'Dolls are out of reach': Expert warns Trump's floor at risk of 'falling out'
Republican pollster and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump's comment that Americans would have to make do with only buying one or two toys for their children for the holidays instead of 30. Most Trump supporters will struggle to pay for those two, she explained.
Longwell spends most of her time speaking with focus groups of people who voted for Trump in 2024 after supporting former President Joe Biden in 2020.
She noted that Trump's poll numbers are already headed south, with his approval ratings on handling the economy sinking to historic lows, despite it once being his greatest strength.
"One of the things I want to point out, I really have two points from listening to voters," she prefaced. "One is they definitely think that this is Trump's economy. His thing yesterday about trying to say, 'Oh, this is Joe Biden's stock market.' No way! Voters associate him with the tariffs. Many of his voters are sitting there saying, I don't know. My guy's saying this is going to work, so I'm going to wait and see and hope that it works."
ALSO READ: Trump voters got exactly what they wanted — so why are people complaining?
Her second point is that part of that Trump coalition is working-class and lower-income voters, who have different expectations after supporting Trump.
"There has been this political realignment that Donald Trump has really supercharged, where the Republican Party is now much more the party of working-class voters. Those are the people who are going to be hit by the higher prices," said Longwell. "These aren't people who had 30 dolls to begin with. These are people for whom that one doll was very special. And now that doll is going to be out of reach in terms of price."
She said that, in many ways, it will be those Trump voters who will be the "most negatively impacted."
While those on the upper end can scale back vacations or other things, but lower-income families don't have much they can scale back on.
"For people who are saying I already can only do so much for my kids at Christmas, and now, because of Donald Trump's tariffs, I can't afford much of anything," Longwell continued. "I mean, I hear voters talk like this in focus groups all the time, where they say, 'Look, the reason I voted for Donald Trump is because I wanted him to lower prices.' And already now they are complaining about the fact that he doesn't seem to be focused on the economy. That he's not doing anything to bring down prices. And they feel that because, you know, $10 here and there makes a big difference in their lives. And so those are the people who are going to be hurt. And I think that's where you're going to start to see some of Trump's floor potentially fall out."
See her comments below or at the link here.
- YouTube youtu.be