President Donald Trump attends an event to announce a deal with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the prices of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in the Oval Office at the White House on Nov. 6. 2025. (REUTERS Jonathan Ernst)
For most of the last five decades, the Republican Party has managed to rule confidence on the U.S. economy with voters. But MS NOW reports President Donald Trump may have ended all that in roughly one year.
“Republicans have spent a decade telling Americans they’re the party that knows how to run an economy,” said Akayla Gardner. “Fewer and fewer voters believe them. As the U.S. war with Iran drives up gas prices and snarls supply chains, Republicans face a growing disconnect between their promises of an economic “feast” and the reality at the pump and grocery store. Their response so far: Ask Americans to sacrifice.”
Trump and his allies are asking Americans to deal with higher prices for items and essentials by buying cheaper, buying less and accepting short-term pain “in exchange for long-term national security gains that administration officials struggle to define consistently,” she said.
Gardner points out that National Republican Senatorial Committee-endorsed Minnesota candidate Michele Tafoya advised a right-wing radio audience that if they’re really so worried about the cost of fuel, maybe they should “take one less trip to Starbucks” until Trump’s Iran war ends and gas prices drop.
“Let’s just be patriots about it,” she said.
“In February, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recommended that cash-strapped Americans buy ‘cheap cuts of meat,’ suggesting they purchase liver instead of ‘a porterhouse steak,’” reports Gardner.
These messages are downright Jimmy Carter in feel, say critics, and Gardner reports critics are attacking it from within the GOP.
It’s “more than tone-deaf,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former Trump appointee to the U.S. Department of State during his first term. “Some of the rhetoric has just been shameful.”
MAGA voters are just as disdainful, including 21-year-old North Carolina voter Hunter Luther, who was furious that premium gas in his area was toping $5 a gallon — almost $85 to fill his tank.
“Everything seems to be going up and nothing’s going down,” Luther told MS NOW. “It’s getting hard.”
Having each of his Cabinet members ape the exact same thing Trump says about affordability being a “hoax” is getting nowhere, said Gardner. “Republican elected officials have remained publicly loyal to Trump, including those facing competitive primaries or difficult midterm races,” she said, but “November’s results will offer the first real test of whether the GOP’s economic brand can survive the war … with working-class voters …”
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