Can Trump convince voters on the US economy?

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1:14Here in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump gave a rare presidential address to the nation in prime time on Wednesday night. His pitch, that things are great and they're only going to get better. Tonight, after 11 months, our border is secure. Inflation has stopped. Wages are up. Prices are down. Our nation is strong. America is respected. And our country is back, stronger than ever before. We're poised for an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen. So that was Donald Trump's take. But are all Americans convinced of that? That polling seems to suggest otherwise. And some of the reviews of that speech, including from conservative activists and commentators, wasn't all that glowing.

2:00Is this speech going to make a difference? Why did Donald Trump give this speech to begin with? And how is it going to affect next year's midterm elections? All this and more. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

2:41Hello, it's Anthony here in Washington, D.C. Hello, it's Nomia Iqbal here, too. And it's me, Marianna, in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London. We have an interesting thing to talk about today, and that is Donald Trump's address to the nation, primetime address from the White House on Wednesday night. He was on script. He likes having the stage, and it's the biggest stage. All of the networks here in D.C. and across the country, as well as the cable news networks were carrying his speech. But it wasn't your traditional presidential address to the nation that's announcing we're going to war, some sort of major policy push.

3:21It was a little different. Let's hear some of it. One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Our country was ready to fail, totally failed. Now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. And that said by every single leader that I've spoken to over the last five months. Next year, you will also see the results of the largest tax cuts in American history that were really accomplished through our great big beautiful bill perhaps the most sweeping legislation ever passed in Congress we wrapped 12 different bills up into one beautiful bill that includes no tax on tips no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors under these cuts many families will be saving between$11 ,000 and$20 ,000 a year.

4:16And next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time. Okay, maybe not a typical presidential address in primetime, but a typical Trump speech. I've heard a lot of those lines before. Haven't you heard, Nomiya? I have. I did feel like he was shouting, though. Like, I'm just listening back to that. I feel like he's shouting at us a little bit. But when I heard it was a primetime address, I was like, oh, this is going to be big, right? We're going to war or something like that. So we've really got to pay attention because those addresses are pretty, they're rare, aren't they?

4:49You don't do them that often. But it wasn't like that. Yeah, I did find that it was classic Trump in many ways, but it did feel a little bit, oh, we're being shouted at. Well, I was just going to say that social media very much echoes that view. Kind of across the political spectrum, really, I've been looking at my undercover voters, my fictional characters who have profiles across all the main sites. And I mean, less so the very, very supportive of Donald Trump characters, but kind of more generally, people are like, oh, that was quite shouty. And it was quite fast paced. And it was quite sort of on script.

5:23Like it felt like the messages were being delivered as intended, which is not very Donald Trump, really. I mean, you both know better than most, but he tends to like going off on various tangents. And actually, it felt like quite prepared for Donald Trump. And quite a few people on social media have been commenting on that. And quite interestingly, I think one of the things that people often like, the people who like him, is that he doesn't stick to the script. And he isn't sort of a classic politician in that way. But it felt a little bit, I don't know, it felt a little bit more traditional, if that's the right way of describing it, Anthony.

5:56I love that you've used the word traditional for Donald Trump. Yeah, I think that might be right. There was none of Trump's humor, you know, his kind of charm that we normally see. And that does come out in his rally speeches, which, you know, meander all over the place. But, you know, part of Donald Trump's appeal to his base is that he kind of pulls back the curtains and laughs along with them at the establishment. And here there was none of that. It was not fun. It was not good humored. It was haranguing almost. He was talking really fast, wasn't he, Anthony? Do you think his chief of staff was there with a stopwatch?

6:33Well, actually, she was there. Susie Wiles was in the room along with Caroline Leavitt and a few other senior advisors behind the camera. And according to the reporter who was in the room, the TV pool reporter, Susie Wiles stood there. Donald Trump said, how did I do? And Wiles said, you know, we were shooting for 20 minutes and you came in at 20 minutes on the dot, said he did a good job. Everyone there seemed like they were very happy with it. They had done a terrific job. Leave it was watching it on a monitor, apparently seeing how it looked on TV. But that may be one of the reasons why he seemed a little shouty and rushed is, according to some reports, he only had 20 minutes.

7:12Like the network said, we're giving you 20 minutes. I don't think I would be shocked if anyone cut away, you know, if he would gone over. But still, I think that was in his head that this was his script. He was told he couldn't deviate from it. He actually said afterwards that Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, who we've talked about in the past, she was the one who wanted him to do this speech. And the benefit was he could say what he's supposed to say, the message the White House wants him to have. I was thinking that that speech last night, if you are, well, they are preparing for the midterms, aren't they?

