White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has reportedly directed Trump administration staff to double down on talking about affordability and the improving economy, as President Donald Trump continues to dismiss kitchen-table issues and focus on personal priorities such as the Iran war and his White House ballroom project.
“There are two tracks: There is what the president says, and then there’s what you as a staff member message on,” a White House official told MS Now.
The president’s indifferent attitude towards spiking gas prices, poor approval ratings, and the 2026 midterms has some in Trumpworld nervous, a former adviser told the outlet.
“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,” they said. “It’s malpractice.”
“None of these low-level, unnamed sources actually know what’s actually going on,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Independent. “By peddling lies and falsehoods, they’re actually trying to hurt the country and the President’s agenda, in which they will fail. While we continue to succeed, they will continue to be losers who run to no-name reporters who are easily manipulated because they think they can make a name for themselves by writing fake stories.”
During a Cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump boasted that midterm concerns were not pressuring him to reach a deal with Iran to quickly end the war, which has jacked up fuel prices and caused global economic uncertainty.
“They thought they were going to outwait me,” Trump told the Cabinet. “You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms.”
The president was similarly dismissive last week when asked about high gas prices during an appearance at the White House ballroom construction site.
“This is peanuts and I appreciate everybody putting up with for a little while,” he told reporters. “It won’t be much longer.”
“I don’t even think about that,” he added. “What I think about is you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
It’s a risky moment for the president to be ignoring the political winds, given polling this week that showed his disapproval rating is at a record high, while American consumers’ confidence in the economy is at a four-year low.
In addition to facing pressure from without, Trump has incurred anger within his party by endorsing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his victorious Senate primary campaign against longtime GOP Sen. John Cornyn.
Upset over the Paxton endorsement came alongside GOP concern about the president’s $1.8 billion DOJ “slush fund,” which has Republicans considering blocking a pending immigration funding package unless guardrails are put in place around the fund.
