Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
The recent Democratic cry of “affordability” is ironic in many ways.
The left-wing narrative of Trump hyperinflation was one of desperation and came only after previous memes had failed to resonate.
The 2025 generic “dictator,” “fascist,” and “Nazi” smear points never helped the left much.
Nor did the nihilist government shutdown over the “Obamacare crisis” work other than perhaps to depress fourth-quarter GDP.
Nor did the earlier spring 2025 melodramatic predictions of an impending “Trade War,” “Recession,” and stock-market “Meltdown resonate.”
Nor did the “Gestapo,” “SS,” and “Nazi” ICE smears become effective talking points.
The “illegal orders” and “unconstitutional use of force” in destroying narcotraffickers’ shipments in transit of lethal drugs were mostly empty rhetoric.
Then the Democrats got smart and remembered how Trump had won in 2024.
He ran and triumphed on pointing out that gasoline had gone sky-high under Biden, who drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, put federal oil and gas lands off-limits, and wasted hundreds of billions on green subsidies.
Biden entered office with Trump’s national gas average of $2.39 a gallon and promptly doubled it to $5—until it settled down to a four-year average of $3.35-40 a gallon. That was roughly 35-40 cents higher than the present $3.00 Trump national average.
Biden’s four-year inflation had cumulatively hit 21.5% and it climbed much higher when staples like key foods, insurance, housing, energy, cars, etc., were tabulated separately.
Trump thundered that he had left Biden with a 2020 near-historically low 1.2-4% inflation rate—and then Biden’s four years had more than quadrupled it to an average of 5.2% per year.
In any case, in the 2024 campaign, the case was made that Biden had added $8 trillion to the national debt while making staples unaffordable to the middle class. Trump easily won on that economics/affordability issue.
The affordability case was seemingly closed, given that the Democrats never had an answer for Biden’s misery indices and thus turned to the other smears mentioned above.
But then a funny thing happened.
Trump had entered office with a monthly inflation rate of 3%. but did not somehow immediately lower it. And the rate remains. After ten months of Trump’s tenure, it was still at the same 3%.
Yet suddenly, the left cried, “Affordability!”
Apparently, Trump was culpable because in months he had yet to undo all the damage Biden had inflicted over four years, despite the fact that Trump’s inflation was already 2.2 points less than the Biden four-year yearly average—and headed downward.
But the public was exhausted by high prices and wanted Trump not just to lower dramatically the average Biden inflation rate but also to reduce the Biden 21.5 aggregate inflation and to do so immediately.
The Trump team did not believe anyone would believe this yarn for a number of reasons.
One, no one could credibly believe that the party responsible for hyperinflation could dare to blame its successor for not immediately, in ten months, cleaning up the mess that Democrats had wrought over four years.
Two, Trump had enacted a series of dramatic initiatives that may soon not only lower inflation but could create a veritable boom from some $10 trillion in promised foreign investment. More deregulation, extended tax cuts, and additional reductions are in the big beautiful bill.
The administration has been fast-tracking new federal fossil fuel leasing, pipeline construction, and incentives for greater production of oil and gas, and massive natural gas exports. The borders are closed. Two million illegal aliens have left the U.S., lessening social welfare costs and increasing labor opportunities for U.S. citizens.
By year’s end, some $200-300 billion in 2025 tariff revenue will be collected, coupled with increased domestic opportunities for U.S. business expansion.
So, apparently, the Trump administration thought that the public was aware that mid- to long-term remedies were underway that would fuel the economy in mid-2025. Thus, did they assume “affordability” was not yet really an issue and needed little explanation, given the good news to come was already self-evident?
Or, they were so consumed with foreign affairs—and indeed, dramatic successes abroad—that they thought such good news would naturally become force multipliers of the implicitly bright economic forecasts.
Indeed, efforts to end the Ukraine war, the elimination of the immediate threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb, and a ceasefire in the Middle East were in sharp contrast to the prior four years, when two theater wars broke out on Biden’s watch after the disastrous misadventure in Kabul.
Finally, all Israeli hostages who were still alive returned. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran’s military have all suffered terrible damage.
Each month, there seems to be a new announcement of more favorable trade agreements with major commercial partners. Once dismal military recruitment is now at a historic high. There is not a reduction but a veritable end of all illegal immigration.
Trump tried to fashion cease-fires in wars all over the world: the Congo-Rwanda, India-Pakistan, Cambodia-Thailand, Azerbaijan-Armenia, and Ethiopia-Egypt.
So why did Trump see the left gaining some traction on the affordability issue? The administration has so far not fully absorbed three realities.
One, their likely successful economic stimuli and reforms will not kick in fully until mid-2026. So they needed to argue for a little more patience or to explain in detail exactly how, why, and when the economy will correct the Biden catastrophe.
Two, they did not pound home enough the difference between Trump’s economic legacy in 2020, the ensuing Biden four-year failure, and now his own ten-month new efforts to build upon what he had once accomplished.
Third, even foreign successes, ironically, can detract from the economy. True, good coverage of a Trump ascendant abroad helped him at home. But when the economy is demagogued as “unaffordable,” Trump’s attention overseas is used as proof that he doesn’t care about those at home.
In other words, in an election cycle, a presidential Nobel Peace Prize is worth less than a one percent inflation rate.
There is a year left before the midterms. If the Democrats win the House, they will stall the entire Trump agenda. They will impeach him in their first month. And they will subpoena and wage lawfare against all major Trump appointees in hopes of either bankrupting them or putting them in jail.
Obviously, to continue the MAGA counter-revolution, all emphasis should be on the economy. Every policy initiative should be discussed in terms of its economic utility, from ending illegal immigration to recording oil pumping to foreign investment.
Detail matters. Trashing Biden is far less effective than comparing the actual data of his four-year averages with Trump’s own first-term stats so far: gas prices, the inflation rate, illegal entries, deportations, foreign investment, and other economic indicators.
Foreign policy must be presented in domestic and preferably economic terms: blowing up a narco-trafficking boat saves thousands of lives.
Providing NATO leadership offers leverage with the far more hostile EU—as in “decide whether as Europe-NATO you wish for an American presence, or as Europe-EU you do not like us and wish us gone—but not both.”
What is the dollar effect of deportation on job growth and higher wages for Americans, or on vastly reduced entitlement costs?
In sum, the economy is already better than Biden’s yearly averages. Events are in play that will create substantial national wealth soon, which will make the middle class better off. And successes abroad translate to an enhanced economy at home.
But all that in a unified fashion has to be hammered home rather than assumed.