A year after Republicans quietly rebranded their signature tax cut legislation, President Donald Trump's own pollster is publicly disputing his role in the decision.
According to two sources who attended a White House strategy meeting last fall, Tony Fabrizio, Trump's longtime pollster, told the room that while the president loved the name "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," it simply didn't test well with voters, reported NOTUS.
A senior GOP aide in attendance said Fabrizio effectively told Republicans they, not Trump, would be responsible for shifting the messaging — since the president couldn't be counted on to do so himself – but now he denies it.
"I never said that," Fabrizio insisted. "It's ridiculous to think I said that to a room full of people nearly a year ago and it's just now appearing in the news. It never happened."
Whatever was said behind closed doors, the substance of the warning proved accurate. Republican leaders went on to scrap the original title in favor of "Working Families Tax Cuts Act" — only for Trump himself to keep using the old name on Truth Social just days later, undercutting the rebrand almost immediately.
The confusion over messaging has persisted for a full year. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) described Trump's approach to messaging as scattershot, saying the president's attention constantly shifts between competing priorities, leaving Republicans without a sustained economic message to run on.
“We desperately need to re-level the economic playing field,” a Republican strategist said.
“We’re already starting that slide of people being like, ‘What are they doing to help?’” the strategist added. “‘These guys talked about inflation, they talked about cost of living and then they went [to Washington] and they’re more worried about the color of the Reflecting Pool.’”
That inconsistency has left lawmakers frustrated as the law's one-year anniversary approaches with little fanfare, overshadowed by Fourth of July festivities, a congressional recess, and Trump's fixation on unrelated projects — from the aforementioned Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation to the new White House ballroom or the president's legislative obsession.
“I think it’s so unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters last week about a bipartisan housing bill. “To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), when asked about the yearlong sales pitch, offered a measured assessment, calling the effort's results mixed while defending Republicans' own messaging efforts on the Senate floor.
“The president has his own way of communicating things that are important not only to him, but to the country, so we leave that to him,” Thune said. “But I think it doesn’t distract or detract from our responsibility as messengers to be out there.”