7:44You could clip parts of that speech up quite nicely. What's quite interesting, though, is that actually often it's not clips from speeches necessarily. I mean, occasionally it's moments from rallies, But often it's the other types of content they make, like the quite sort of rage-baity, as we describe it, trolling stuff that does really well. Like they'll deliberately post an AI-generated video or something that is particularly controversial. And that really sort of picks up steam online. Whereas traditional political speeches often go viral for the wrong reasons. It's usually because there's a moment that people are like, oh, what happened there?

8:15Or this isn't so good. But I've really noticed it with this one, actually. The kind of alternative social media sphere who are broadly, certainly on the right, of course, like quite supportive of Donald Trump. Some of the podcasters, YouTubers, different people like that have been a little bit more sort of critical of Donald Trump. Or maybe critical is the wrong word. Maybe worried is the right word. They think that he doesn't seem like himself. So, for example, the right wing podcaster Owen Schroeder said exactly that. He didn't think the president seemed like himself. He posted this response to the speech on X.

8:48Tonight's speech from President Trump was mostly inconsequential. And it kind of makes you wonder what even spurred it, what was even the purpose of it. But nonetheless, it just happened. We all witnessed it. And I think for most fair, honest, neutral observers, we saw the same thing, which was we've never seen Trump like that before. He was not his usual confident self. He seemed to be speed reading. The charisma was gone. The aura was gone. The swagger was gone. And the message was stale. There was nothing new. There were things that he said tonight that can just easily be disproven. It's interesting because is the problem, the delivery and the tone and all of that kind of stuff, or is it actually the content that because he was talking not necessarily so explicitly about some of the issues that these podcasters would often pick up on, they're kind of less into it than they normally would be?

9:48I don't know. There were things that he said, and it's probably important for us to highlight that, that weren't true. Yeah. Especially on inflation. He went into a lot of details like that, didn't he? He said that inflation, he inherited the worst inflation in 48 years. I mean, inflation in January was 3 % under Biden's and it's still 3%. So that's not true. He wanted people to believe that the economy is doing very well and that life is good. It can get better. But he did come across a bit Biden-esque to me. I remember, do you remember in 2024, President Biden seemed to argue with voters on how they felt about the economy and how they felt about life.

10:29And it was like, well, no, you should feel good about it. Everything's affordable. And it kind of, he came across a little bit like that, like a little bit out of touch. And yeah, he seemed confused as to why people weren't happy. That's the vibe that I got. Confused and angry about it. You know, like, you know, look at all these great things. Why? Why aren't you happy about this? You know, remember how awful it was before. And, you know, that is the same trap that Biden fell into talking about how awful it was during Donald Trump and that things are better than than you think. and hear all these different stats and indicators that show that the economy is doing better, better here than elsewhere in the world.

11:09Inflation isn't as bad. It's coming down. All of these things, when people are hurting, when they are struggling, telling them they're not is just not a winning message. And I was sitting there thinking, listening to speech, and afterwards, what could he have said in a 20-minute speech to the nation that would really move the nation? Are you going to be an advisor to President Trump? Well, the reality is I couldn't think of anything. I'd be a bad advisor. My advice would be, what's the point? Unless you have something really big, some sort of a big, bold thing you can push, then what's the point of just getting up there and trying to convince the Americans that what they feel and what they believe is not really the case and things are actually great.

11:54And these are all the things that at some point in the future, next year, with the big, beautiful bill and the tax cuts and the tariffs, it's going to get better. I mean, you know, he came in, he campaigned on things will get better on day one, which is unrealistic in the extreme. But that's what he did. He said prices will come down and, you know, price, not just inflational slope, prices will come down. And with the exception that we talked about it with eggs and a few other things, gasoline prices, which have come down, by and large, you know, the inflation is still there, a little lower this week than I think some expectations, but under 3 % is still inflation.

12:33That will be a concern. It won't change the fact that prices are high now. And what he is, what he has prescribed, tariffs, sometimes they may be working against him. So it was a challenging situation for him to find himself in. And there's no easy way out of it, except for, you know, hope the economy gets better. I think that's a really interesting point, actually this kind of comparison with Joe Biden that you were mentioning, Nomia, and certainly looking at how it's unfolded on social media. I mean, one of the things that Donald Trump generally succeeds at is this feeling of authenticity that he's like, right, I am telling you the truth and what I'm telling you kind of matches up with your experience of reality and feels quite validating.

13:14Whereas obviously with this, it seems to be like quite a lot of people are reacting in quite the opposite way. Their experience of the economy, for example, doesn't seem entirely aligned with the way that he's describing it. Yeah. And I mean, it's not just us talking about people feeling bad about the economy. There is polling data that has shown that Americans are unhappy, that they're unhappy about the economic outlook, and they're blaming Donald Trump. I mean, there was a poll that was just out. 33 % of US adults said they approved of how Donald Trump is handling the US economy. That's the lowest rating so far this year.

