MOUNT POCONO, Pennsylvania — President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night audience left the Mount Airy Casino Resort in high spirits, but some attendees had lingering doubts about the current and future state of the economy.
Republicans have spent weeks pressing Trump and White House officials to do more to sell the president’s economic platform heading into a highly contested midterm election cycle, considering how voters’ affordability concerns buoyed Democrats to a clean sweep in the November 2025 elections.
Though Trump has logged some legitimate economic wins through his first year in office, he has largely failed to wipe out the significant post-COVID-19 price increases that dogged former President Joe Biden’s tenure, something Trump repeatedly said throughout his 2024 campaign that he would accomplish within days of reentering office.
While Trump’s Tuesday night speech was clearly focused on driving home that message, his biggest applause lines of the night all seemed to come more from attacks against Biden himself, or even the campaign rally atmosphere itself, rather than any real discussion of the president’s plans for delivering on his promise to roll back all of the economic pitfalls of his predecessor.
The Democrats “always have a hoax,” the president declared Tuesday evening. “The new word is affordability.”
“Democrats talking about affordability is like Bonnie and Clyde preaching about public safety,” he continued, drawing hearty guffaws from the audience. “They are really the, truly, the enemy of the working class when they do it.”
Mark Blanton, a stone mason from outside of Philadelphia, suggested that he had been starting to question his vote for Trump in the last election, based on concerns about prices at the grocery store, but that attending Tuesday’s rally “lit a fire” under him again.
“Don’t get me wrong: No way in hell I’d’ve ever voted for [former Vice President Kamala Harris], you know what I’m saying, but just being back in that room — seeing all the support MAGA has and all the fun President Trump has working to get it done for all of us, that got me,” Blanton said, noting that he was particularly excited to show his friends back home a video he snapped of the president doing his patented “Trump dance” to the Village People’s “YMCA” after wrapping his remarks.
‘The honeymoon’s over, sweetie’
Furthermore, multiple rally attendees, not to mention people who had not visited Mount Airy on Tuesday to see Trump, suggested to the Washington Examiner that they still wanted to see more results from the president.
Tanya Delgado, a retired nurse from New York who attended Trump’s remarks with a few friends, chatted with the Washington Examiner as the group took turns on a slot machine near the entrance to the casino floor after Trump’s speech.
Delgado claimed to have “always liked” Trump but had never voted for him, adding that elevated gas and grocery costs were still a “major problem.”
“I know he’s trying, but the honeymoon’s over, sweetie,” she continued.
Delgado did say that she was a fan of “No Tax on Tips,” a provision within Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act set to kick in next year, as that would have a direct, positive effect on multiple members of her family in the service industry. Still, Delgado reiterated that “people won’t wait around forever” simply because they “think Trump is funny.”
“We put you in that house. We can kick you out of it,” she snapped, laughing with her friends. “Clock’s ticking.”
Kenny Earle, a local retiree, told the Washington Examiner that he had voted for Trump in three consecutive elections. He did not attend the speech, however, and showed up Tuesday night just to see the spectacle.
“I come up here once or twice a week anyway, so I thought, ‘Why the hell not?’” he explained, puffing a cigarette while having a go on the virtual slots.
When asked what he thought of Trump’s economic stewardship, Earle shrugged.
“Some good, some bad, same as most,” he said. “I’d wager he’s got a ways to go before folks can breathe easy again. Tell you what, though: No way in hell Kamala would be doing much better.”
Dina and Hillary, two other locals, gave a similar assessment of Trump’s performance in the parking lot ahead of the president’s arrival.
“Well, he’s not a politician,” Dina told the Washington Examiner. “He’s a businessman. He got elected the first time to clean the swamp, and he did. And, this time, I think he’s doing what he can, so I think he’ll get this done too.”
Though northeast Pennsylvania represents a bellwether region within a critical swing state, Monroe County, where Mount Pocono is, swung for Trump in 2024 — the first time Monroe voters had backed a Republican presidential candidate in 20 years.
And while Trump’s rally antics might have been enough to ease concerns among the MAGA coalition’s most faithful, he will still likely be fighting an uphill messaging battle through next November.
One casino employee, granted anonymity over concerns regarding job safety, told the Washington Examiner that 2024 was the first year they had ever voted in a general election. That person said they previously “hated” Trump but that, financially, they had been left with “no other option.”
“Politics are bulls***, man,” he vented. “It’s just so divisive. Trump won because Biden was killing people. Turns out he’s just more of the same. All bark, no bite.”
