Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in 2024? A significant number of Trump voters thought that he would do a better job of improving their families' financial situations. Years of steeply rising cost of living had been hard for the country, especially for non-affluent Americans. As the AP explained,
Trump decisively won among voters who said their family finances were “falling behind” — a group that grew from about 2 in 10 voters in 2020 to about 3 in 10 [in 2024]. He also carried more than half of voters who were “very concerned” about the cost of food, the cost of housing, and their own health care costs.
Through various federal policies, such as tariffs, Trump promised to make things like food more affordable. Trump went so far as to say he'd "immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One" of his term.
Well, how has that gone? Inflation is poised to hit at least 4%. People are feeling extremely pessimistic about their economic future. Prices are higher than ever. Instead of tariffs making things cheaper, as Trumped claimed they would, they have predictably made things worse. Add in a war causing the price of oil to skyrocket as global supplies dwindle, and it keeps getting worse.
Surely, Trump has handled this all with grace and compassion and taken responsibility. Or perhaps not. Trump has taken credit for bringing prices down while simultaneously saying things like, "The word 'affordability' is a con job by the Democrats," and that the idea of rising prices is a "fake narrative" concocted by Democrats.
At an Easter luncheon this year, Trump reportedly said the following in reference to what he told the Office of Management and Budget Director :
Don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too.
According to NBC,
Later in his remarks, the president added that states would have to raise their taxes to pay for child care costs and that the federal government “could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up” for it.
“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Those are interesting things to hear from a man who shows no respect to constitutional limits on federal power, who was elected in large part due to his promises to magically bring down the cost of living, and who takes more and more actions that require the expenditures of the federal government to skyrocket well, well beyond what it can afford to pay.
The President promised he would focus on bringing the cost of living down. He has taken actions that have obviously and predictably made things worse. He does not seem to care. He denies that there is a problem while simultaneously blaming it on others. He tells you not to believe your own lying eyes as you watch prices rise and the amount of money you have drop. He has expressed that many of your day to day financial concerns, including healthcare and childcare are not his business.
If the President cared about non-affluent people and their financial struggles, he would not have plowed ahead with tariffs. He would not have started an expensive war nobody wanted. He would not deny there is a problem while simultaneously blaming the problem on others and taking credit for easing the problem. He would not have made his crowning legislative achievement a bill that will likely benefit affluent people more than non-affluent people and may undercut government-provided healthcare.
Instead, he would acknowledge the problem, take some ownership, and at least act like he cares. But Trump cares only for enriching himself and those who can benefit him. The rest of us, including many of his supporters and voters, are nothing to him. As long as a core group of die-hard supporters stick with him, it seems unlikely anything will change for the better.
For those of you who continue to support him, it might be time to truly listen to the words he says, believe your own eyes, and reconsider whether he actually cares about you and your family. You may be surprised and unsettled by the truth.