'Psychologically infuriating': Insiders warn even Trump’s 'brave face' can’t shield him from voters
U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as a member of the media raises their hand, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 1, 2025. REUTERS Jessica Koscielniak
Bulwark White House correspondent Andrew Egger said he doubts President Donald Trump will be able to convince Americans the economy’s great, despite his messaging talent.
“These are actually quite bad [economic] numbers,” said Eggers on a Thursday Bulwark podcast. “… These were kind of a slobber-knocker. It’s not just a 3.3 percent increase year over year in the [Producer] Price Index. It’s almost a percentage up just from over a month ago. And in a single month that’s a shocking price increase.”
“It’s a man-made crisis,” said Bulwark editor Jonathan Last. “… This is stagflation — something we didn’t have under Biden. … You have unemployment creeping up, job growth flattening out, demand softening and prices going up.”
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Still, Last wondered if Americans like “Cletus and Lurleen” would convince themselves that Trump’s economy was still better than Biden’s. Last said polling data showed Americans “were so stupid” they believed the Biden economy was “as bad” as the Great Recession, “when we had a global financial crisis … with two percent of all houses in foreclosure.”
“That was insane,” said Last. “So, if people could be insane in that direction why couldn’t they be insane in the other direction and just decide Daddy Trump says everything is great?”
Eggers said inflation is “politically toxic to anybody in political power,” even Trump, who fires members of his own administration for reporting economic facts.
“There was global inflation shock and all the democracies that had elections in 2023 and 2024 ‘kicked out the bums’ because they were mad about inflation,” Eggers said. “Inflation is so psychologically infuriating for an electorate … There are a lot of reasons to believe that even if Trump tries to put a brave face on it will be harder to do when prices are hitting them hard at the supermarket and the gas pump.”
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Public polls are already indicating public blowback from higher prices.
See a portion of the Bulwark video at this link.
