Earlier this month, in the immediate aftermath of the Democrats’ dominant performance in the 2025 elections, Donald Trump declared that he sees concerns about the cost of living as “dead.” A day later, the president went further, adding, “I don’t want to hear about the affordability.” The day after that, he went so far as to condemn the very idea of “affordability” as a potent political issue, dismissing it as “a con job by the Democrats.”
It didn’t take long for White House officials to realize this rhetorical strategy wasn’t going to work. The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Trump’s aides “have urged the president to focus on affordability,” given its obvious importance to the American public.
With increasing frequency, Trump is, in fact, emphasizing the issue. Unfortunately, as part of the emphasis, the president is pretending the issue doesn’t exist.
On Monday afternoon, while vowing to sign the Epstein Files Transparency Act if it reaches his desk, Trump packaged his response as part of a larger pitch: “All I want is I want for people to recognize the great job I’ve done on pricing, on affordability.”
But he hasn’t done a great job on the issue. That didn’t stop the president from echoing the false claims a few hours later during remarks at the McDonald’s Impact Summit. The New York Times reported:
As President Trump seeks to reframe his message on affordability, he is increasingly denying there is a problem at all. Speaking at a gathering of McDonald’s franchise owners and operators in Washington, Mr. Trump boasted that he had ‘normalized’ inflation, slashed regulations like water restrictions that helped small businesses, and brought down energy costs. But after being dogged for weeks on Americans’ frustration with the high cost of living, the president gave no details about how he planned to address the issue.
“This is also the golden age of America, because we are doing better than we’ve ever done as a country,” the Republican boasted, describing conditions that exist only in his active imagination. “Prices are coming down, and all of that stuff.”
The idea that the United States is currently enjoying a “golden age” is obviously difficult to take seriously. Indeed, leading members of Trump’s own economic team recently conceded that parts of the U.S. economy are already in recession. What’s more, there’s a series of recent independent polls, each of which found widespread public dissatisfaction with the health of the economy, with most Americans blaming the president for having made conditions worse.
The status quo might very well be Trump’s “golden age” — he’s apparently doing quite well, profiting handsomely from his powerful office — but the people he ostensibly serves appear to feel quite differently about their own wallets.
Just as important, if not more so, was Trump’s latest claim that consumer prices “and all of that stuff” are “coming down.” As the president really ought to know, that’s plainly not true. Despite Trump’s assurances and campaign promises, everything — from energy costs to grocery prices — has gone up over the last year. If the president asked for Americans’ patience, that would make sense. If he presented some kind of plan to address the affordability crisis, that would be even better. But Trump appears convinced that the best way to address the issue is simply to push the same lie over and over again, demanding the public take his word over their own experience. The more the president plays make-believe, the more he appears hopelessly out of touch. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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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