13:48And And that used to be his strength when he's campaigning. He was generally given better marks on the economy and his handling of the economy in his first term than Biden was getting. His approval rating on the cost of living was 27 percent. That is down from 31 percent, which was already bad earlier this month. Even Republicans looking at Trump and saying that he's doing a good job on the economy went from 72 percent that went down to 72 percent from 78 percent earlier this month. So the trends lines are heading the wrong way on the economy, which is what Americans care about most. And it's not just that poll.

14:21There are a number of other polls that show Donald Trump with the lowest approval ratings he's had this year. And also, I mean, flashing red warning sign territory for next year's midterm congressional elections. Well, I'm not quite sure if Donald Trump likes the word affordability or not. It's become a kind of it's it's he's now calling affordability a hoax, right, by the Democrats, even though he talks a lot about affordability. And that has now become the buzzword. And it's something Donald Trump talked about in relation to prices on everyday items. Let's look at the facts under the Biden administration.

14:59Car prices rose 22 percent and in many states 30 percent or more. Gasoline rose 30 to 50 percent. Hotel rates rose 37 percent. Airfares rose 31 percent. Now under our leadership, they are all coming down and coming down fast. Democrat politicians also sent the cost of groceries soaring, but we are solving that too. The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33 percent compared to the Biden last year. The price of eggs is down 82 % since March and everything else is falling rapidly. And it's not done yet. But boy, are we making progress. Nobody can believe what's going on. All right. First of all, a lot of those figures are exaggerated.

15:46And also they're comparing it to maybe the peak of inflation in the middle of Biden's term. By the end of Biden's term, inflation had dropped considerably. The price of gasoline was down compared to where it was when the Ukraine war had just started. the price of turkey. It hasn't fallen that much. I mean, it has fallen by a few percentage points, but it also kind of depends on what you consider a Thanksgiving meal. And places like Walmart had shown that the price of their Thanksgiving meals went down, but that's because they were giving people smaller turkeys and fewer side dishes and more generic things.

16:19So a lot of these numbers you have to kind of drill in on and are not exactly accurate. But I think the bigger picture here is Trump, again, is trying to blame Democrats and the people before for the problems now. And that will work for a while, I think. And I think it worked for Biden for a while when he came into office. But now we're almost 11 months into Trump's presidency. And it's going to be harder and harder for him to say, you know, things things may be bad. He doesn't even really say things are bad, but things things are getting better. And to keep pointing the finger back at the Democrats when it's Republicans who are the ones in power.

16:54The thing is, presidents, we all know they bend statistics, don't they? They all try and do it to their advantage. But I think it's fair to say President Trump takes it to a whole other level. And of course, he must know what the polls are saying about him. He's quite kind of obsessed with them. But on the eggs thing, it was so interesting. He said that the price of eggs has gone down since March. And then he said, and everything else is falling rapidly. That's just not true. Like you only have to go to the supermarket to see that. But even if he was talking specifically about grocery prices, they've gone up this year.

17:26And if you look at the consumer price index data, that shows a far greater number of grocery items have actually gone up in price since he came to office. Interestingly, on social media, over the course of this year, quite a lot of people have posted videos of themselves, you know, buying certain products like eggs on TikTok or, you know, on social media to say, oh, look, hang on, this is still really expensive or this is a bit less expensive or it's different now. And that's what actually I think all politicians struggle with now is that unlike pre-social media age where, you know, you tell people stuff and they might in their own lives be thinking, I'm not so sure about that, but they couldn't see what other people were experiencing.

18:03Now it's like, hang on a second, I can see that there's a viral video that's had 10 million views and it's saying the opposite of what you, the president, are saying. And that is sort of a problem. So I think that I think that until, yeah, I think until people feel like there's a material difference and they post that. It's interesting. I mean, if you were running again, the social media strategy of Donald Trump's team, you might actually say, I tell you what, let's, you know, let's try and get some influencers to post some good stuff about the economy. You know, there's no there's there's not really legislation against saying to influencers like, I tell you what, go to the supermarket and post about these things which are cheaper or go and post about these topics.

18:40That isn't something that's happened, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did happen at some point. Yeah, I mean, no one talks about all the planes that didn't crash. Right. I mean, you know, the prices being affordable for some things are going down doesn't generate traffic, I'd imagine. And Marianne, you probably know better than I. I mean, it's the hate clicks, the things that make you angry, that make people want to keep clicking and interacting. And it's interesting because, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of this content on social media put out by Trump's team pointing the finger at Joe Biden saying, look, look, look, we're so much better than him.

