner under Biden, according to Walmart. My cost [sic] are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats [sic] ‘affordability’ issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!”
Whether the president understands this or not, Walmart lowered the cost of its Thanksgiving dinner by reducing the number of items included in the package and replacing brand-name products with value products. It was not, in other words, the result of the White House’s awesomeness.
As for the idea that the underlying issue is “dead,” the president seems to know better. Consider his exchange with Bret Baier during the Republican’s Fox News interview Wednesday night.
Trump: We've done so much, energy is way down. Look at energy. We'll have $2 gas. That brings everything else down. Groceries are way down other than beef. They have this new word called affordability and they don't talk about it enough. The Democrats make it up because we took… pic.twitter.com/ZkZCpSMV98
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 5, 2025
Assessing the broader political and economic landscape, Trump said he’s succeeded in bringing energy costs “way down.” (That’s the opposite of the truth.) He added that the cost of groceries is also “way down.” (That, too, was a lie.) As part of the harangue, the president insisted that inflation rates during Joe Biden’s term were “the highest … in the history of our country.” (That’s ridiculous.)
But perhaps the most striking part of the interview was Trump saying, “You know, they have this new word called ‘affordability’ and [Republicans] don’t talk about it enough. The Democrats did.”
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that “affordability” is not a “new word.” Instead, let’s consider the merit of the president’s analysis. By Trump’s reasoning, GOP officials and candidates have struggled because they haven’t talked about the cost-of-living challenges facing American consumers. That might make him feel better, but the underlying issue isn’t rhetorical, it’s practical. Republicans can use “this new word” all the time and it won’t change the fact the party, with total control over federal policymaking, has failed spectacularly to address one of the key issues that elevated them to power in the first place. Democrats scored election victories, not by mentioning “affordability,” but by shining a light on the GOP’s substantive failures on the issue and offering an alternative. The longer Trump fails to understand this, the more often he and his party will suffer political and electoral consequences.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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