With his speech in Pennsylvania this week, President Donald Trump is falling into the exact same trap that former President Joe Biden did as he tries to assuage voters about affordability issues in America, MS NOW commentator Donny Deutsch said on MS NOW Wednesday morning.
"Trump's making a terrible mistake on affordability," said Deutsch. "Look, he has three choices. He could stay isolated in his bubble in Bedminster and Palm Beach. That's not a good solution. He can come out and do what he did last night and basically say, no, affordability is not an issue, it's a hoax, which insults people's intelligence. And people at the checkout line go, no, that's not true. Or what he could have done is come out and say, hey, look, it's actually leveled off. It's the same place it was when he took office. And it's a hard job. And I thought it was going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen overnight. But here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm going to do, continue to do and just basically be direct and just show empathy."
"What people hate more than anything is when somebody just somehow says, no, what you're thinking and what you're feeling is not reality," said Deutsch.
He agreed with his co-panelists that Democrats have "seized upon" affordability issues, and that Trump "is just unable toacknowledge that things justsimply aren't perfect."
"Once again, if I was doing an ad campaign for the Democrats, I'd be doing something called 'checkout confidential': go on checkout lines and play the tape of Trump saying affordability is not an issue, and then have people say, oh my God, look, look at the cost of my bread, look at the cost of my orange juice, look at the course of my coffee," Deutsch said. "And once again, I think that Trump is showing that he is just not in touch."
"Trump ... dropped the football and he fumbled it. And I think it's going to be a terrible mistake for him," he added.