When Donald Trump took the stage at a rally on Tuesday night, he was expected to address concerns around affordability and the state of the US economy.
Over the course of a sprawling 90-minute speech in Pennsylvania, he did talk about the economy – but also immigration, his Democratic critics, Venezuelan boat strikes, windmills and golfing.
If some Republicans, and his White House aides were hoping for a focused message that the party could use to deflect repeated Democratic attacks over the economy, the president did little to deliver.
Instead, it was a typical Trump rally speech, with his “weave”, as he likes to describe his style of frequent rhetorical tangents, on full display.
He said Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who he called “Susie Trump”, had instructed him to focus on the economy.
He complained about his advisers not wanting him to talk about border security – which he talked about anyway.
“I haven’t read practically anything off the stupid teleprompter,” Trump said about an hour into his speech.
And when he did talk about economy, the president’s message was that things were bad during his predecessor’s term, they were getting better now and that the best was yet to come.
“I have no higher priority than making America affordable again,” he said. “They caused high prices, and we’re bringing them down.”
Displaying a series of charts, he contrasted the economy under his predecessor Joe Biden with current levels. He noted that gas prices, interest rates and inflation were down and that real wage growth was up – although when compared to conditions at the end of the Biden presidency, the numbers show little change.
Trump also defended his tariff policies, which some economists have cited as contributing to cost-of-living woes.
Harkening back to comments he made earlier this year, Trump said that Americans could get by with fewer cheap products imported from China – like pencils and dolls – as a price for bolstering domestic manufacturing in key industries like the steel sector.
“You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” he said. “Two or three is nice.”
Such reasoning – and Trump’s insistence, yet again, that affordability concerns were a Democratic “hoax” – may not land well with Republicans who, unlike Trump, will be on the ballot in next year’s midterm elections.
“You’re doing better than you’ve ever done,” Trump told the crowd at one point. Recent polling, however, suggests many are not feeling that.
One poll by Politico, for example, indicated that half of overall voters – and 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 – felt the cost of living was the worst it has been in their lives.
Arguing that the economy is better than Americans think didn’t help Biden improve his popularity during his presidency. And encouraging Am erican frugality was hardly a winning message for President Jimmy Carter during the economic doldrums of the 1970s.
Trump will have time to hone his economic pitch before those midterm elections arrive, but a sharper message may not matter if he doesn’t curb his penchant for off-script, headline-grabbing musings.
Trump ramps up immigration rhetoric
His comments on immigration Tuesday night, particularly on refugees from “third world” countries, were some of the most caustic. He called Somalia “about the worst country in the world” and mocked the “little turban” worn by Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant and naturalised US citizen.
“Throw her the hell out,” he said. “She does nothing but complain.”
He also confirmed a 2018 report that he called Haiti and African nations “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting with congressional leaders. At the time, the report prompted a major backlash and Trump said “this was not the language I used”.
On Tuesday night, he was explicit.
“We had a meeting and I said, ‘Why is it we only take people from shithole countries’, right?” he said. “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden?”
“But we always take people from Somalia,” he continued. “Places that are a disaster – filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
These comments, along with yet another mention of impending “land strikes” on Venezuela, may edge out Trump’s economic message on a night when the economy was meant to take centre stage.
And Trump gave Democrats new ammunition to use when making the case that when it comes to affordability, the president is out of step with the American public.
For the first time in months the president was back on the road and in front of a friendly rally crowd in a key electoral battleground. And he has a way of feeding off, and learning from, the energy of his supporters.
In the end, though, Republican success will depend less on presidential speeches than on whether conditions improve for everyday Americans. And despite the charts and rhetorical pirouettes, that outcome is still very much in doubt.
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