Pollster and longtime conservative messaging guru Frank Luntz paused a moment after CNN news anchors asked him for his reaction to President Donald Trump’s calming words on the stock market.
“He's saying, quote, ‘Don't be weak. Don’t be stupid.' I mean, at some point, that patience must wear thin if the economy isn't trending in the right direction. How much patience do you think these voters will have?” asked CNN anchor Boris Sanchez.
Luntz challenged the circumstances of the statement: “So, I need to ask you a question: Did he actually say, ‘don't be stupid?’ Was that his language, his rhetoric?”
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“It was a quote from the president,” Sanchez affirmed.
“Then that is a very bad thing to say. Voters do not like being told that they're stupid,” Luntz said. “If the president said, ‘don't rush, be patient. Good things happen in the long term,’ the public would have said, ‘I'll accept that. I’ll embrace that. you know, I’m a language person, and when he's saying, ‘don't be stupid,’ there will be a lot of voters in the center that will regard that as a criticism, an undeserved criticism.”
Some voters aren’t taking economic news well regardless of diplomacy. Billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-founder Elon Musk escalated his attacks against White House trade adviser Peter Navarro today, calling him a “moron” who’s “dumber than a sack of bricks.” Trump also earned the distinction of presiding over the biggest losses in the S&P 500 of any president’s early term since World War II, and global markets plunged on Monday, triggered by Trump’s trade war and China’s forceful response to unexpectedly high tariffs.
The market also spent last week in a slide, momentarily slowed after some fake news wrongly claimed Trump was reconsidering a tariffs pause. Markets enjoyed a brief rebound again today before easing into another tumble.
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But Luntz assured stemming public disapproval is a matter of careful word choice, saying, “there's still time to recover if the language is proper.”
“Make no mistake: on the language of tariffs, the public is still not made up their minds whether this is good or bad. They don't like the opening, but there's still time to recover,” he said. “No. 1, are we on a level playing field? No. 2, does the American workforce get every opportunity that other workers get to sell their goods and sell their services? No 3, does it raise or lower the prices that the average American pays for the average items? And No. 4 … what does this mean for my bottom line? If you were to ask those questions and answer them favorably, then these tariff policies would have public support, but the administration is doing a lousy job.”
Watch Luntz' comments below or by clicking this link.
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