I doubt they will hold it against him — he’s perfect in their eyes — but he never told the cult that there would be any pain with his tariffs. And, by the way, he didn’t tell the non-cult dolts who voted for him because of the price of eggs either.
In the ABC News interview, journalist Terry Moran mentioned to Trump that economists say his tariffs will raise prices. Moran then noted Trump said in a social media post in early April that Americans should “hang tough” amid his trade battles and that “it won’t be easy” (before, he said, the US wins).
As Moran was asking Trump whether Americans should indeed expect “some hard times,” Trump said: “I’ve said that during my campaign.” Trump added moments later: “I said all of these things during my campaign. I said, ‘You’re gonna have a transition period.’”
But he didn’t say that during the campaign.
A CNN review of Roll Call’s Factba.se database, the most comprehensive public database of Trump’s comments, turned up no examples of Trump warning during the campaign of a “transition period,” or anything like that, related to tariffs or his economic agenda; he used the word “transition” in the context of transgender people and the presidential transition process before Inauguration Day.
When CNN asked the White House on Wednesday for any evidence for Trump’s claim about his campaign rhetoric, a White House official responded, on condition of anonymity, by providing a single link – to a comment Trump made in an interview more than a month after the election, as president-elect, in which he said he “can’t guarantee” Americans wouldn’t have to pay more because of tariffs.
Even in that interview, Trump said “I don’t believe that” consumers ultimately pay tariffs. Regardless, a post-campaign comment clearly doesn’t corroborate Trump’s claim about what he said during the campaign.
I was surprised to see in all the polls just how aware most people are about the effect of tariffs. Somehow the knowledge that they will pay the price for them has sunk in and his lies about it didn’t — at least for a majority. The rest are about to find out and I’m sure many of them will find reasons to blame Biden or the weather or anything but Trump. But most will know exactly who did this and Democrats should make sure they see footage of all those assurances that they would pay nothing.