MOUNT POCONO, Pennsylvania — President Donald Trump is set to travel to Mount Pocono in northeast Pennsylvania on Tuesday, where he will make a renewed pitch to voters that his economic agenda will bring down prices for American households.
Over the past month, Trump has sought to reverse negative economic sentiments with a series of cost-focused initiatives aimed at granting consumers relief across several sectors, including housing, automobiles, and food. However, the president has also repeatedly referred to “affordability” as a “con job” and a “hoax” manufactured by the Democrats and falsely said he has ended inflation.
And, according to two of Trump’s out-of-government political advisers, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are quietly pressing the White House to do more to sell the president’s economic policies ahead of a contentious primary season.
Tuesday’s event, a campaign-style speech at Mount Airy Casino, will represent the first major time Trump has taken his economic spin on the road since Democrats rode a wave of affordability concerns to massive wins in the November elections.
White House officials argued that Trump‘s recent affordability push is not a reaction to November’s results, but rather a matter the president has been working on since “Day One.”
Those officials said undoing the “economic damage” former President Joe Biden caused over his four years in office will “take time” but pointed to slowing inflation and falling gas prices as major indications that the president’s policies “will deliver results” for voters.
Still, Tuesday’s locale suggests that “Team Trump” might be privately feeling the heat despite its public confidence.
The region, a bellwether area within a critical swing state, is not reliably Republican. However, Monroe County, which encompasses much of the Poconos, voted for Trump in 2024, marking the first time the county went red in a presidential election since 2004.
And Trump’s messaging appeared to shift slightly while discussing the economy on Monday, abstaining from his repeated claims regarding the affordability “hoax” while leaning in heavily to the idea that Republicans are cleaning up the “mess” they inherited from the Biden administration.
“You can call it affordability or anything you want, but the Democrats cause the affordability problem, and we’re the ones that are fixing it. So it’s a very simple statement,” he said at the White House. “They caused it, we’re fixing it. And they have a tendency to just say this election is based on affordability, and nobody questions them.”
Trump entered office with net positive ratings on his handling of the economy, but he has seen a significant drop in support on this matter since January.
A poll published by Politico last week found that 46% of the more than 2,000 respondents voiced that the current cost of living in the United States was “the worst they can ever remember it being,” including 37% of respondents who voted for Trump in 2024.
Over the past month, Trump has employed a somewhat “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks” strategy, as one veteran Democratic operative referred to it, to address the souring public sentiment.
In mid-November, Trump threw his support behind proposals from Bill Pulte, his Federal Housing Finance Administration director, to stand up 50-year and portable mortgage options. The president has also opened price-fixing investigations into meat packers, pressed American auto companies to begin producing “very cute” and “tiny” car options, and unveiled a $12 billion bailout of American farmers struggling under his tariff war.
Still, the president has also pushed back at the small number of Republicans willing to publicly press him on the matter, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whose clashes with Trump on affordability and the Jeffrey Epstein files led the president to withdraw his endorsement of her and label her a traitor last month.
Greene, who has said Trump’s rhetoric has led to death threats against her family, announced recently that she would step down from her office next month. However, she told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview that aired on Sunday that, despite Trump’s claims, affordability is a “real issue.”
“It’s one of the top issues, not only in my district; it’s across the country,” she said, prompting furious insults from the president on Truth Social.
TRUMP CHANGES HIS TUNE ON RELEASING SECOND STRIKE FOOTAGE
Terry Holt, a longtime Republican aide who worked for former President George W. Bush and former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, founded the Cost Coalition earlier this year to oppose Trump’s economic policies. Ahead of Trump’s remarks, Holt told the Washington Examiner that the “real hoax is that Donald Trump and his cronies ever cared about affordability.”
“He raised the prices he ran on lowering, and now he’s about to make healthcare skyrocket more,” he said. “Billionaires get tax breaks and drug traffickers get pardons, while everyone else picks up the tab.”
