Over the span of four days earlier this month, President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social account about his proposed triumphal arch, ballroom construction, the Iran war, a UFC fight at the White House and Bruce Springsteen’s alleged plastic surgery.
He also posted (and later deleted) an AI-generated photo of himself as Jesus, on the heels of a screed aimed at Pope Leo XIV, who Trump said “should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
What’s absent for long stretches in the president’s social media presence and from his discourse more generally of late is the economy — an issue Trump rode to the White House in 2016 and 2024.
“Trump’s original deal with the American people was ‘I’m a boorish lout and kind of embarrassing, but I know how to run the economy.’ And they believed that because they remember the economy being good in 2016,” said Mike Murphy, an anti-Trump former Republican strategist and co-host of the “Hacks on Tap” podcast with David Axelrod.
Critics and concerned Republicans say Trump isn’t making the economy enough of a priority with this year’s election just over six months away, though he has attempted to shift the focus back to cost-of-living issues in the last week.
