Newsletter
On
Politics
Is Trump
Tuned Out to Americans’ Financial Needs? A Remark Suggests Yes.
Asked if
he was motivated by Americans’ financial woes to make a deal to end the war
with Iran, he responded, “Not even a little bit.”
Katie
Glueck
By Katie
Glueck
May 13,
2026
President
Trump has never been a fuzzy, feel-your-pain kind of politician.
That came
through in an especially striking way yesterday, when he answered a question
about whether he was motivated by the financial situation of Americans to make
a deal to end the war with Iran.
“Not even
a little bit,” he replied, as my colleague Erica Green reported. (You can watch
the video here.)
“I don’t
think about Americans’ financial situation,” Trump added. “I don’t think about
anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
That’s all.”
It was a
response that flouted fundamental rules of American politics — that voters are
motivated above all by economic concerns, that they want to support politicians
who “care about people like me” — and it was a risky one, given Trump’s dire
political standing:
His
disapproval rating is consistently hovering around 60 percent or worse
A new CNN
poll found that 77 percent of Americans — including a majority of Republicans —
thought his policies had increased the cost of living in their own community
Inflation
rose a startling 3.8 percent in April, the fastest rate since May 2023, sending
a flashing warning about how the war in the Middle East is raising prices for
Americans
Republican
pushback to the conflict is growing in Congress
And Trump
has not exactly given the impression that he is single-mindedly focused on
bringing down the cost of living. He spent one recent night unleashing a
barrage of Truth Social posts about various grievances and topics, including
conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“President
Trump was re-elected for four reasons,” Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican
pollster, told me. “To improve the economy, to bring down inflation, to control
illegal immigration and to get away from woke culture. Anything that works
against any of those four goals is not helpful.”
Republicans
have had some good news, however, on the redistricting front. Two favorable
court rulings for them have spurred a rapid escalation of Republican-led
redrawing of maps across the South.
Trump,
for his part, has arrived in Beijing for a two-day summit with China’s leader,
Xi Jinping. And his team argues that he can focus on problems both abroad and
at home.
“President
Trump’s ultimate responsibility is the safety and security of Americans, which
is why the President will never allow the world’s number one state sponsor of
terror to have a nuclear weapon,” Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, said
in a statement. She added, “The Administration is focused on implementing the
proven Trump agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and energy abundance to keep
America on a solid economic trajectory.”
Several
primaries unfolding this month will test his influence, and the popularity of
his policies, in his party. And of course, November is a long time from now.
“The
longer-term forces are obviously not promising, with increasing inflation and
declining job approval on the part of the president,” Ayres said. “There’s some
short-term forces, particularly the mid-decade redistricting, which might work
in their favor on the House side. So we’ll see which one dominates.”
But, he
noted, “there’s no question that there’s a strong relationship between the
president’s job approval and his party’s performance in the House.”
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