Transcript: Trump Erupts in Fury as Inflation Jump Visibly Rattles Him

As Trump seethes over soaring prices, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg discusses the good signs and the bad for his party right now, and suggests ways to maximize Democratic odds in the midterms.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 7 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump just got hit by some really terrible inflation numbers, and boy is he in a rage about it. He erupted at a reporter for asking a reasonable question about prices, seethed at another reporter over his ballroom, and made an admission about ordinary Americans’ economic pain that was incredibly self-damaging. Yet we’re in a split-screen moment. Trump’s inability to resolve the Iran fiasco means his travails with inflation will likely keep getting worse. But we’re also seeing GOP chances in the midterms rebound significantly due to redistricting. So we’re working through all of this with Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who’s been arguing for months that Trump’s political problems on the economy predate the Iran war and won’t be fixed if the war ends. Simon, always good to have you on.

Simon Rosenberg: Greg, it’s always great to be with you.

Sargent: So we just learned that consumer prices spiked big time last month, much of it driven by energy prices rising due to Trump’s war. The consumer price index is up 3.8 percent in April relative to last year. That’s up from 2.4 percent before the war. But even if you take out volatile food and energy costs, prices still rose by the same amount. Simon, your quick reaction to all that news?

Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, look, Trump’s tariffs and his broader economic strategy had already caused the economy to slow, job growth to slow, and inflation to reignite prior to the war. And the more data that we’ve gotten, the more it’s clear he took an extraordinary risk by engaging in this war, given that things were already heading in the wrong direction in the economy, which we also saw in his polling data.

And now we’ve had a couple months of post-war data and Trump’s polling numbers are collapsing even further. His economic ratings are going down. We have the lowest consumer confidence recorded in 65 years. And the inflation numbers are ugly. And so it’s pushing him and his party further and further away from the electorate.

Sargent: Absolutely. And Trump knows he’s in trouble on all this. He was asked about all of it by a reporter and he lost it. Listen.

Reporter (voiceover): Mr. President, you promised to bring inflation down. It’s now at its highest level in three years. Are your policies not working? What’s happening?

Donald Trump (voiceover): My policies are working incredibly. If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7 percent. Now, we had a choice. Let these lunatics have a nuclear weapon. If you want to do that, then you’re a stupid person. And you happen to be. I mean, I know you very well.

Sargent: Simon, I was unable to determine who this, quote-unquote, stupid reporter is. But what’s funny here is his anger over being asked whether his policies are to blame. You could not ask for a clearer example of a president actually being to blame for economic conditions. It’s never this clear—tariffs, immigration, the war. The connection is absolutely inarguable. Your thoughts on that?

Rosenberg: Costs are up because of him. And I think the reason this has hurt him so much in the polls is that he promised otherwise. He promised to lower everybody’s prices and costs and to make lives better for everybody. And he’s done the exact opposite. And I think that’s part of the reason that he and his party are paying such a heavy price right now in polling.

In economic terms, he’s done all these things, including cutting healthcare, that have hurt working people. And he gave himself a massive tax cut. And if you look at the tariffs, the tariffs are clearly part of a strategy to shift the tax burden in the United States from wealthy people to working people. And so it’s literally the case that he’s done a series of things that have done enormous harm to working people, farmers, small business people—and done a whole series of things to enrich himself and other wealthy people in America. It’s about as clear-cut as you can get, Greg.

Sargent: Well, look, you’ve been a Democratic strategist for a long time, and for Democratic strategists like yourself, one of the things about Trump has always been that he’s really hard to hit on the economy. He’s a billionaire, but he just comes across to a whole lot of people out there—especially low-information voters—as some combination of an economic populist [and] as someone who’s not like other Republicans on the........

© New Republic