Why are Americans abandoning Trump on the economy?

0:02Zohran Mamdani:This is a Global Player original podcast. But I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home. And I wonder what grade you would give your economy. A plus.

0:11Mark Joseph Stern:A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. That is Donald Trump telling Politico how well the economy is doing. He's very good at inventing things that have very little relation to the truth. But the buzzword in America right now is affordability. Does he get that? But if you look at the polls, the American people are giving Donald Trump a D minus, minus, minus, minus, minus for the state of the economy. Only 31 % approving of the way the US economy is being run by this administration. What does that mean for next November's midterms? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel.

0:58Mark Joseph Stern:It's John. It's Emily. And variously, Donald Trump has tried to describe this issue of affordability as a democratic hoax that people are just falling for as if it's a sort of, I don't know, some conspiracy theory got up and has no relationship to reality. but if you're not feeling that you can afford things there is all sorts of data which backs that up of people saying i haven't been able to afford to go and see a doctor because i can't afford the payment i haven't been able to afford to get a prescription because i haven't got enough money i can't afford to go on holiday i can't afford to do this and so increasingly americans are talking about an affordability crisis donald trump is being told by his aides you have to acknowledge this and Donald Trump is really struggling because he keeps wanting to call it a hoax whilst being sent out by the White House on his affordability tour to talk about how well the US economy is doing.

1:56Mark Joseph Stern:Yeah I mean let's put some facts into the mix which is that some prices have fallen on his watch so gas, gasoline you fill up the car with fallen the overall cost of living though has continued to climb so grocery costs on average obviously It depends what you buy up just short of 3 % for the year until September. Electricity costs have jumped more than 5%. That's according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the bureau that Trump fired the head of and sort of tried to silence. And the reason why all this matters, I mean, obviously, for Americans, it matters in every conceivable way possible. But the reason why this matters electorally is because the charge that was made against Biden so well and so memorably was that he'd lost control of inflation.

2:46Mark Joseph Stern:He'd lost control of the economy. And whilst Biden was talking about the macro state of things, look at all these new jobs, look at the infrastructure projects, look at the Green New Deal, look at what we're actually piling into the economy. The average American didn't feel it. And fundamentally, that was what finished him off. I think, you know, by most accounts, I mean, yes, you can talk about age. Yes, you can talk about growing worry of his senility or his inability to last four more years. But most people on the doorstep would say Biden is not allowing us to live and prosper in America right now.

3:25Mark Joseph Stern:And Trump was the alternative. So if the same charge is now being made at Trump, even though some things are getting cheaper, like gas, then what does that actually do for his approval ratings for his favourability? Yeah. And so therefore, what do you do about the midterm elections next November, where at stake will be control of the House of Representatives and the Senate? At the moment, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, a very supine Republican Party, control both. If the Republicans lost control of those two houses, then Donald Trump's tenure as president, he will serve out the last two years, but he will be an absolute lame duck president.

4:06Mark Joseph Stern:All the focus will be on what went wrong and who do we need for 2028 to win the election. So what do you do about that? Do you make the midterm elections next November a referendum with Donald Trump at the centre of it? Because Republicans poll better when Donald Trump is involved and closely involved. Or do you leave Donald Trump completely out of it? Because that way we can say, well, look what we've done in our own neighbourhoods. Forget what Donald Trump's done in Washington. We're fighting your corner. and into that mix has stepped donald trump's chief of staff susie wiles who very much wants this to be all about donald he's going to have a fun next year but we're going to put him on the campaign trail too typically just a little bit of campaign speak if i may yeah um typically you in the midterms it's not about who's sitting at the white house it's you localize the election right and you and you keep the federal officials out of it.

5:03Mark Joseph Stern:We're actually going to turn that on its head. Good. And put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters. Yes, they are. And we saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active. Susie Wiles is a fascinating character. She doesn't do many media appearances, but the stuff that she whispers in Trump's ear has the ability to sort of make or break elections. It was Susie Wiles who in 2024 said, you've got to stop slamming the postal vote. You've got to stop telling your supporters to stay away from postal ballots because actually you're going to put them off and we're going to lose the election.

