President Donald Trump sounded like a carnival huckster in his Wednesday-night speech from the White House. He seemed to believe that if he presented his stream of misleading and sometimes false statements in a loud, fast and angry voice, then Americans would suddenly decide he’s actually doing a good job on the economy.
He shouldn’t count on it.
No one wants to hear a speech from Trump about how the economy is all former President Joe Biden’s fault.
Trump’s attempts to talk his way out of America’s affordability crisis are falling flat, and Wednesday’s speech won’t change Americans’ perception that things are bad. According to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published Wednesday, only 36% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, and 70% say their monthly expenses either match or exceed their monthly income.
No one wants to hear a speech from Trump about how the economy is all former President Joe Biden’s fault. Nor does anyone want Trump gaslighting them about the state of their personal finances.
But factually challenged boasts and blame are just about all there has ever been in Trump’s bag of tricks. He has never presented himself as someone who could empathize with the public’s economic fears, but as a performer of a particular sort: the self-help, get-rich-quick wealth guru.
The wealth guru — think “The Apprentice,” think multi-level marketing schemers or onetime Trump collaborator “Rich Dad” Robert Kiyosaki — doesn’t preach sacrifice or patience. Wealth gurus flaunt their riches (hello, private planes and gold-plated apartments) and promise to let you in on the secret of how to obtain the same.
And if you cannot? Well, that’s on you. You didn’t try hard enough, you didn’t sell hard enough, or you didn’t believe in the guru enough.
Trump tried that tack in the recent past. Remember last week, when he called affordability “a hoax”? Or, also last week, when he suggested Americans buy only “two or three” dolls for their children this holiday season?
Those remarks went over like the proverbial lead balloon.
Those remarks went over like the proverbial lead balloon. Wealth gurus aren’t supposed to tell you to make do with less. They’re supposed to let you in on the way to make enough money to afford hundreds of dolls if your little heart so desires.
After the unhelpful remarks from last week, Trump reappeared on Wednesday, peddling economic distortions in the hopes of bamboozling Americans into thinking they can afford as many dolls as they want.
Don’t count on it.
As for some of his bold claims from Wednesday: He hasn’t brought inflation down — it’s about the same as it was when he took office in January. Gas prices are not hovering around $2 a gallon in several states — they’re about $1 higher than that in most of the country. True, the price of eggs is significantly down. (Those lower prices may be due, at least in part, to his administration opening a probe into whether egg producers colluded to keep supplies low and prices high. That’s something he could have truthfully boasted about, but he didn’t.) But beef costs about 15% more than it did a year ago. Coffee is up by a similar amount. As for his undisclosed plan to bring down the cost of home electricity bills, so far his record is the opposite: Electricity costs are increasing at a rate more than double the Consumer Price Index. Trump sidestepped the fact that Republican refusals to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies threaten to send the cost of health insurance soaring for millions of Americans. Instead, he boasted of a vague plan to let Americans buy their own health insurance — but that’s what the ACA exchanges do for Americans who don’t receive workplace health insurance and aren’t eligible for Medicaid or Medicare. The premium subsidies Democrats have been fighting to extend give Americans a form of cash to pay for those plans. As for the claim that more Americans are working than at any other time in American history — well, yes, because our population is the highest it’s ever been. However, the unemployment rate is climbing, as is the time it takes for someone to find a new job if they lose one. None of these attempts to distract Americans from reality should surprise anyone. Those who study MLMs — and Trump dabbled in this world — say almost every recruit loses money, with the gains accruing only to a small, elite group. Similarly, Trump is presiding over what economists call a “K-shaped” economy. The top 10% of Americans, flush with stock market gains, are living large, while everyone else struggles with student loan payments, budget-busting auto loans and more. No one is getting richer from the Trump economy than Trump and his cronies. As Americans frantically scramble to keep up, he’s used cryptocurrency startups — particularly the Trump meme coin — and regulations to make billions of dollars for himself and his family. The apparent corruption is blatant. There is also constant suspicion about stock-trading patterns among people with access to confidential government information. All of this becoming to clearer to Americans by the day. Trump’s polling approval numbers are falling, while more and more Americans blame him and his Republican congressional minions for our increasingly strained personal finances. We aren’t, after all, a bunch of credulous followers of a wealth guru. We experience the truth about the economy whenever we swipe a credit card at the supermarket or pay our monthly bills. And we know that however loud or fast Trump says them, his numbers don’t add up.
Helaine R. Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has also appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. 
