President Donald Trump’s Cabinet is being dispatched across the country to try and sell his accomplishments and are instead running into a buzzsaw of angry voters.
According to a report from Politico, the Trump roadshow is going so poorly that one Cabinet member is being warned to not show up for a return engagement in a key state where Republicans are in trouble.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited New Hampshire last week to promote natural gas pipelines and "and got hit with questions about $4 gasoline prices, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins traveled to Iowa over the weekend to rally farmers but ended up defending Trump's decision to import foreign beef, "which sparked outcry" with cattlemen.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Florida to discuss school nutrition, instead got pulled into a fight with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro over two measles-related deaths in Lancaster County — the state's first measles deaths in 35 years, the report noted before adding that Wall Street insider Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has hit a wall with the business community skeptical of his plan to end the Iran war and lower long-term federal borrowing costs.
"The Cabinet kerfuffle comes at a time when the president’s envoys are needed most," Politico is reporting. "The midterms are less than three months away, the president’s approval rating is near record-lows and the White House is on a mission to remind voters of all it believes it has accomplished in the last two years, including a spate of tax cuts, improved border security and reductions in violent crime."
"If you just look at how it's animating people here, if you just look at the breadth of the headlines coming out from it, it's a challenge. It has legs, to be honest," one Iowa Republican operative told Politico, granted anonymity to discuss the fallout.
In particular, Rollins is facing the greatest challenge as she plans to a Tuesday return to Iowa, a GOP stronghold, where Trump beef proposal has ranchers up in arms.
“Trump has a good story to tell on the economy with respect to the tax cut and with respect to the investment that’s coming,” explained economist Stephen Moore, a former Trump adviser. But “if people are going to start confronting her on beef prices or egg prices or whatever it might be, it’s better to avoid being in the spotlight so you don’t get set up.”