Bulwark Takes - Sarah Longwell: Trump Has A New Weak Spot

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

Sarah Longwell joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to break down how Donald Trump’s reckless tariffs are hammering working families, pushing prices even higher, and shattering the illusion that he knows what he’s doing on the economy.

Hey guys, I just got off with Nicole and Claire McCaskill over on MSNBC. We're talking tariffs and the havoc still to be wreaked from the upcoming tariffs. One of the things, one of the news reports that came out today about Walmart raising its prices, you know, we're seeing auto manufacturers like Ford raise their prices. There's a lot of anticipatory price raising going on. So we had a cool conversation. I talk a lot about how this issue, the central issue of the economy, is the one Democrats need to go on offense on. Check it out. Hope you like it. We started off talking about Wall Street, but initially, like we were all saying,

who cares about Wall Street? And my concern from the beginning has been small and medium sized businesses. And across the board, they are like, whoa, what are we doing? Because even if it's 30 percent, they've got all their stuff out there. They had two to three weeks margins. They're already laying off people. So maybe this puts a halt to that. And I hope that's the case. China expert and someone you know well, Gordon Chang, also said this is essentially a win for China and that all these Chinese goods are still going to come into our country where ours remain shut out from their markets. Mr. Ambassador, a lot of our friends are skeptical about this. Friends are skeptical. Oh, no.

The criticism is coming from inside the House, even with Fox News hosts skeptical about Donald Trump's so-called tariff win this week. It comes amid polling that shows Americans are putting off or reconsidering major life decisions and events due to the anxiety they feel over Donald Trump's handling of the economy. 75% of people in America say they're putting off buying a house

because of the Trump economy. 65% say they're delaying having children. And 60% are putting off getting married because of Donald Trump's economy. Joining our conversation is publisher of The Bulwark, host of the Focus Group podcast, Sarah Longwell. Claire is with us as well. Sarah, what are you seeing and what do you feel is coming? Well, I've been hearing for a long time now, and this goes back years into the Biden administration, the cost of goods was the number one thing that voters cared about. The reason that they elected Donald Trump was because

they felt that their grocery prices were too high, their housing costs were too high. And because we were digging out from the pandemic for the entirety of the Biden administration, and we had inflation, even as the macro economy was improving, voters, especially those at the lower end of the income scale, weren't feeling it. And so Donald Trump had one job. His one job was to come in and lower prices. And here's the thing that he did when he was campaigning. He lied to people and he said, I'm going to lower grocery prices on day one. Right. He just made promises he couldn't keep. And so voters in the focus groups that I conduct multiple every week, the number one concern you

hear from Trump voters is that the costs aren't going down for them, that in fact, things are getting more expensive. They have a ton of anxiety about the tariffs, and many of them are doing exactly what you just played in that clip, which is they say things like, I'm putting off buying a car because I'm worried about tariffs. I was in the market for a car, but now I'm not doing it. And so that uncertainty is still there, even as Donald Trump is sort of rolling things back. And so I just there's no way Donald Trump is able to message around things like his corruption. right? He goes on offense. He creates scandal after scandal. Voters have a tough time locking in on one thing.

And so and they kind of trust, oh, he's a businessman or whatever. But when they feel the negative personal consequences of the economy, when the economy is down, when inflation is up, all of those things, you can't message around that, right? You just can't spin. Donald Trump can't bluster his way or sort of beast mode his way through that issue. And this is why when you were sort of asking David Frum, OK, well, what do you do about it? How do you make people care? And the number one way is to talk about it all the time. And this is where offense comes in. This is where Democrats need to be on offense all day long about the things that Trump is doing that are going to cause people economic

pain, because if they do that, they put a knife right through the central mythology of Donald Trump, which is that he's some vaunted businessman who's going to make, you know, 12 dimensional chess negotiating deals, you know, that's going to be in their benefit. When they don't feel the benefit, then they're willing to listen to you. It does feel like the first Trump chapter that he can't spin his way out of. Is that is that your assessment? Yeah, I mean, look, like I said, I think there's a lot of things he will and can spin his way out of. We were just asking people about some of this corruption that we're seeing, you know, the $400 million jet from Qatar. And the fact is that stuff with voters, his voters

particularly, it doesn't penetrate as much. It penetrates for Democratic voters and some independent voters, but not for his people. But the coalition, and I know you guys were discussing this a little bit before, but it bears repeating that the new makeup of the Republican Party, a majority of them are people who make under $100,000 a year. His voters shop at Walmart and they will notice the price increases. And so that is the area where you now have the ability to say, hey, he's failing you. He lied to you. He's not good at business. He's not good at negotiating. He's getting owned by China right now. And it feels like anything

Democrats are talking about that isn't that is is and I think you can you can tack a lot of issues onto that. Come on. He is he is giving tax cuts to his to his rich friends while you pay more at Walmart. I mean, that that is where you reach people. Sarah, I'm curious, as when you're doing these focus groups, is there any blowback on the congressional Republicans yet at all for not speaking up and and stressing that they can stop these tariffs if they wanted to, either on the corruption front or the cost of goods. Are you seeing any kind of weakening of the Republicans in Congress? Because obviously the midterms are going to loom large here in about 10 minutes for all of this stuff. And I'm curious what the folks are saying about the people in Congress.

