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President Donald Trump gestures to troops after delivering remarks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on Tuesday, June 10, 2025, during a visit to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. |Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok
In the MAGA cinematic universe, Donald Trump is the swaggering lead: The titan, the breaker of norms, the orange oracle whose very presence bends markets and makes the proletariat swoon in awe and appreciation. In this fantasy, Trump doesn’t just steer the economy. Trump is the economy. The Dow rises when he tweets. Gas gets cheaper when he pouts. Groceries restock themselves in fear of his mighty vengeance.
But here in the cold, inconvenient reality of 2025, that myth is collapsing under the weight of hard numbers and harder lives. Trump’s once-vaunted approval on economic matters, an irrational if persistent myth, was the one lifeboat Republicans could cling to while the rest of the ship burned, is slipping faster than Rudy Giuliani’s grip on a bar his tab.
Trump's polls are ugly. Across swing states and suburban districts, independents and soft GOP voters aren’t buying the “Everything is Great Again” line, especially when they’re paying still eyeing persistent inflation, spendy groceries, and praying their credit card rates don’t jump another two points.
And for all of Trump’s bluster about the economy being “the best in the history of the universe, maybe even better than God’s economy,” people aren’t feeling it. They’re not idiots. They have wallets, and brains. They’ve seen the trade war costs coming home … to them. They know that the vaunted “90 deals in 90 days” is as real as Trump’s hairpiece. They've seen the immigration ICEstapo raids wrecking farms, construction, health care, and other pillars of the economy.
Now, here comes the GOP cavalry with the political equivalent of pouring gasoline on a grease fire: The “Big Beautiful Bill,” a name only a cultist could say with a straight face. Birthed in the marbled halls of Mar-a-Lago and midwifed by Heritage Foundation goons cosplaying as economists, this Frankenstein’s monster of a bill is a dazzling parade of bad ideas. It’s the 2017 Trump tax bull on bath salts. Tax cuts for megadonors? Check. Project 2025 garbage throughout? You bet. A wrecking ball taken to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that even Josh Hawley opposes? Absolutely.
“In battleground districts, the bill polls somewhere between ‘untreated syphilis’ and ‘mandatory Nickelback concerts.’” ...
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