The president returned to campaign mode as he touts economic progress.
President Donald Trump said Americans are lucky he’s in office as he sought Monday to refocus his administration on concerns about the rising cost of living that have gripped much of the country.
Trump, at an annual gathering of McDonald’s restaurant franchise owners and executives, touted his administration’s progress in tackling pandemic-era inflation that spiked under President Joe Biden — and blamed his predecessor for lingering high prices that helped drive electoral Democratic gains this month.
“Nobody has done what we’ve done in terms of pricing,” he said at the McDonald’s Impact Summit in Washington. “We took over a mess.”
The speech reflected an effort by the president to showcase his administration’s moves to bolster the economy with tax cuts and investment — and perhaps divert attention from the pursuit of the files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The president promised that progress is on the way even as his trade war as increased the costs of some goods.
“Now we have normal inflation,” he said. “We’re going to get it a little bit lower, frankly,” he added. “We have it almost at the sweet spot. And prices are coming down on different things.”
He touted the investments he has brought in, pointing to his tariff agenda as a major source of money coming into the United States and predicting that there would have been a “catastrophe” if it weren’t for his presidency.
“You probably would have had a bankrupt country. You are so damn lucky that I won that election, I’m telling you,” Trump said.
Inflation rates have sharply declined from a high of 9.1 percent under former President Joe Biden — the highest since the early 1980s — to 3 percent last month. But Americans cited in a NBC News exit polls from the elections earlier this month that they aren’t feeling it and consider the economy and cost of living among the top issues concerning them.
The president repeated now familiar criticisms of Biden, arguing he made prices so high that Americans aren’t pleased by the level that prices have reduced.
“Unfortunately, they were so high in the last administration that people aren’t that happy, because it was so high, so even though it’s coming down,” Trump said.
He also repeated his claim that a Thanksgiving meal basket from Walmart is down 25 percent compared to last year, though an Associated Press fact check and other news organizations have determined that there are fewer and different items on offer. He also took credit for lower energy costs amid a drop in crude oil prices, though industry analysts are mixed on how much credit Trump deserves for it.
Trump argued that another signal of a strong economy are stock market gains, which he called “a hell of an indicator.”
James Blair, the political director for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the RNC, told POLITICO earlier this month that Trump planned to refocus his political messaging on affordability. He noted that Zohran Mamdani won in the New York City mayoral race because he focused on affordability as a key issue, previewing that Trump would be “very, very focused on prices and cost of living” in the wake of those elections.