19:11But actually, their media strategy as well. You know, we've had sort of Trump's team coming out and reiterating and echoing a lot of these messages about the economy. Take, for example, J.D. Vance, who was in Pennsylvania this week, where he again kept pointing the finger at Joe Biden and also said, can Americans be a bit patient? This is what he said. I believe the American people are going to reward us because the American people are smart. They know Rome wasn't built in a day. They know what Joe Biden broke is not going to get fixed in a week. We've got to stay with it. We've got to keep on working on bringing good jobs and money back into the United States of America.

19:47And that will, it already has paid major dividends for the American people. It's going to pay a lot more in the year to come. Yeah, that Vance speech was actually interesting because he did something Donald Trump didn't do, which is acknowledge that things are not great. It's not a golden age quite yet that American people are still struggling. I mean, that was right off the bat what he said. And he did it much more convincingly than Trump ever has done. And then part of it, I guess, maybe is Vance's background. I mean, he does come from, you know, a lesser means family. He doesn't have didn't have houses with gold toilets in it.

20:23You know, he wasn't a millionaire in his 30s. And so he seems he can be a little more authentic on that. But I think that is one thing to watch is kind of the the divergent messaging between Donald Trump, who is just constitutionally incapable of acknowledging that maybe everything he's doing is not working immediately. and things are still kind of bad for a lot of people. And Vance, who is able to draw on his experience and to kind of tip his hat and say, yeah, we have more work to do. Rome wasn't built in a day. Things aren't great yet, but they're getting better. But he's doing it subtly. He's not completely, obviously, breaking away from the president.

21:02He wouldn't do that. But he's kind of creating that narrative, isn't he? And he's creating that position for himself where he's like, I understand your pain. That's all you know. I think that's what Trump needed to do last night. He just needed to do a bit of, I understand your pain. Now, we were talking about this speech. Let's get back to it because there wasn't a whole lot new in the speech as far as policy goes. One thing that he did announce, which was a bit of a surprise, was this warrior dividend for U.S. service members. Here he is unveiling this in that speech. Tonight, I am also proud to announce that more than 1 ,450 ,000, think of this, 1 ,450 ,000 military service members will receive a special we call Warrior Dividend before Christmas, a Warrior Dividend.

21:54in honor of our nation's founding in 1776, we are sending every soldier$1 ,776. Think of that. And the checks are already on the way. Okay, I'm going to say that was a very Donald Trump move. People are saying, oh, it didn't seem like him. It didn't, you know, like what Marianne was saying. Handing a check, that's a very Donald Trump move. It's like, here's a check. He have some money and that will make you feel better. I think he did this, didn't he, in his first term with Obamacare. He handed out these checks, one-off check. I can't remember how much it was. You'll probably remember. But it was for people under a certain income, which it was undetermined.

22:39There were stimulus checks. But I thought that was quite interesting. But I think that here's a check to make you feel better and to sort of reward people. It was quite Donald Trump news. In that case, it was Congress that passed it. It was legislation. I'm not sure where this is coming from. I'm going to have to look into it a little bit more, whether there was something in the big, beautiful bill that gave the president the power to give bonuses to service members and how he has the authority to just use tariff revenue, which is still government revenue that needs to be spent by Congress, but just can kind of hand it out in checks to service members.

23:14I don't think anyone's going to sue to stop this. But also Donald Trump had been floating this idea of dividends payments from the tariffs to all Americans, or at least all Americans who are earning under$100 ,000 a year or some sort of a cap on it. But that was a big promise he had been hinting at and saying they were going to do. So I don't know how the average American listening to the speech who had been hoping and Googling and looking for like, when is the tariff dividend check going to come? Then they hear, oh, it's only if you're in the military. There might be a bit of disappointment or a bit of kind of frustration that he'd been dangling this out there for everyone.

23:55And now it's, again, a million, 1.45 million. Great. They deserve it. This will be great for them. But he's definitely overpromised, hasn't he, on what tariff revenues can cover. Well, I think we've been picking apart Donald Trump's speech for longer than Donald Trump actually spoke on Wednesday night. But for a speech that didn't really have a whole lot to it, it is important to look at it and see what it meant, because the message from the speech isn't what he said, but why he said it and whether it'll have any effect. And I think that tells us a lot more about what this White House is worried about and how worried this White House is about the affordability issue.

24:36I have to be honest, the headline that I took away from it when I had watched it was, OK, so the U.S. isn't going to war with Venezuela because that's what there was an assumption. Tucker Carlson said that, like, oh, yeah, this is what the announcement's going to be. And so last night when when I was out having a social life, I was like, oh, I'm going to have to go back in. I'm going to put that thing down. I'm going to get summoned. But yeah, that's one thing that I did really take away from that speech. Nomiya, it's been great to have you back on as always. Thank you, I've enjoyed it. Until next time, bye y 'all.

25:09Bye. Bye bye.