JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In 2024, candidate Trump did what most candidates do. He made big promises. He said he'd fix the economy, start a new era of winning for the Republican Party and create lasting peace in the Middle East, among other things. And he said he'd do it quickly. But in recent weeks, many of his promises and the fights he picked to fulfill them have seemed to collapse. So what does that mean for Trump and his party going forward? We have NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro here to discuss. Hi, guys.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Hello.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, great to be with you.
SUMMERS: Domenico, I want to start with you. President Trump kicked off this aggressive pressure campaign last year to get Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps. This week, there was a huge blow to that effort. Tell us what happened.
MONTANARO: Yeah, Virginia voters narrowly passed a ballot initiative that if it survives legal challenges would likely net Democrats four congressional seats. It's really a remarkable twist, I mean, given that Trump thought that his push for mid-decade redistricting in states like Texas and elsewhere would net Republicans lots of seats and help keep control of the House in Republican hands. Now the opposite looks to be true.
SHIVARAM: And now that the president's pressure campaign didn't go his way - and I'll add that it's in the middle of a really tight midterm election year - he's responding to the results on Tuesday as you might expect. He called the election rigged and without evidence blamed the results on mail-in ballots. In a post on social media, Trump suggested that the courts could get involved in stopping the referendum, and that legal fight has already begun on top of the fight that Trump started with this.
SUMMERS: OK, do you guys think Trump underestimated Democrats' willingness to push back and fight on this?
MONTANARO: I mean, it certainly looks that way. I mean, the bottom line is Trump started a fight that he couldn't finish. I don't think he thought Democrats would push back as forcefully as they have when he started this redistricting arms race in the first place, and now it appears to have really backfired.
SUMMERS: It was also a big week of fallout on tariffs. The government is setting up a system to give back the money from Trump's tariff policies that the Supreme Court shut down. Where's that money going?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, I mean, we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars getting refunded to American companies after the Supreme Court overruled some of Trump's tariffs. And Trump has argued for a long time now that these tariffs would provide more money to the U.S. and benefit American consumers. He said the money would help boost manufacturing. At one point, he said it would help increase pay for military troops and farmers. None of that happened, Juana. Instead, many companies had to increase costs for American consumers in order to accommodate the new tariff policies. So now, companies are getting billions of dollars back, which might not get passed down to consumers in any way, and Trump's big tariff plans ended up working against him because high costs are right now one of the things that voters are really concerned about ahead of the midterms.
SUMMERS: Domenico, candidate Trump really went all-in on promising to fix the economy, but polls show that voters are pretty unhappy with how he's handling it. Is this just about tariffs or is there something bigger?
MONTANARO: Well, tariffs are one big piece of this. I mean, it was something that Trump could really affect and really hurt his numbers on the economy. And the Iran war has even made it worse than that. You know, it's driven up gas prices, the war, and it's all taking a political toll. A Fox News poll out this week found that voters said that they trust Democrats more on the economy. That's the first time in a decade that that's been true in their poll. Digging down further, an AP-NORC poll shows that, you know, things are even more stark for this president. And it found only 23% approve of the job that Trump is doing on the cost of living - 23%. I mean, that's people's top issue, and we haven't seen those kinds of approval numbers for a president on any issue since the Bush era and the Iraq War.
SUMMERS: Yeah. I mean, those numbers are stunningly low in response to things that Trump insisted would be popular. How concerned are Republicans?
SHIVARAM: I mean, they're pretty concerned. I talked to one Republican strategist, Brendan Steinhauser. He says Republicans are going to have to somehow find a way to explain the high prices that have come with the Iran war, and that includes the president who Steinhauser says, at this point, has kind of bitten off more than he can chew.
BRENDAN STEINHAUSER: I do think he's probably picked too many fights, and he's probably stretched himself very thin. But it's still relatively early in his second term, and I think he can right the ship. But obviously, he has a lot of headwinds against him.
SUMMERS: I mean, he's right. It is relatively early in Trump's term. However, it's not early in an election year. It's almost May - elections in November. Is there actually enough time to right the ship?
MONTANARO: In theory, sure, but the reality is, I think it would take a different president in a different year with a very different focus in messaging, and even then, it would be really tough because this cake is getting more and more baked as the days go along. And there really isn't all that much time for the national environment to change. Trump's disapproval ratings are sky high. About half the country strongly disapproves of the job he's doing, and that hasn't changed at all. In fact, it has gone up. And for context on the economic environment, for all of Trump's claims that when the war is over, those gas prices are going to come down quickly, it's just not true. The election is in November, and a graphic this week in The Wall Street Journal really jumped out at me and caught my eye because it showed that forecasts are showing that gas prices won't come down to pre-war levels until at least through 2028.
SHIVARAM: Yeah. And messaging discipline isn't exactly the president's forte, right? And at this point, the message, I mean, he hasn't really figured out what's going to stick that explains, you know, why the war in Iran is resulting in these high costs that maybe won't come down for another couple of years, as Domenico was saying. I was traveling with Trump in Las Vegas last week, and this was what he had to say.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Today, the economy is booming. Our economy is booming. You know, you don't read about it. You don't see it so much because of what's going on in Iran, which is really, you know, it's been two months. I mean, two months - you've been in other wars for 18 years.
SUMMERS: Two months, that is quite a message for a president who promised he'd fix the economy right away.
SHIVARAM: Yeah. I mean, his message is basically, you know, it could have been worse. This war could be going on longer. Gas prices could be higher. He wants to try and talk about, you know, other issues and his other economic messaging things, like no tax on tips in Las Vegas or his plans to lower the cost of drugs. Meanwhile, people are in polling clearly showing that they're really, really worried about the economy, and he's standing in front of voters saying that the economy is booming. So his message right now is to sort of dance around the main topic without hitting it head-on, but it's not very convincing for voters who are refilling their gas tanks every week in a city where it almost costs $5 a gallon.
MONTANARO: I mean, and - it could be worse - is a heck of a bumper sticker.
SUMMERS: NPR's Domenico Montanaro and Deepa Shivaram, thanks to both of you.
MONTANARO: You got it.
SHIVARAM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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