Fox host declares Trump can’t fix his 'big problem' — and the GOP will pay

US President Donald Trump attends National Design Studio launch event for America.gov, a new AI-powered government website, at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., US, September 29, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

On Tuesday, a Fox Business host asserted that President Donald Trump has created a “big problem” that he’s unable to fix. This is according to longtime Fox financial analyst Stuart Varney, who asserted that Trump’s mistake is not only hurting Americans, but dragging down the GOP’s midterm chances.

“Senate Majority Leader John Thune says voters care more about affordability and prices than the Iran war,” noted Varney before playing a clip of the Republican senator. “Right now the races are more about affordability issues,” said Thune. “It's the price of diesel in places like Iowa and Kansas and Nebraska and the Midwest, Minnesota. I think that's the issue, and what's happening is Iran has trumped everything else that's going on.” As Thune suggests, recent polling has shown that voters in farm states are fed up with rising fuel prices. According to Newsweek, Trump’s approval rating is underwater in nine out of 10 of the top agricultural states, including Texas, where his disapproval rating is near 60 percent.

“The war has trumped everything else,” Varney emphasized, saying, “The war actually seems to be the big problem for President Trump at this moment.” What’s more, asserted Varney, “There's not much you can do about that in the very short term with the midterms five weeks away.”

To make matters worse, noted his guest – Trump's former Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender – the administration is grappling with other economic issues, like skyrocketing bond yields, which are driven by investor concerns over the country’s ability to pay its fast-rising debt. As CNN explained in early September, the bond situation is being driven by a number of contributing factors, at the core of which is the war with Iran, which is “driving up US defense spending and the cost of oil, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. That energy spike is reinforcing inflation worries in a bond market already nervous about America’s $40 trillion mountain of debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which is a measure of how much the US government pays to borrow more money, climbed on Wednesday to the highest level in nearly three years. The bond market stress will make it more expensive for consumers to get a mortgage, for businesses to borrow and for Washington to pay the bills.”

While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attempted to stabilize the market via a massive bond buyback program and claimed the effort was a success, “It did not bring rates down,” admitted Faulkender. “Mortgage rates, for example, have gone above seven percent,” he said, before trying to argue that the buyback was a success in less tangible ways.

“That's not the way voters see it though, is it?” replied a noticeably dubious Varney, asserting that Americans want to see genuine improvement. Faulkender expressed that such a change would only take place if the war was ended and the budget deficit reigned in, but Varney was skeptical, laughing, “Yeah, budget deficit getting under control? Okay, I'll have patience waiting for that.”

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