Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. The 2026 midterms, as we’ve talked about, will be determined by the economy. That was brought home by a recent Harvard/Harris poll where some dozen issues were arranged and the surveyed public was asked to rate their importance in their own opinion.
They ranged from the economy, foreign affairs, the border, higher education problems, the transgender, and, overwhelmingly, No. 1 was the economy. And it was laced in the term that the Left has used, called affordability, and they have that one issue has driven down President Donald Trump’s, basically, 48 to 50 approval ratings the last, oh, two months ago down into the lower 40s.
We don’t know how accurate these polls are, but the Left has made the argument that the prices are about 21%, 22% higher than when Donald Trump left, and they are on average about 5, 5.2 higher per year. And Donald Trump in 10 months did not lower.
Now, I know you’re saying, “Victor, Victor, that’s absurd. It was former President Joe Biden who did what you just said.” Exactly. So, why is that issue hurting Donald Trump so much? And what can he do to stop it?
Well, the answer is that he assumed he—I’m using Donald Trump and his name and “he” for the whole Trump conglomerate, the whole team. What they assumed was anybody, they thought, anybody who followed the 2024 campaign would understand that Donald Trump won by pointing to Joe Biden’s record: 12 million illegal aliens, many of them or most on the dole, draining the social services network, undercutting labor prices by cheap labor, bringing in drugs, a big cost. Supply chains weakened after COVID-19. Don’t want to have a lot of stimulus when there is pent-up consumer demand, warning some blue-chip economists not to do what Biden did. What did he do? Eight trillion dollars in stimulus borrowing. I could go on.
But Trump had delineated all of those pathologies in the 2024 campaign that had led to this hyperinflation, the worst in 40 years.
So, Trump comes in in January, and the inflation rate that particular month had gone down from an average of 5.2% to 3%. So, then he goes and works on the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” He works with his interior and energy secretaries to already produce record levels of natural gas and oil. The Big, Beautiful Bill, of course, had deregulation, the continuation and expansion of tax cuts, and then the symmetrical trade he was talking about, and then the record $10 trillion to $20 trillion, probably $10 trillion, in foreign investment.
So, that was all laid out, why the Democrats were talking about affordability, affordability. The attitude, this is my point, the attitude of the Trump administration, however, was, well, we have these long-term catalyst and stimuli and reforms that are gonna supercharge the economy. Any time you have more deregulation, more tax cuts, more energy development, more foreign investment, more fair trade, it’s gonna boom. Next year we’re gonna have the World Cup games, suckers, right in the United States. We’re gonna have the 250th anniversary of the birth of the country. This is gonna take off like a rocket.
That was the assumption. I think it’s accurate, but, and then the other half of their assumption was no—and Donald Trump kept saying it’s a con job. Nobody’s gonna believe affordability from the people who destroyed it. Twenty-one aggregate inflation, if you look at insurance, housing, autos, health care, food staples. Thirty percent it went up under Biden. More than 6% a year, 7% a year, 8% a year on these key staple items that are so essential, power, gas.
So, I think what I’m getting at is they were kind of asleep at the wheel. They said no one was going to believe that propaganda. They all know that Biden ruined the economy and left us with a mess, and that’s why I won the election. However, we’ve done all of these things I just delineated and they’re gonna kick in next year, and I’m going to turn my attention to solving the Middle East problem—which he’s made a lot of progress with the ceasefire with Hamas. We’re gonna solve the Iranian nuclear proliferation problem, which he’s more or less has done. I’m gonna spend a lot of time on seven or eight ceasefires, which he’s done, and now I’m turning my attention to the Ukraine war.
Yes. And when you were doing that, that lie about affordability being your fault was reverberating in every single media broadcast. Affordability, affordability, Trump’s inflation. And for you not to address that every day and say, “Wait, the inflation today is 3%. That’s what I inherited, and it’s only been 10 months, and I’ve got the whole mechanisms in place to lower it, but I haven’t increased inflation one iota. In fact, it’s down at 3% from the 5.2%.” But we didn’t get that is what I’m trying to say.
So, Donald Trump is saving the world, and quite successfully, with a wonderful foreign policy that is bringing real results both abroad and on the southern border, and that will have economic implications, as will his foreign policy. And meanwhile, the Left is saying he cares more about Ukraine. He cares more about the Israelis. He cares more about the Azerbaijanis and Armenians. But us, we care about our affordability.
And no one is saying, “You should care about affordability. You made America unaffordable every year you were in power and we’re undoing your mess.” But we haven’t had that message, and I hope we will very soon.
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