← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
A
Want to be a star? No problem. Anyone can shine on TikTok. Post your first video today. Real life, real story, real you. Download TikTok and get started. Hey, guys, Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the Bulwark. And today I want to give you some interesting focus group stuff. We've been hearing about Trump voters reacting to the economic fallout from the Iran war over the last month or so. First, a quick update on where things stand with the war. This week, Secretary of State and everything else, Marco Rubio announced that Operation Epic Fury, Trump's offensive war against Iran, was over. Great news. War's over. At the same time, we started a new operation to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Operation Freedom. So a new operation, not the same one as Epic Fury, that one apparently is over. So Operation Freedom, that was started, but then Trump abandoned it after only two days. So essentially, the straight is still closed, which means that gas prices are going to remain high. And let me tell you right now, voters, this is all I'm hearing about, especially and including Trump's own base, they're feeling it in their wallets. Whether they're swing voters or part of Trump's, you know, core base. The thing we hear most often is about gas prices. Like, that's just what people are upset about right now. So let's take a listen.
- [01:31]
B
I'm hating these gas prices. The car I'm driving currently is a giant SUV. So it's already terrible. It's 15 mpg. So, yeah, sucks. Right now, gas prices are up. The prices are going up everywhere. Threatened France and Germany and England and Italy that they had to come get the gas themselves. You realize that they weren't going to do anything. And yeah, I think this is
- [02:01]
A
a
- [02:01]
B
panic move and I don't appreciate it.
- [02:04]
C
War happens. Gas prices jump up what, you know, a full dollar, and we probably won't see that drop back down for another year because, you know, that's just the regular. I mean, even with COVID when that happened, you know, food prices rose all the way up and now you're still seeing them not shrink to what they previously were.
- [02:21]
A
So one of the things to understand is that the way that voters view gas prices is often like a stand in for how the economy is doing. They drive past gas stations every day. They fill up their cars every week. They know what that number used to be and they see what the new number is and they are really upset about that new number. It's the same thing with grocery prices, right? People talk about the price of eggs. It's not people are mad about just the price of eggs. Right. It's a stand in for a conversation about how expensive grocery prices are. Gas is the same way. Gas is like one of the number one indicators for whether or not people think the economy is in a good place. So it's the same reason that why back during Biden's term, those little stickers of Biden saying I did this, you know, on the gas pumps, that was a devastating thing for him because gas prices were a standin for how the economy is doing. And nothing makes people feel better or worse about a candidate, not even a candidate, but just a president than how the economy is doing. So it's not just gas. Right. It's all of these things. So let's listen to how some Trump 20, 24 voters who disapprove of Trump's job performance, which is an increasingly large number of the Trump voters that we're talking to. Let's hear about how they talk about cost of living in general.
- [03:37]
D
Energy costs have gone up. So my electric bill has gone up 20%. The tolls have gone up because I to go into this, into New York City for health care sometimes everything's gone up, have to pay $10 to get in. Parking's gone up, the tolls, gas, even price of goods haven't gone down. So it just seems like the prices keep going up. And he promised to bring grocery prices down. Eggs have gone down, but they still haven't gone down as low as I would have liked before beforehand, he promised to bring down prices of groceries and, and he hasn't done that.
- [04:09]
A
Although the markets are looking like they're good, they seem incredibly fragile and certainly the day to day prices of gas and food and all of that, I'm not feeling that we're doing as well as I had hoped we would.
- [04:19]
E
Not that it's entirely his fault, but people can't afford daily life. People can't, people can't afford the things they need. People can't afford gas, health care, basic, basic things that you need as a human to exist. And he promised, he literally campaigned on a promise to make that better. And it has just gotten worse. The grocery bills have just gotten worse. The power bills have just gotten worse. The gas has just gotten worse. And then he started, I'm not going to say that he started a war. I'm going to say that we are now in a war that has made the gas prices even higher.
- [04:59]
A
Okay, so we've got energy costs, tolls, health care, parking and groceries all going up. And let me remind you, these are Trump's own voters blaming him for the increases, right? Everyone we're listening to here today is a Trump voter, although some of them are different kinds of Trump voters.
- [05:17]
F
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- [06:38]
A
In response, Trump's strategy, as you know, we see how upset people are, has been to tell voters that actually we're the hottest country in the world right now and we are living through a new golden age. And anyone who thinks otherwise or expresses economic anxiety is lying. Let me tell you what, this is not going to work. It is one thing to try to message something that sort of people already believe or to to talk about something so much that they start to focus on that thing. Like there's a lot of ways in which Trump uses rhetoric to get people to kind of live in his world, but you cannot talk voters out of their own experiences when it comes to the cost of living, right? You just can't do it. They experience it every day. It's like the number one thing that impacts their lives. And in that last clip, you heard that voter specifically talk about the Iran war as being sort of the root of this, of the rising costs. And at the end of that section of clips, you heard one of those voters talk about how the Iran war is really at the center of this, and that is across so many of the focus groups. Like, look, people understand that, that Trump has made choices. That person who, who, you know, didn't want to blame it on Trump and the war in Iran still, like, knows it is the war in Iran. And most voters understand Trump, that was a war of choice. And so when it comes to the tariffs, when it comes to the Iran war, people know those are Trump's choices, and so they think about them through that lens. So let's listen to some more voters talk about this again. All of these people voted for Trump in 2024.
- [08:13]
G
It no longer feels like the promise of Make America great again is about America. It's like we're helping everybody else, you know, be great. And what about, what about the regular people? You know, the ones who are looking for jobs, you know, me, myself going to buy groceries in the store, paying 450 for, for a gallon of, of gas. It's, it's just, I don't know. I, I'm hopeful, but at the same time, I just feel like it's, it's a disappointment.
- [08:53]
H
When he first took over, you know, gas prices were high, and then it went, it went, it went down. And I, and I noticed it, and I was grateful for that. But then, obviously, with what's going on right now, with the whole war, you know, it went back up. Now, I, I'm not really, for, like, what everybody's saying is, is correct. I prefer for all the focus to be in America, to make America great and not so much, you know, other countries, right, they have their own governments, they have their own presidencies, whatever. They should, you know, kind of focus and do their own things. I get like, if they need our help, then we go, we help them. But then it takes a lot of resources from our, you know, that, that we need for, for to make our country great again. And then as, as a repercussion, it's like, now we're paying again, high gas prices because we got involved in a war. But then I don't want to kind of contradict myself that I want to feel safe.
- [09:42]
A
Here's the thing. Plenty of these voters believe Trump when he said he wasn't going to get into more stupid wars forever wars. In fact, it was really central to why at least a portion of the people who decided to vote for Trump voted for him. This was an important promise for them. But of course, now he got into office, he started a brand new war with Iran. Worse, he did it without even bothering to make the case to the American people, to Congress. His objectives change from day to day. The whole thing has been chaos. Starts new operations and then they shut them down. None of us know what's happening. The only thing that voters do know is their gas prices continue to go up because of this war. So let me leave you with this summer is coming, and this is the time when people like to spend their time on the road, they like to spend their money doing things, they like to travel. How much worse are Trump's numbers going to get when voters see that the cost of everything that they want to do this summer, when their kids are off school, going through the roof? I think we're about to find out. Thanks for tuning in, guys. We'll catch you next time. And for those of us in California, we're going to be out there, San Diego, La, come see us. Go to the Bulwark.com events and you can get your tickets there. All right, catch you next time.