Trump’s lack of focus on economy spooks Republicans in 2026 election

Over the span of four days earlier this month, President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social account about his proposed triumphal arch, ballroom construction, the Iran war, a UFC fight at the White House and Bruce Springsteen’s alleged plastic surgery.

He also posted (and later deleted) an AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus, on the heels of a screed aimed at Pope Leo XIV, who Trump said “should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”

What’s absent for long stretches in the president’s social media presence and from his discourse more generally of late is the economy — an issue Trump rode to the White House in 2016 and 2024.

“Trump’s original deal with the American people was ‘I’m a boorish lout and kind of embarrassing, but I know how to run the economy.’ And they believed that because they remember the economy being good in 2016,” said Mike Murphy, an anti-Trump former Republican strategist and co-host of the “Hacks on Tap” podcast with David Axelrod.

Critics and concerned Republicans say Trump isn’t making the economy enough of a priority with this year’s election just over six months away, though he has attempted to shift the focus back to cost-of-living issues in the last week.

But even when Trump does bring up the economy, his words often don’t reflect the reality many Americans are feeling. He recently said gas prices — which are 27% higher than a year earlier according to AAA — are “not very high,” and he has called affordability a “Democratic hoax.” 

It’s a tone deafness that has led to flagging polling. Sixty percent of respondents in CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey, released Thursday for the first quarter of 2026 disapproved of his handling of the economy. The shift reminds some political advisors of missteps made by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election cycle.

Saying inflation is “transitory,” as Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did in June 2021, sounds a lot like Trump officials proclaiming gas prices will drop in “a few more weeks,” as they have amid the Iran war, said Adam Bozzi, a Democratic strategist and former congressional aide.

Republicans hope to hold onto narrow majorities in the House and Senate, but some worry the party could be squandering a long-held GOP advantage on the economy and repeating mistakes Democrats made a cycle earlier.

“He lost his franchise of the economy, and the Democrats realized that is his vulnerability,” Murphy said.

Democratic campaigns flip the economy script

White House spokesperson Kush Desai batted down the idea that Trump and Republicans have lost ground on the economy.

“President Trump can walk and chew gum at the same…