“When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time, and how bad it was just one year ago?” Trump mused on his social media platform Truth Social Thursday.
For William Saletan, staff writer at The Bulwark, Trump’s ranting was a startling admission, and one he’d not seen before from the president.
“I’m kind of shocked, this might be the first time that Donald Trump has acknowledged real numbers!” Saletan said, appearing on the “Daily Blast” podcast Friday.
“He’s denying the real numbers about the economy… I watch everything he says, I have notes on it, [and] I can’t count the number of times he has said since he’s been back in power that prices are coming down.”
The host of the podcast, The New Republic’s Greg Sargent, concurred that Trump’s rant suggested that he knew “he’s in political trouble,” labeling the online post as a “strange tirade.”
Trump and the Republican Party suffered a major blow last month after a series of strong election showings in New Jersey and Virginia, and according to exit polling, the president’s support among Hispanic and Black voters has tanked since last year.
“There’s now a lot of numbers to back up the thesis that the shift of ethnic minorities, of Blacks and Latinos in particular, to Donald Trump in 2024 has reversed,” Saletan said.
In Virginia, Saletan said, exit polls showed that Hispanic and Black voters shifted away from the GOP by 15 and 13 points, respectively. And in New Jersey, it was an even greater shift.
“In New Jersey, it was twice that. It was a 24-point shift among Latinos, 28-point shift among Blacks away from Trump in the New Jersey governor race,” Saletan said.
“This is not isolated, this is now a broad, national trend in which a lot of minorities who thought that Donald Trump was going to be their guy have decided ‘maybe not so much,’ and the Republican candidates down the ballot are paying the price.”
Among Trump’s greatest electoral hurdles has been the economy, which has continued to plague Americans with inflation and rising costs, and despite Trump’s claims to the contrary.
“He lies about the numbers, and then the problem is Americans, of course who actually go to grocery stores and buy things, are like ‘actually, that doesn’t seem to be true,’” Saletan continued. “He’s denied it, and I’m just kind of shocked at that post because it acknowledges at least the indirect truth of the polls being negative on him.”
