Bulwark Takes - Trump's Tariffs Are Crushing His Voters

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Sarah Longwell joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to discuss how Donald Trump’s chaotic economic and immigration policies are backfiring, sending grocery prices soaring, devastating small business owners, and triggering deep anxiety even among his own supporters. They explore how the political fallout is eroding Trump’s approval ratings and exposing the total lack of competence and guardrails in his inner circle. 

Hey, everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of The Bulwark. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel here. But I was just on a call. We were talking about both the economy, the incoming tariffs, the shortage that people are already talking about, like people who own stores. And then we also got into the Mike Walsh almost firing, but then actually just shuffling over to the United Nations. We got into both those things. It was a good conversation. Hope you enjoy it. Sarah Longwell, the politics for any human being would be catastrophic. The politics for someone who ran for president, saying that the price of everything will, quote, go down on day one.

I'm talking about the groceries standing in front of melting meat should be lights out. Where are the where's the political sort of pendulum swinging on Trump? Well, I mean, look, you're already seeing the impact of his numbers going down, and not just in his overall approval rating, but his approval on his handling of the economy, which has always been his greatest strength. But one of the things I want to point out, I really have two points from listening to voters. One is they definitely think that this is Trump's economy. His thing yesterday by trying to say, oh, this is Joe Biden's stock market. No way. Voters associate him with the tariffs. Many of his voters are

sitting there saying, I don't know, my guy's saying this is going to work, so I'm going to wait and see and hope that it works. But a lot of those same Trump voters, right, and this is the second point that I want to make, many people in the Trump coalition are working class and more low-income voters. There has been this political realignment that Donald Trump has really supercharged, where the Republican Party is now much more the party of working class voters. Those are the people who are going to be hit by the higher prices. These aren't people who had 30 dolls to begin with. These are people for whom that one doll was very special. And now that doll is going to be out of reach in terms of price. And so it is

his voters in many ways who are going to be the most negatively impacted people at the upper end of the income scale they can say okay well maybe i scale back on a vacation or something but for people who are saying i already can only do so much for my kids at christmas and now because of donald trump's tariffs i can't afford much of anything i mean i hear voters talk like this in focus groups all the time where they said look look, the reason I voted for Donald Trump is because I wanted him to lower prices. And already now they are complaining about the fact that he doesn't seem to be focused on the economy, that he's not doing anything to bring down prices. And they feel that because, you know, ten dollars here and there makes a big difference in their lives. And so those are the people that are going to be hurt.

And I think that's where you're going to start to see some of Trump's floor potentially fall out. I mean, small business owners are an incredibly important, not just part of the economy, but part of the political landscape. Both sides fight over them ferociously. And I mean, this anecdote has to be playing out all over the country. Sarah, what are you hearing from that part of his support that saw, that wanted to emulate something that he was selling as he played a successful business person? Well, you know, part of what's been interesting to me, to listen to people who really support the tariffs, who are trying to give him and say, no, no, no, like we should do this, is

they have a bunch of different reasons why they are with him on the tariffs. They either say, well, look, we have to do something about the debt. So we're going to pay the debt down or we need to reshore American jobs. We need to bring back manufacturing or, you know, or it's a negotiating tactic. And you hear all these different things, which, of course course mirrors the chaotic messaging coming from this administration, right? We don't really know why they're doing it. And as a result, like it can't be all of those things. You will not accomplish all of those things. I think most people are skeptical. You can do any of those things with tariffs. And so I think that for a

lot of these voters, especially for the business community that really counted on Trump coming in, cutting regulations, cutting taxes, who thought he would be good for them and were, unfortunately, I think, willing to put aside the sort of threat to democracy that he posed in favor of what they thought were going to be positive business moves from Donald Trump. I think they are going to find themselves the most damaged by this and maybe the most regretful of their choices. So the degree that the attacks against the FBI and the rule of law and the national security sort of institutions has been an ongoing story for nine years. I'm always wondering if the fact that 66 percent of Americans now believe that the Trump administration is too chaotic, if these stories are going to land differently now.

What in sort of the vein of too much chaos, too much upheaval, too much too fast, this isn't what we voted for, are you picking up from voters? Look, really the first segment is what you're picking up from voters, right? People feel the economic strain right away. And that's a personal consequence. They have that personally. But when then when you layer on top of that, not just one, but many stories of wild incompetence, right? So the incompetence of putting a reporter on a signal chain. I mean, the idea that Walls was the only person that needed to be held accountable. When I saw that story, I thought the same thing

you did. This is Laura Loomer having influence. They don't like Walls because he's a neocon, because Hegseth should also go. I mean, this guy was sharing absolute classified information on these, you know, secure in a commercial sense, but not in a national security sense, channel. So there was nowhere close. Like, this is not how people should be behaving. And so you take the national security sort of just clownishness. And then on top of that, you have them deporting people who are clearly American citizens, wrongly deporting them, then refusing to get them back, then refusing to listen to the Supreme Court. I mean, when you layer that on competence, any one of those Americans might tolerate if the economy was okay. But if the economy is not okay and you have those things, that's where you get the total sense that no one has their hands on the wheel. I mean, and it made me think of the conversations

we had about the role of the generals, just saying that something is not OK. These people don't always vote. People don't often vote on national security because they don't want to worry about it. And I think that when politicians try to make it front and center, it usually doesn't work because it's one of those functions of government where you may weigh in on a philosophy for years. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans ran on being strong on defense. Not the case anymore. But the idea that it's so chaotic, that people are talking about, and it's seeped into culture, this massive, massive security breach

of military plans being sent into group chat. I feel like that could color all of these other lapses. And I wonder, you know, I see signs all the time where people, handwritten posters, which I feel like are the best window into what people really care about most to write on their poster before they go out on a weekend to protest. Let's say due process. I mean, some of this stuff that people spent years, you know, trying to sort of drive home, it has really landed and resonated in a different way this time, Sarah. Yeah, I mean, I just think this time is so different in part because at least in 2019, you know, pre-pandemic, Trump had a hot economy and that and also he was surrounded at the time by serious people, right, by a lot of the sort of Republican firmament

that put up guardrails around him. Doesn't have any of those guardrails this time. I mean, all of the people he is surrounded by. I mean, there's a recent Marco Rubio has like 10 jobs now. It's because he's one of the only competent people in the entire administration. And so maybe he'll just run the whole thing

by the end of it. Congrats, Marco. I hope this is what you were hoping for when you went all in for Donald Trump. But, you know, just really quickly on the generals, this does seem like a moment where you would think that people who really do care about our national security, people for whom it has been their vocation, the thing that they devoted their lives to, their study to, that they would be out here this moment decrying what is going on. I mean, if you care about the United States. Like who? Name names. Name names. Mattis, Milley, anybody. Where is it? I mean, there are, but anybody who's been, I would take former FBI directors.

I don't know what happened to Chris Wray. I don't know what happened to the guy who. I don't know what happened to the guy who was running D.O. Merrick Garland. Where is everybody? To your point, the worst has come to pass. He's running like an autocrat. He's being blocked when he does things that are illegal by the judges,

but it's not the role of the courts to be the only people standing up and saying, this is wrong, this is un-American. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm watching the entire civil, all of our civil society, our media companies, our universities, our law firms, they are knuckling under. They all look like the Republican Party in 2018, just slowly capitulating. And it'd be nice if some people started to speak up because it really has gotten to the point where that's necessary. From your lips, my friend. Sarah Longwell, thank you.