GOP lawmakers fear Trump is out of sync with voters on the economy

Senate GOP lawmakers fear Trump is out of sync with voters on the economy Comments: by Alexander Bolton - 06/29/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Alexander Bolton - 06/29/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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GOP lawmakers fear that President Trump is out of sync with them and many American voters on the economy, the biggest issue of the 2024 midterm elections.

Trump’s refusal to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is the latest troubling sign for GOP senators, who have pressed Trump for weeks to pay more personal attention to voters’ concerns about rising costs.

Instead, Trump’s off-the-cuff statements professing “love” for higher inflation numbers and declaring he’s not thinking about the financial situations of American families while negotiating an end to the conflict with Iran have GOP candidates bracing for a tough election season.

“Living back in the 1970s, I remember I had a car that had about a 12- or 13-gallon gas tank and when the prices went up, I didn’t have the money to fill it up. I was living literally gas tank to gas tank. We got to acknowledge those situations,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said.

“The American people will give you a lot of latitude in fixing a problem that they themselves are experiencing if they feel like you’re empathetic with what they’re dealing with and you have a plan to address it. Those are the two things we have to work on,” he said.

Tillis said the war has distracted Trump from the economy but he said the rest of his administration can help by doing more to communicate how the White House is focused on rising costs.

“They need to make it a priority and stay focused,” he said.

GOP leaders have urged Trump to run on his economic accomplishments from last year but to little avail.

Instead, Trump is often preoccupied with cracking down on Republicans who defy him and on pushing for Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which has virtually no chance of becoming law.

Trump shocked Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other GOP lawmakers last week when he at the last minute cancelled the signing ceremony for a housing affordability bill that passed by huge margins in both chambers. The president said he wouldn’t sign it until Congress passed the SAVE America Act.

Republican senators warned that move hurts GOP candidates who are already facing political headwinds because of voters’ sour views of Trump’s handling of the economy and inflation.

“We do have midterm elections coming up here, last time I heard,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), stating an obvious fact that some GOP lawmakers think Trump may be losing sight of.

Trump dismissed the freakout from Republicans on Capitol Hill over his refusal to sign the housing bill, telling Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “no one gives a [expletive] about housing,” according to Punchbowl News.

A Republican senator who requested anonymity said that voters’ perceptions of Trump’s handling of the economy are emerging as a major problem for Republicans heading into November.

“It’s not great,” the GOP lawmaker said of internal polling showing that independents are shifting significantly away from Republicans and toward Democrats.

The Republican source said that voters’ negative views of Trump’s economic record “accelerated” after he launched military strikes against Iran, which resulted in Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. Gas prices rose by $1.50 per gallon and fertilizer prices soared.

“People feel their priorities are not important,” the senator added.

Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former Senate and House Republican leadership aide, said Trump’s “biggest priorities” are Iran negotiations and the SAVE America Act.

“His priorities are dealing with national security and voter integrity and the voters’ biggest concerns are the economy. His priorities aren’t syncing up with the voters’ concerns even though he believes he has the best interests of [Americans] at heart,” Bonjean said.

Trump didn’t help himself when he told reporters last month that he wasn’t thinking about Americans’ finances “even a little bit” while he was trying to negotiate an end to the Iran conflict.

Trump’s allies argued that the statement was widely reported by the media without proper context because what the president meant to say was that he was most focused on stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but the gaffe left some GOP senators wincing.

A Fox News poll of 1,002 registered voters nationwide conducted this month found that 59 percent of voters feel pessimistic about the economy — 4 percentage points worse than a year ago — and that 44 percent said they’re falling behind financially — 8 percentage points more than those who voiced similar concern a year ago.

A PBS/NPR/Marist poll of 1,340 U.S. adults conducted this month found that only 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, his lowest approval rating on the issue since Marist started polling on it in 2019.

Republican senators vented their concerns about voters’ views of Trump’s performance on the economy last month at a tense meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, when they panned the Justice Department’s plan to establish a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate MAGA allies who say they were unjustly prosecuted under former President Biden.

A senior Republican aide said that Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, spoke out at the meeting with Blanche “about how bad polling is, currently, for Republicans and how bad the president is losing ground among all groups.”

Scott warned GOP colleagues the Justice Department’s anti-weaponization fund was the political equivalent of throwing an anvil to a drowning man, the source said.

Vin Weber, a GOP strategist and former member of the House Republican leadership, said voters will cast their ballots based on how they view the economy but argued there’s only so much the president can do to change voters’ perception.

“What matters is what the actual state of the economy is like. I do agree that the president needs to talk about the economy in ways that show he cares but I think that’s a marginal consideration next to the real state of the economy,” he said.

Weber said Democrats will use Trump’s comments that seem to show indifference to Americans’ economic struggles but argued “it’s kind of a diversion.”

“We got to get used to the notion that the president is going to talk about what the president wants to talk about,” he said.

“The macro environment is very closely tied to the president’s approval rating and the president’s approval rating is very closely tied to his handling of the economy. There’s no question about that,” he added. “It’s getting late in the game to change the macro environment.”

Add as preferred source on Google Tags Donald Trump John Cornyn John Thune Mike Johnson Ron Bonjean Thom Tillis Todd Blanche

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