Not everyone agrees with President Donald Trump’s message about the economy he gave Tuesday night in Pennsylvania.
Case in point — the panel on Wednesday morning’s “Morning Joe” on MS NOW, who took issue with Trump’s message and how he mocked “affordability,” per Mediaite.
The panel was comprised of co-host Mika Brzezinski, guest Claire McCaskill, co-host Willie Geist and Jonathan Martin, Politico’s Politics Bureau chief.
At the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Pennsylvania, Trump boasted about a resurgent economy, stating, “America is winning again” and “Pennsylvania is prospering again.”
He also spoke about consumer spending.
“You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils…,” he said. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.”
Brzezinski replied that affordability was “a big issue.”
“Not to assume what his supporters think here, but I really wonder how that speech went over if you’re a Trump supporter watching it on TV and the comment about pencils and buying less, I don’t know. I don’t know. It seems a little confusing,” she said.
“He’s saying that the economy is roaring and doing well, but at the same time he’s preaching austerity: Buy less for your children, buy less for your family this Christmas,” Geist added.
He also said many Trump supporters were “disappointed by what they heard” from Trump, stating “prices were too high.”
“This was supposed to be to reframe the debate about affordability, an acknowledgment that Americans are paying too much for their lives, that they need help from this administration,” Geist said. “And he immediately goes on the stage with a banner that says lower prices behind him, which is not true. Inflation is where it was when Joe Biden left office and mocks the idea of affordability. He says it’s a ‘Democratic hoax’ and that no, prices are not actually too high.”
“That didn’t sit well. If you listen to those exit interviews of people at the rally, they say, ‘I like Donald Trump. I like a lot of what he stands for. But he is wrong that things are going well in this country in terms of our pocketbooks,’” Geist added.
McCaskill weighed in on Trump “lying” about prices.
“He can lie about a lot of stuff and his base will take it. It’s very hard for him to lie about how expensive everything is because people feel it. And, you know, I don’t know, this speech, he’s not well. He’s not well,” she said.
She added Trump should “tell the American public what his grandchildren received for Christmas” pointing to the “excesses” of his “gilded” White House renovations.
“How dare him tell people how many dollars they can buy their children, or how many pencils they can have. This guy is a walking hypocrite when it comes to conspicuous consumption,” she said.
Martin cautioned that what Trump said would hurt the Republican Party and could turn voters off.
“Not only did [he] not stay on the message, he mocked the message. He veered off,” Martin said.
“The word invalidating comes to mind here, and it’s sort of the overall arc of Trump’s America right now,” Brzezinski said.
“If you’re really cluing in: invalidating, hypocrisy and confusion on every level, on the economy, he calls it a ‘hoax.’ He spends an entire evening in Pennsylvania kind of joking about it and telling people to buy less,” she continued. “Meanwhile, his tariffs are part of what’s tanking it or part of what’s making people hurt. So that’s confusing. That seems hypocritical. That is very invalidating.”
