Stephanie Ruhle Details Her Lunch With Trump in His ‘Gilded Bubble’: ‘Took One for the Team’

MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle discussed her lunch with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, having taken part in the traditional pre-State of the Union meeting between presidents and leading network news anchors.

Rachel Maddow introduced Ruhle during the network’s pre-speech coverage and noted she “took one for the team” by going to the White House on behalf of the network.

“Our own Stephanie Ruhle took one for the team and had lunch at the White House today with a group of other TV anchors, and Stephanie joins us now to talk about that a little bit. Stephanie, I understand that Trump painted a very rosy picture for you today of what he wants to say tonight. Can you tell us anything about what he’s going to say and how it matches up with what is really happening?” Maddow asked.

“So I would say, Rachel, that my takeaway from today is that the president — or Trump 2.0 — is definitely living in a gilded bubble. I would say, even if you compare it to his first term, the president is now surrounded by an administration that says yes, yes, please, thank you, and yes again. He truly is living like a king in this White House,” Ruhle replied, adding:

We know he personally and his family are making well over a billion dollars this term, and he’s living that way. He’s going to talk about the economy tonight, and he told us on the record that over the next three years, the United States, in his words, is going to see the greatest economy in our country’s history.

Juxtapose that with what his polling is, with what consumer confidence is, and you can’t even compare the two. It’s as though his vantage point of the American people and the economy ends at the edge of the Mar-a-Lago property, because he spends his weekends there surrounded by very wealthy businesspeople. And when we asked him about the economy, he keeps pointing to the markets. He keeps pointing to your 401k.

He keeps talking about, if you’re a homeowner, how much the value of your home has gone up. But think about the millions of Americans who are not invested in the markets, who do not have a job right now, who are concerned about AI, and who are actually living in America. When he talks about the economy, he always turns to gas prices, right? Gas prices is just one thing you’re paying for with your car — you still have to buy that car.

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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