U.S. President Donald Trump gestures before leaving the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., September 9, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
On Thursday, a conservative columnist warned his fellow Republicans that voters “won’t buy” the Trump administration’s begging for a “second chance” in the face of so much “bad news” and “terrible numbers.” This is according to Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent for the conservative newspaper the Washington Examiner, who noted that while President Donald Trump has received some good news he could use in his midterm campaign, the president continues to focus on other matters while prices skyrocket, and it’s “killing” the GOP.
York begins by noting that new data indicates the U.S. poverty rate fell to a record low in 2025, and while some experts warn the new report doesn’t account for changes to federal policy that will hammer American pocketbooks this year, in theory, this is positive economic news that Trump could celebrate. “What about a big White House event featuring President Donald Trump touting a welcome decline in poverty and an increase in income?” wonders York. “There hasn’t been one. ‘I dunno, but if I were president and the poverty rate dropped to the lowest rate on record, I might make a big deal out of it — a lot bigger deal than the Trump White House is making,’ commentator Mickey Kaus, who has been covering poverty and social policy for decades, remarked on Wednesday.”
But as York admits, there is plenty of bad news to overshadow the good. “The year-over-year rate of inflation today is actually higher than it was when Trump took office in January 2005,” writes York. “That is largely due to energy prices. To use new figures from AAA: Last year, the average price for a gallon of diesel was $3.71. Now, it’s $6.40. Last year, a gallon of regular gas was $3.20. Now, it’s $4.44. Those are terrible numbers, especially less than two months away from midterm elections.” Here he cites Fox News’s Brit Hume, who said on Wednesday, “This business with prices is just killing this administration and the president’s party.”
To make matters worse for the GOP, while Trump is going around claiming “there are no problems with the economy” and “that Americans who are deeply upset about prices are being unreasonable,” Vice President JD Vance is literally begging voters to give the administration another shot. “Give us another chance,” pleaded Vance earlier this week. “Or give us another couple of years, to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”
In York’s estimation, “It’s never a great idea for a second-term administration, even with the unusual circumstances of the Trump second term, to ask for ‘another chance’ at election time. Voters are not very charitable about that sort of thing.”