President Donald Trump not only misled Americans about what he would do as president, but has now done the opposite and is flaunting it, argued Puck News columnist and MSNBC analyst John Heilemann on Wednesday.
In a post-election analysis for the 2025 off-year races, host Nicolle Wallace discussed former President Barack Obama’s closing message in Virginia and New Jersey, noting its resonance with voters. Obama’s remarks focused on the question: “Are you better off than you were nine months ago?” Wallace summarized: “Based on how voters feel about the economy, the answer is resoundingly no.”
Heilemann said that the message is amplified considerably because that was Trump's whole 2024 message.
"This —it was the thing that Donald Trump beat Democrats over the head with for two solid years. And not only are things not better, but he is doing things that are relatively easy to explain, either on a substantive or a symbolic level, that are at odds with that," Heilemann explained.
Trump is faltering, he explained, whether it's what Obama was talking about or grocery prices, this is going on "while he tears down the East Wing to build himself this Putin-esque ballroom." Meanwhile, there is the ongoing debate about "the substantive questions around tariffs. And tariffs are actually doing what they're doing to prices."
"When you decide to make the main thing, the main thing, and then you not only don't solve the main thing, but you make the main thing worse," said Heilemann. "And you do it in an egregious, flagrant, almost kind of throwing in your face way in the way Trump has it. You know, it's going to leave a mark. It's going to it's going to bite you in the — on the other side. And that's what happened, I think, yesterday, among many other things."
