In the run-up to President Donald Trump’s pre-Christmas primetime address to the nation, it was widely rumored he was going to use the speech to announce some kind of military action in Venezuela. Perhaps an Operation Mid-Advent Hammer of sorts.
That didn’t happen, thankfully. Instead, Trump largely sought to defend his second-term economic record and attack the Democrats for their massive contributions to the “affordability” crisis they now promise to solve.
You can question whether Trump’s message was effective, and many people did. Clearly, this was a successful Trump pitch last year when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the incumbents, but a tougher sell now that he is back in office. But Trump needs to make a version of this argument ahead of the midterm elections. Whether it works or not will depend largely on whether public perceptions of the economy improve, if not by next summer then by Election Day.
What would not have helped Trump make his case is if his primetime speech had actually been about war in Venezuela or somewhere else. This would have been true regardless of whether Trump launched a surgical military strike, as is his preference, rather than plunging the country into an extended Vietnam- or Iraq-like quagmire.
Virtually anything Trump talks about other than the economy and his efforts to lower prices will be a niche concern at best. This includes even some good things Trump is trying to do, like seeking an end to the war in Ukraine.
Most of the swing voters who cast their ballots for Trump did so because they trusted him more on the economy than the alternatives. They had fond memories of the pre-pandemic economy of Trump’s first term, which featured both low unemployment and low inflation, and decided to give him a pass on the 2020 downturn caused by the lockdowns, which he backed more reluctantly than his opponents.
But they haven’t seen much progress on the economy since Trump returned to office, even as he has been ubiquitous. This is where focusing on ballrooms and pageantry can be a bit off-message. And yes, even Trump’s international diplomacy can be made to seem like George H.W. Bush’s indifference to economic issues (and ignorance of grocery store checkout scanners).
Since Trump has taken a more hawkish turn in his second term, it has been said that rank-and-file MAGA voters have stuck by him even as self-styled America First influencers have sometimes dissented. While that’s true, Trump being a war president—and particularly a war-without-Congress president—won’t help Republicans in 2026 or 2028.
Here too the elder Bush’s experience is instructive: Neither success in the Persian Gulf War nor the largely bloodless ouster of the Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega did much for the GOP once the 1990–91 recession hit. Foreign affairs were trumped by the economy. The subsequent history of regime change wars is far worse than anything that happened on that front when Poppy was in the White House.
War may also be a double whammy with the lower-propensity voters who backed Trump in 2024 but are always difficult to turn out for other Republicans when he isn’t on the ballot, even in the best of circumstances. It is the least conventionally Republican Trump voters who might stay home if they are struggling to pay their bills at the same time the country is involved in a foreign war. And if these voters feel burned by Trump, good luck getting them to the polls to support Susan Collins.
Trump needs to appear active and engaged on the economy. It is likely the only thing that can turn Republican electoral fortunes around by next November, though the objective economic conditions will be more important than any speeches he can possibly give. But an America First president not seeming preoccupied with foreign countries is an important first step. It seems that Trump understands, or is at least finally starting to get, this.
There is no shortage of things that Trump has done in his second term that I think are good that will still not move the needle for down-ballot Republicans in the next two elections, or will mainly please surefire GOP voters. And yes, he does have to do other things as president than try to convince people he cares deeply about the price of eggs.
At the same time, Trump shouldn’t misread his mandate. He was elected to curb inflation, not topple tinpot dictators. The more time he spends trying to do the latter, the less people will think he is interested in the former.
The post Can Trump Convince America of His Domestic Agenda? appeared first on The American Conservative.
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