Trump calls 'Affordability' a Democrat scam just days after crowning himself the 'Affordability president'

 Amid historic lows in approval polling, intolerably high prices and sweeping Democratic victories in special elections across the United States last month, President Donald Trump on Tuesday dubbed the affordability crisis wracking the nation a "Democrat scam."

Much of Trump's effort during his second term has been focused on extreme immigration enforcement measures, sending federal troops into Democratic-led cities and oscillating his support between Ukraine and Russia, but Americans across most demographics have appeared more concerned with the surging cost of living.

As groceries, healthcare, childcare, education and housing see significant increases under the Trump administration, even the most ardent MAGA followers have felt the effects of the affordability crisis in their lives. But despite the data, polling and material impact of the crisis on everyday Americans, Trump, speaking from the newly gilded Oval Office on Tuesday, called it a "con job."

Some of his cabinet secretaries, however, were more wary of telling their supporters not to believe their own eyes.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins referenced the crisis on Tuesday as a lingering issue for American farmers. She said the economic “destruction” over which Biden presided increased costs for the nation’s farmers, calling them “massive numbers that will take some time to get out from under," The Associated Press reported.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also called affordability a “crisis.” And Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner referenced affordability in the context of hundreds of thousands of Americans he said were able to become first-time homebuyers recently.

Vice President JD Vance sought to bring the issue back around to Trump’s viewpoint, acknowledging affordability as a crisis Democrats created

"That’s their new word: affordability," Trump said of Democrats last month. "It's much less expensive under Trump. And I haven't been here long. Nine months is not a long time. But, look at what I have done."

"We have, potentially, the greatest economy in the history of our country," he added, even as recent research by the University of Michigan shows consumer sentiment dropped last month to nearly the lowest point ever recorded by the institute.

A November survey showed the index of consumer sentiment at 50.4, down 6.2% from October and an alarming 30% lower than one year ago. Consumers across all ages, income brackets and political affiliations were aligned in their pessimism over personal finances and business conditions.

The only outliers with a positive outlook, according to the study, were tech companies and those with large stock holdings.

Trump's approval rating has been declining steadily since taking office in January. Recent polling from YouGov and The Economist showed that during last month's government shutdown, his approval rating dropped to one of its worst points during both of his terms in office — lower than Biden ever reached during his four years in office.

Trump had a 33% unfavorable rating, according to the poll, which measured the difference between the share of Americans who approve and disapprove of the president's handling of prices and inflation.

Even as the government shutdown stripped thousands of federal employees of pay, halted flights at 40 of the nation's busiest airports and rescinded Americans' access to critical federal services, Trump forged on with several remodeling projects at the White House costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The ads write themselves [for the midterm elections] in 2026 when you have a president who promised to make the American people’s lives better – and who was supposed to be a champion of the working class and not of the elite – bragging repeatedly from his gilded Oval Office while military families are on food bank lines," Tara Setmayer, co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, told The Guardian.

“It’s so tone-deaf and so ‘let them eat cake’ it’s hard to believe that he’s serious about this but he is and keeps constantly doing this. It screams: ‘I don’t give a d--- about everyday people,’ and his base is beginning to wake up to the fact that perhaps he doesn’t care about us.”