Donald Trump’s chaotic rambling is giving his chief of staff a lot of work to do.
Susie Wiles is reported by MS NOW to be facing an uphill battle to keep the administration focused on affordability, which staffers hope will save the president from the nosedive in his approval ratings as the midterms loom.
The issue is that while Americans feel the pinch in their pocket thanks to the war with Iran, Trump is more interested in talking about his construction projects, such as the so-called Arc de Trump, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and his enormous White House ballroom.
The network cites an anonymous White House official who says that to mitigate the president’s tangential musing, Wiles has instructed staff to stay religiously on the message: affordability.
Trump, meanwhile, will do as Trump does.
“There are two tracks: There is what the president says, and then there’s what you as a staff member message on,” the official said.
Part of the plan is to get various departments and agencies to make changes that can be framed as a matter of affordability, but it doesn’t seem to be working with voters.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a result of Trump’s war in Iran, has driven gas prices close to the $5 mark, while grocery prices and inflation are also causes for concern.
A New York Times/Siena survey updated on Thursday put Trump’s approval rating at 38 percent, down from 52 percent on inauguration day and 43 percent shortly after the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
A separate poll from Gallup, meanwhile, showed that economic confidence is through the floor, with just 16 percent of respondents saying the economy was in “excellent” or “good” condition.
Trump has tried to play off the economic problems attached to the war in Iran by presenting the conflict as a minor issue that he could end at any moment with the click of his fingers. He’s promised that when he does so, people will enjoy economic relief.
“While beautifying our nation’s capital is surely important and appreciated, if you don’t live, work, or visit D.C., you don’t really reap the benefits of the president’s passion projects,” an anonymous former Trump White House official told MS NOW. “What people do feel is $4.50 gas, and that’s the real passion point for Americans.”
“I think it’s a failure on the part of his staff,” they added. “They’re not focused on the issues that Americans are focused on, which is obviously affordability.”
The ex-staffer was also angry about Trump’s $1.8 billion repayment fund, which he had agreed with the DoJ in exchange for dropping a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS following a leak of his tax returns.
The pot of money is to be used to reimburse people Trump thinks were wronged by previous administrations, with Jan. 6 rioters likely to be among them.
“While obviously the president is going to do what the president is going to do, his staff has just so ill prepared him or ill informed him of the political consequences of what he’s doing,” the ex-staffer said.
“None of these low-level, unnamed sources actually know what’s actually going on. By peddling lies and falsehoods, they’re actually trying to hurt the country and the president’s agenda, in which they will fail,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told MS NOW. “The directive has always been to tell the story of the president and his agenda, and highlight all the wonderful successes that have been achieved for the American people.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for further comment.
