White House shows 'symptoms of panic' in 'whack-a-mole' election dash: DC insiders

President Donald Trump's scattershot attempts to douse the economic fires his own policies helped ignite are reading as pure desperation to the people who watch Washington for a living.

With five weeks until election day, the White House has floated a grab bag of ideas to fight inflation that's outpacing wage growth, according to a Washington Post report Monday — but "experts say it's unclear any of it will placate voters" in time to save the GOP's grip on Congress.

"These are symptoms of panic in the administration about problems that they have in part created," said David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution.

"Inflation has been running over the Federal Reserve’s target rate since 2021, but an array of Trump policies have fed the problem, economists say," the Post reported.

"Trump’s decision to join Israel in going to war with Iran has disrupted the global oil supply, leading to elevated energy rates. His tariffs have produced higher prices for some imported goods. And his administration’s immigration crackdown has made low-cost labor harder to find, keeping price pressures on domestic companies high."

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said the administration's fixes have been "small in the grand scheme of things … if they're helpful at all. So it's not like it's moving the dial on the affordability crisis."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum and a former adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain's 2008 campaign, noted the tactic isn't new.

"This whack-a-mole with particular prices is something the Biden guys tried," he told the Post. "It doesn't solve the economic problem, and it doesn't seem particularly politically successful."

Rebecca Patterson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. economy is simply too vast to fix on an election timeline and "time is running out."

"This is simply not something anyone can do in a month," she said. "Actions taken today might help in the medium and longer term. But between now and the election, the best you can hope for is that voters appreciate that you're trying."