Republican Party insiders on Thursday offered the press a starkly different assessment of President Donald Trump's primetime address to the nation than they gave the president, according to a new report.
Politico reported on Thursday that people close to the president told him that he did "great" after the cameras stopped rolling on Wednesday night. However, once he left the room, they were "far less ebullient about the president’s attempt to improve his dismal numbers on the economy," according to the report.
“It’s the right idea to talk about the economy more, but the execution was abysmal,” one Republican operative who served in the first Trump administration told the outlet. “He’s a very effective salesman when his heart is in it or when he’s on the attack. But the ‘I feel your pain’ speech — he just doesn’t have that club in his bag.”
An official with the Republican National Committee told Politico that "it’s hard to imagine any members waking up today and saying, ‘Oh, now I feel better.’"
Trump's address to the nation came at a time when public polling showed just 36% of Americans supported his economic policies, the lowest mark of his second term. Meanwhile, Democrats are winning elections across the country by focusing on "affordability," a word Trump has described as a "Democrat scam."
“In politics, the ‘look-back’ is never as effective as the ‘look-forward’,” Kevin Madden, a veteran GOP communications strategist, told Politico. “Voters will always provide more breathing room if you establish credibility by acknowledging the challenge, and the challenge right now that they’re feeling from higher prices is real. You have to acknowledge that, first, if you’re ever going to gain their support for the policy plan to address it and make it better in the future.”