You know, Congress doesn't get a lot of airtime. There's just the focus on especially the procedural machinations, the things that are in Punchbowl, the things all of us who are sort of professional political consumers engage with. These voters are not tapped into that. They are tapped into things that have an impact on their life or things that they sort of find culturally fun to talk about, like, I don't know, trans bathrooms. But in terms of how they think about Congress, I mean, the fact is most Republican voters want Republicans in Congress to do exactly what they're doing, which is just listen to Donald Trump. And so there's not a real sense of, boy, I demand somebody stop him. And in fact, for a lot of Trump voters, you know,

I've heard two different sets of things. And a lot of times it depends on what their income is, because for people at higher ends of the income scale, they just want you to trust Trump. And maybe they think it's because we're going to remake American manufacturing. That's what it's going to take to make America great again. Or they think it's we're going to use it to pay down the debt or it's all a negotiating ploy and just trust Trump. Then there's the other set of voters that you hear from, and they don't really know

why things are happening the way that they are. They just know their prices aren't going down. And they know that Trump promised that they would and that he was a businessman and it mattered. Like that was that was the central promise. And so those voters aren't saying, hey, what is Congress doing about this? They're saying, why isn't Trump doing the thing that he promised he would do? And I'm worried it's going to get worse because of these tariffs. So I want to read this to you from the New Republic. Whether voters ultimately punish Republicans for Trump's corruption may depend primarily on how Americans are doing economically next year. If they're doing poorly, then Democrats would be wise to weave Trump's corruption into a

broader story about his failure to address voters' economic concerns. It's a similar point to the one that you're making and a question that I've pushed you on. Do you think that the economic catastrophe that is Donald Trump's self-inflicted, almost wag the dog life, tariff war is something that could see his political fortunes drop off a cliff? Or do you think it'll just chip away at him

as the price impact and the cost of living becomes a daily reality for American families? Yeah, I mean, I think it'll depend on whether or not prices rise extraordinarily high or whether they go up slowly. I think, you know, if it I mean, look, there's a reason Trump rolled back the China tariffs, right, is because he became terrified. His advisor said, like, there was a report in The Washington Post where, you know, Trump came to understand this was going to hurt his people. And I think that you will see public opinion for Trump drop in direct relation to the rise and fall of the economy. And this feels unsatisfying because you want people to be frustrated with Trump because he is corrupt at a scale like we have never seen, because he is,

you know, cozying up to murderous dictators and alienating our allies. You want people to care about that. But the fact is what people care about most and what they will react to the most and what got Joe Biden's his negative approval ratings is they're going to care about the cost of the things that they engage with every single day. Not everybody, but a critical mass of people. It's going to be the number one thing. And that is why you should talk about the corruption. Please don't hear that. I'm saying don't talk about the corruption. Don't talk about the disappearing of people. Talk about all of it. But you've got to sort of come back to the way it impacts individuals personally. That's just sort of politics 101.

And I think that Democrats have really got to figure out how to find their footing and say, the economy is the cudgel with which you can sort of hit Donald Trump and you can bring in most other issues to it. And I don't want people to hear also, the thing about qualitative research that can be tricky is when I say things like, you know, we asked about the plane and some of Trump's issues in the Middle East

and people didn't really care about it. That doesn't mean that people should hear that and say, oh, we shouldn't talk about those things because voters don't care about them. What they should hear is, we need to make people care about these things and there are ways to do it right that's what offense looks like it looks like we are driving this narrative donald trump did this himself his first term with the economy i mean he had a good economy but he went around constantly reinforcing how good it was he said hey, hey, best economy for women, best economy for black people. How's your 401k doing, buddy? That was his mantra. And I would like Democrats to say

Trump is failing you. Trump is failing you. He lied to you about bringing prices down every day, every minute related to every issue that's top of the news cycle and to drive the news cycle over this. People are going to feel it. You need to tell them. I mean, look at what Republicans did when inflation was up or gas prices. They would take little things with Joe Biden. They would stick them on the gas tank. You're telling me that Democrats right now in this moment, when we're about to see shelves empty, when people are seeing car prices go up, when Walmart is raising prices, that this can't be an offense issue. Of course it can. Of course it can. It is so true that this is the issue that has been weaponized against

Democrats really for the better part of 20 years. And they now have all the facts being presented to the whole country by the by the people inside the economy themselves. It is it it calls out for political offense from Democrats. Sarah Longwell, thank you so much