‘Trump Took His Eye Off the Ball’: Jonah Goldberg Argues Chaos Has Cost Him ‘Affordability Voters’

Conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg argued that President Donald Trump’s chaotic first year back in the White House has cost him affordability voters during an appearance on CNN Tuesday.

After host Phil Mattingly prompted Goldberg by asking him what, between “DOGE, all the federal layoffs, economic uncertainty from the tariffs, Justice Department targeting the president’s rivals” stood out to him about this year, the Dispatch co-founder dove in:

Yeah, so I kind of put them all in one big uber category and then you can talk about this-, break them down in importance, which is that I think Trump took his eye off the ball about what got him elected. Put immigration aside, I think immigration definitely is one of his issues, and he’s had much more success with it than I would have predicted. But the people-, the reason he won those seven swing states that everyone-, that he constantly talks about, those voters were not all in on the MAGA agenda. They were nostalgic for the economy of 2019, the pre-COVID economy. And they were basically affordability voters for the most part. And Trump then began to talk about, you know, retribution and doing all that kind of stuff, and thinking that basically anyone who voted for him was all in the MAGA agenda. And now we’ve seen independents, a lot of Hispanic voters swing wildly back to Democrats, which is why Democrats did so well in the off-year elections. And those are portentous about the midterms.

Watch above via CNN.