5:41Mark Joseph Stern:And that sort of slowly filtered down to Trump. And he came to understand how crucial it was that, you know, if you tell people that their vote's going to be thrown away or wasted or hijacked, then they won't vote at all. And that's kind of how you lose elections. So the fact that Susie Wiles has come out saying he needs to be on the ballot, I think is really interesting. because she's right. I mean, the reason why the party in opposition tends to do well in the midterms is frankly because the most energised voters are the ones that come out to vote in the midterm elections. And the kind of traditional sort of like once every four years voters doesn't, you know, it's what it says on the tin.

6:21Mark Joseph Stern:If you vote in presidentials, you don't really notice the years in between. And she's saying Trump may not be standing. He's not technically standing in 2026. But if we put his name everywhere, if we tell people this is make or break, then they will come out to vote for him because there is, you know, for better or for worse, the cult of Trump. And that is the high risk strategy. But if you've got this latest poll, which has just landed today, and there have been a slew of polls showing something similar. But this latest AP NORC poll, which shows that only 31 percent of Americans think that the economy is doing well under Donald Trump.

6:56Mark Joseph Stern:Sixty nine percent think it's doing badly. Then putting him on the ballot is a huge risk because Trump's power will evaporate. As to Susie Wiles, I've been hearing various bits and pieces that actually she's not a central now in the White House operation. It's all getting very fraught. You're hearing at the Department of Homeland Security. There is big falling out between Kristi Noem and the border czar Tom Holman. And on and on it goes. And, you know, questions over Hegseth and his efficiency and the scandals involving him at the War Department. and so it goes on. It does feel like after 10 months in which we have been acknowledging that Donald Trump has been ubiquitous and able to do whatever he likes and defy gravity.

7:41Mark Joseph Stern:There are an increasing number of Americans who think that they are worse off because of tariffs, his signature policy, and that they are suffering as a result of that, who feel that the affordability is hitting them hard. And these are the pocketbook issues in America that decide elections. Look, I think the thing here is we are a year out from the midterms, right? They're next November. And I don't know what position Susie Wiles still holds, whether she is still the kind of the horse whisperer. But it seems to me key that they want him to go out and to talk about prices and to talk about affordability and to do something about affordability.

8:22Mark Joseph Stern:And that is how he earns his place on the ballot. The trouble is they tried this last week and he went out to Mount Pekono in Pennsylvania. And instead of addressing the question of prices and goods and even talking about gas, he, well, we'll let you hear for yourselves. This is what he does. The one thing you need, you need steel. You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils.

8:49Mark Joseph Stern:That's under the China policy. You know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two. You know, they don't need that many. But you always need you always need steel. You don't need thirty seven dollars for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don't need thirty seven dollars. There is so much that is so wrong or so interesting about that clip, because, you know, do you really want to be saying as we run up to Christmas that, you know, your child only needs two or three dolls? I mean, who are you to say that, Mr. President? And it sounds just a bit like you are the Grinch. And I think it also, if you can join it with Donald Trump's adoration of all the tech billionaires who are kind of falling over their private jets and their yachts and everything else.

9:37Donald Trump is seen to be very much the friend of all the tech bros who have got billions and billions.

9:46Mark Joseph Stern:And we know that Trump has got billions and billions. And I think there is a real danger for him. And it's interesting that Steve Bannon has started to talk about this, saying you're looking out of touch. All the people you mix with and you seem to like are the billionaires. And yet you and you're making jokes about someone. Two dolls is enough. And I think there's a bit of out of touchness that Donald Trump needs to be cautious of when he's doing this. Yeah. Well, I think part of that is that the guardrails, the people around Trump, the first administration would have said, don't do that. you sound like a dick.

10:19Mark Joseph Stern:Now, those people have gone and the people that are sort of spurring him on are actually just going, yeah, just carry on. You know, you've seen the cabinet scenes where they just go, you're doing amazingly, you're wonderful, you're doing... So nobody is actually telling him that, maybe with the exception of Bannon, who frankly has been saying that sort of thing for the last decade and a half, because that's what he says. I mean, he also flips and calls affordability... Either he's trying to tell you that the prices are coming down, or he's telling you that the whole question doesn't really exist.

10:51Mark Joseph Stern:And this is another clip from yesterday where he suggests the Democrats have just made it up.

10:56Zohran Mamdani:You have called the affordability crisis as a democratic hoax, but you also want to make a bear cut affordable again.

