David Axelrod Says Trump Is Damaging Congressional Republicans: ‘He Is Completely Digging a Hole’
CNN political commentator David Axelrod said President Donald Trump is engaged in “an exercise in denial” when it comes to the economy, and added that it will hurt congressional Republicans in the midterms.
On Tuesday, Politico released an interview with the president, who gave the economy a grade of “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”
“I wonder what grade you would give your economy,” Politico’s Dasha Burns said to Trump.
“A-plus?” Burns reacted.
“Yeah, A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” Trump replied, revising the grade upward. He then insisted that he “inherited a total mess” and claimed that “prices are coming down substantially.”
Anderson Cooper aired the clip on Tuesday’s AC360 on CNN, as well as a snippet of a three-time Trump voter who says the president is not doing enough to bring down costs. The host also showed a clip of the president calling the idea of affordability a “hoax.”
As AC360 aired, Trump held a rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, ostensibly to discuss affordability, though the president digressed many times in typical fashion.
“Axe, will this speech be enough to change perception?” Cooper asked.
The political strategist responded:
Well, I’ll tell you what. If I were his advisers, his political advisers, the people who actually go out and poll and do these things, I would be cringing watching this whole day unfold, because this was an exercise in denial. You know what his “plus, plus, plus, plus, plus” [is]? That’s people looking at their bills. That’s how they feel. You cannot jawbone people into feeling what their life experience is telling them isn’t true.
And you know, I was in the Obama white house during the Great Recession. We got there at the peak of it, and we thought we were making progress. And, you know, but every time you try to claim progress, you just– people resented it because they were living the reality of the crisis. And they hadn’t felt, they didn’t feel as if we were coming out of it. And that’s– he is completely digging a hole. The other people who should be worried are Republican members of Congress who have to run next year… because this is doing them no good.
A few hours earlier on CNN, Jake Tapper responded to Trump giving the economy an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” by noting that Americans have a largely unfavorable view of the economy.
“The reality, however, is that Americans continue to struggle with rising costs and are increasingly holding Trump responsible,” Tapper noted on The Lead. “A recent CBS News survey shows just 36% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. That’s not an A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus. That’s an F.”
Watch above via CNN.
