Transcript: Trump Shows New Signs of Midterm Panic as Brutal Polls Hit

There’s only so many ways that you can lie to people about their own wallets, about their own paychecks, about the bills that are piling up on their desks. I’m at a loss to explain what the White House can do about this, other than maybe hope that the ballroom is a lot more popular than it is now.

Sargent: I want to highlight still more findings here. Voters in each of these six states said the most important issues to them by far are jobs, the economy, inflation, the cost of living. The Times says this: By a 14 percentage point margin, voters in these battlegrounds said that Trump’s policies have hurt more than helped. And 52 percent of independents said Trump’s policies had hurt; only 22 percent said they had helped. Again, in states Trump won mostly, almost all of them.

Benen: Right. The significance of that is that the White House strategy over the last year and a half has been to blame Biden every time these questions have come up. Every time they’re confronted with another poll, another controversy, another pushback from Congress about the state of the economy, they say the same thing: No, no, let’s blame Joe Biden, let’s blame Kamala Harris, let’s blame the past.

But this poll indicates that that talking point, that pushback, simply does not work. People are looking at the effects of Trump’s agenda, of Trump’s policies, of what Trump has been able to deliver. And they’re saying, You know what? I’m not better off. I was better off before. Things are worse. The value of my dollar is worse. Every time I go to the grocery store, it’s worse. Every time I fill up the gas tank, it’s worse.