11:01Mark Joseph Stern:No, the word that they use is a hoax because they're the ones that cause the problem. I'm only, no, I'm talking about when you, you know, you're trying to say it a different way. It's pretty simple though, if you listen. It's a hoax. I mean, you just can't have it both ways. You can't say Biden should go because Americans can't afford everyday goods and then say now I'm in power and I have been for a year. It's all still their fault and they've just made it up. I mean, you know, pick a horse. Exactly. And the problem is that Donald Trump has been in power now for nearly a year. This is Donald Trump's economy.

11:42Mark Joseph Stern:It's not Joe Biden's economy. Donald Trump has been the president. He's taking credit for the fact that the markets are soaring, the stock markets are soaring. You can't say that is me. But the fact that people are struggling to pay their bills is nothing to do with me. It's all Joe Biden. I'm sorry. This is the disjunction where Donald Trump is in a really difficult position because he knows all the polling evidence says you've got to go out there. You've got to tell the American people that you are bringing dealing with the affordability crisis at the same time as not wanting to acknowledge that there is an affordability crisis.

12:19Mark Joseph Stern:crisis and he doesn't really believe there is one. And in Donald Trump's world, there isn't an affordability crisis. But the polling evidence from all these Americans who are skipping their medical checkups, who aren't going on holiday, who can't afford to get on a plane and all the rest of it are telling him a completely different story. In a moment, we're going to be talking about the Supreme Court. Do we now have to assume they're picking a side in what looks like America's future of democracy?

12:59Zohran Mamdani:The News Agents USA.

13:02Mark Joseph Stern:As you know, the Supreme Court in the United States of America has way, way more power than our Supreme Court in the UK. It weighs in on all the most important hot button issues. And what tends to happen is you have the kind of oral hearings that take place. And then in June, you get a whole rush of judgments of the kind of verdicts that the Supreme Court has made. And undoubtedly, the most significant thing that happened in Donald Trump's first term as president was the fact that he was able to appoint three conservative small c justices to the Supreme Court, which means that the court, broadly speaking, has a six three conservative majority.

13:40Mark Joseph Stern:And this week you got a clue as to what is coming down the tracks and the impact that this could have on the midterm elections. And we're joined now by Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer at Slate, who covers the courts and the law and is co-host of the Amicus podcast, a show about the law and the Supreme Court. Mark, thank you so much for joining it. Just take us through what these cases are that are being heard and the impact they might have.

14:12Zohran Mamdani:So this week we heard two major arguments at the Supreme Court, both of which stand to benefit Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The first was a case called Trump v. Slaughter, which is about the president's ability to fire the leaders of independent agencies. These are federal departments that exercise pretty significant power. This case involved the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust law. And for a very long time, Congress has prohibited the president from firing the heads of these agencies without cause. During arguments on Monday, the Supreme Court's conservative justices, including Trump's appointees, made it very clear that they are going to strike down that restriction on removal and allow the president to fire almost anybody he wants, including the head of the FTC and the heads of other agencies, which would be a massive expansion of presidential power because it would give him effectively total control over these bodies that regulate a huge part of the American economy, the labor force, individual rights and liberties, unions, all kinds of other stuff.

15:21Zohran Mamdani:The second case is called NRSC versus the Federal Elections Commission. This is yet another campaign finance case. You may know our Supreme Court is very hostile to regulation of money in politics. The Supreme Court has consistently said that money is speech. And so there are really strict limits under the First Amendment of the government's ability to regulate spending and donations in federal elections. And this is yet another case that will chip away at the framework that we have to regulate the amount that can be spent in elections. It specifically is about the amount that political parties like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party can spend in coordination with a candidate.

16:09Zohran Mamdani:And it's important because we have this limit on how much an individual can give to a candidate. It's about$3 ,500 to prevent bribery so that I can't hand over a million dollar check to a candidate and say, hey, in exchange for this, will you enact some major policy that will deregulate my industry? But the political parties can accept a lot more money through all of these loopholes that really the Supreme Court has helped to create. It amounts to something like a million dollars. And so if the Supreme Court strikes down this restriction on political parties spending in coordination with candidates, then it'll mean that I can hand a million dollar check essentially over to the Republican Party and say, hey, I really want Congressman Smith to pass this major bill deregulating my industry.

17:00Zohran Mamdani:Could you make sure that he knows that's my goal and that this money gets to him? And in effect, the$3 ,500 limit will be a million dollar limit or more. And there will be yet another major loophole in our campaign finance regime that billionaires and corporations can exploit to essentially bribe members of Congress and the federal government to do their bidding under the very thin pretext of giving them a campaign contribution.

