BROKEN PROMISES

Restaurant Owner Who Welcomed Trump Turns on Him as Biz Goes Bust

The Las Vegas businessman says he has “never felt like this before.”

A small business owner and one-time Donald Trump supporter says “everything is worse” under the president.

Javier Barajas, a restaurant owner in Las Vegas, Nevada, told CNN’s Kyung Lah on Monday that he has “never felt like this before” amid the high prices during Trump’s second term.

In 2024, Trump glided to victory in Nevada with 50.6 percent of the vote, marking the first time in two decades that the Silver State had elected a Republican president. Barajas, whose restaurant Il Toro E La Capra offers Italian and Mexican dishes, including a $42 ribeye steak, was among those who voted for Trump, seeing him as a harbinger of change. Now, he still sees change—but the worst kind.

“I have to get a second job just to like, be caught up with payments and stuff like that,” said Barajas, who met with Trump on the 2024 campaign trail. “If things keep going like this, [I am] either gonna sell this restaurant or close it.”

With the Nov. 3 midterm elections approaching, affordability is a top concern for Americans, particularly as Iran war has sent prices soaring.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Nevada, a swing state where Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo is locked in a tight race against his Democratic opponent, Aaron Ford, amid widespread dissatisfaction with Trump’s policies. Data show that Nevada Democrats hold a five-point turnout advantage over the GOP in early voting.

“I want the powerful men to be more, more human. You know, to be more, to have more heart,” Barajas said.

“Diesel is expensive,” Barajas said. “Iran war, it went up more.” The restaurant owner said that if he could go back in time and meet Trump again, he would tell the president not to go to war with Iran.

In September, data showed inflation running hotter than expected. Consumer prices rose 3.7 percent from a year earlier, up from 3.4 percent in August and exceeding the 3.6 percent increase economists had expected.

Meanwhile, Trump has denied that Americans are feeling a hole in their wallets as he travels across the country campaigning for his embattled candidates.

“We’re making hundreds and hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars, but my people said, ‘Please don’t mention that, sir,’ because people are paying a little higher,” Trump told a crowd in Georgia on Saturday.

“But what we’ve done for this country, we’re making money like this country has never made before.”

Trump acknowledged that “the headlines” would likely read “Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump,” but admitted “I don’t give a damn.”

White House spokesperson Matthew Middleton previously told The Daily Beast that Trump “has implemented an aggressive, pro-growth economic agenda that has blunted Biden’s inflation crisis, driven economic growth, increased wages and created private-sector jobs in areas that had been hollowed out and shipped overseas.”

“The President has always been clear about temporary disruptions as a result of the Iran conflict, but this administration will continue to deliver economic wins for the American people over the next two years,” Middleton said.

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Laura EspositoBreaking News Reporter

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