Donald Trump recaptured the White House in part by relentlessly exploiting Joe Biden’s failure to heed widespread concerns about the rising cost of living. Now, bizarrely, President Trump is walking himself—and his party—into the same perilous trap by denying the economic reality that working families are living.
In the weeks before he took office as president, Donald Trump had a portentous, private chat with the broadcast journalist Lesley Stahl, a prelude to a 60 Minutes interview. As Stahl recounted later, she asked Trump why he so relentlessly brutalized the media. His answer, she said, was strikingly direct: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.