17:27Mark Joseph Stern:Mark, that's brilliantly explained. And I guess if we go back to that now sort of infamous sort of iconographic portrait of the inauguration with the tech bros behind Trump, does it mean now that whoever has the tech bros on side, the billionaires of America, the richest men in America on side, wins the election? Is it that simple?

17:50Zohran Mamdani:It's very close to that. Both of these cases really bear on that iconic image of Trump with the billionaires, because first of all, those billionaires pretty much all had cases before the Federal Trade Commission, right? They're all involved in mergers and acquisitions and hostile takeovers and expansions. And those are the kind of thing that the FTC regulates. And one of the reasons that Trump wants control over the FTC, the ability to fire its Democratic members to pressure it into doing his bidding is because he wants to strike these kind of bargains with these billionaires, you know, to give them leeway, latitude, regulatory flexibility in exchange for what we've seen are continuing donations and gifts to the Trump administration.

18:38Mark Joseph Stern:The thing that we were just talking about in the first half of this episode was Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, it sounds as if this would give him the power, the freedom to do that over every official bureau, every, if you like, holder of truth, holder of data, if he so chose. So we actually wouldn't know, Americans, more importantly, wouldn't know what the truth of those statistics were saying, right?

19:11Zohran Mamdani:Oh, that's absolutely correct. In addition to enforcing federal law, a lot of these agencies gather and report all kinds of data that is important in elections that helps us make decisions about what direction the economy is going, you know, whether the labor force is in a healthy state or not. And if Trump can take control over the agencies that do that and force them into doing his bidding, we don't know if those figures are accurate or not. We really cannot trust them. That's not a conspiracy theory. It's just the reality of the courts taking away the independence of these parts of the government, which were designed to work in the best interest of the American people, but which the Supreme Court in the name of presidential power is going to ensure work in the best interest of Trump.

19:57Zohran Mamdani:And there's just a real sort of crossover between that and the campaign finance thing, because one of the agencies that's in question here, the Federal Elections Commission, Trump is about to get control over that agency, which it's supposed to be bipartisan. It's supposed to be independent. It's supposed to monitor money in politics, ensure accurate disclosures, enforce limits on spending. But when Trump takes control over it, he can basically paralyze it and ensure that it's not enforcing the rules or only enforce the rules against Democrats, right? And block a lot of the disclosure requirements that at least allow us to see which corporations, which billionaires are trying to buy our elections.

20:42Zohran Mamdani:So you have to look at all of these pieces together, right? You can't just single out one component. When you look at it all, you can see that the Supreme Court is doing a whole lot that will clearly benefit Republicans in the midterms.

20:54Mark Joseph Stern:And of course, it just makes it a complete contradiction in terms to talk about the independent head of this body. You cannot be an independent head of a body if you serve at the president's whim, which is looking like the direction of travel of the Supreme Court, given the way the arguments were being presented.

21:14Zohran Mamdani:Yeah, of course. And that is a direct violation of Congress's mandates when it enacted these laws and created these agencies. Congress, for instance, wanted the National Labor Relations Board to adjudicate labor disputes fairly and evenly. and now Trump has essentially already been given the power to fire members of that board and to stack it with his own cronies. And that will allow the board to favor unions that support Trump and disfavor the unions that oppose him. You know, the Teamsters famously were very supportive of Donald Trump during the 2024 election. He can ensure that the National Labor Relations Board is good to the Teamsters, but, you know, the teachers unions, some of the public sector unions that were more hostile toward him, he can ensure that they get a raw deal.

22:04Zohran Mamdani:That is just -

22:04Mark Joseph Stern:Just explain the Teamsters, Mark. Who are the Teamsters?

22:07Zohran Mamdani:The Teamsters are a transportation union. Think like truckers. They're more sort of working class people. And they actually, for a long time, were aligned with Democrats. Democrats did them a lot of favors. Democrats bailed out their pension in 2021, but they have turned against the Democratic Party and they have a strong cultural affiliation for Donald Trump. And although they did not formally endorse Trump in 2024, many of their leaders and members strongly supported him. So we are actually already seeing through the NLRB and the Department of Labor, some kind of favoritism toward the Teamsters over other unions.