US politics live: most Americans blame Trump for high prices, poll shows | Trump administration
Majority of Americans blame Trump administration for high prices, poll finds
Welcome to American Politics Live. My name is Shrai Popat and I’ll bring you the latest news from Washington and beyond.
We start today with a new poll from Politico This shows two particularly important statistics. Nearly half of Americans find their monthly bills (from groceries to healthcare to utilities) difficult to pay.. While 55% of Americans blame the Trump administration for high prices at the grocery store.
The data comes after Donald Trump held the first rally-style event on a tour to tout his self-proclaimed success in lowering the cost of living since returning to office.
In a meandering 90-minute speech in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, the president called affordability a “hoax” (a position he has repeated in recent weeks) and criticized Democrats and his predecessor, Joe Biden, for high prices. “We are bringing them down,” he insisted Tuesday evening.
Trump also claimed that he was “crushing” inflation and that “inflation is stopped.” Although inflation fell from an annual rate of 3% in January to 2.9% in August, it remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
Politico’s poll also presents more revealing numbers on specific instances in which Americans must forgo vital services. 27% of respondents said they had skipped a medical exam due to cost in the past two years, and 23% said they had missed a prescribed dose for the same reason.
Key events
Federal judge grants Justice Department request to unseal Jeffrey Epstein grand jury documents
A federal judge in New York has granted the Justice Department’s request to unseal grand jury documents from the 2019 federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
In his ruling, Judge Richard M Berman cited the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the DoJ to disclose all records related to the late sex offender in a searchable format by December 19. Berman granted the motion with the “unequivocal right of Epstein’s victims to have their identities and privacy protected.”
Recall that on Tuesday, another New York judge ordered the release of records from Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking case.
‘RFK Jr must go’: House Democrat presents articles of impeachment against Health Secretary
Representative Haley Stevensa Michigan Democrat also running for Senate, announced today that she filed articles of impeachment against Robert F Kennedy Jrthe Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Stevens said Kennedy had “turned his back on science, public health and the American people.” In a video posted recently on social media, she added that “families are less safe” since he began leading HHS.
“I cannot and will not stand idly by while one man dismantles decades of medical progress,” Stevens said. “Enough is enough, and that’s why I’m pushing to impeach RFK Jr, to hold him accountable, and to protect the health, safety, and future of every Michigander.”
His cause will be fiercely fought, because it is extremely unlikely that the House and Senate, controlled by the Republican Party, will manage to clear their way.
Sam Levin
Throughout his speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump made a series of false and baseless claimsparticularly on the state of the economy.
The president notably affirmed once again that “prices are falling sharply”. In fact, prices increased during Trump’s second term. The Consumer Price Index shows that average prices were 1.7% higher in September than in January, as CNN highlighted in a recent fact check. Consumer prices rose 0.3% in September, largely due to a 4.1% rise in gasoline prices. Prices were 3% higher in September this year than in September 2024.
He also claimed, without evidence, that the cost of Thanksgiving turkeys was down 33% compared to the Biden era. It’s difficult to gauge how Thanksgiving costs will change: The American Farm Bureau Federation, an advocacy group, said the price per pound of frozen turkey is down 16 percent this year, but wholesale prices for fresh turkey are rising significantly. In a report on Thanksgiving prices, the Los Angeles Times, citing a market research company that studies weekly prices at stores, said the cost of a basket of 11 staples of the holiday meal cost 4.1 percent more than last year.
Learn more about fact-checking and Sam’s key takeaways here.
My colleague, David Smithnotes that Trump’s speech Tuesday was the latest example of the president repeating racist rhetoric against Rep. Ilhan Omar and countries he had previously denigrated.
“Ilhan Omar, whatever her name is. With her little turban. I love her. She comes in, just messes around. She’s always complaining,” Trump said. “We should get her out! She married her brother… So she’s here illegally.”
As David notes, Omar fled the civil war as a child, came to the United States as a refugee, and became a U.S. citizen in 2000. There is no evidence to support the claim that she married her brother, which she has long called “absolutely false and ridiculous.”
Trump later appeared to confirm a story from his first term — previously debunked — that he called Haiti and African countries “shithole countries.”
“We had a meeting and I said, ‘Why are we only accepting people from shitty countries, right?'” Trump said, recalling a meeting with senators. “Why can’t we have people from Norway, from Sweden, just a few. Let’s have a few. From Denmark… send us some nice people. Does that bother you? But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Dirty, filthy, disgusting, crime ridden. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.”
Read the rest of David’s recap of Trump’s speech below.
Majority of Americans blame Trump administration for high prices, poll finds
Welcome to American Politics Live. My name is Shrai Popat and I’ll bring you the latest news from Washington and beyond.
We start today with a new poll from Politico This shows two particularly important statistics. Nearly half of Americans find their monthly bills (from groceries to healthcare to utilities) difficult to pay.. While 55% of Americans blame the Trump administration for high prices at the grocery store.
The data comes after Donald Trump held the first rally-style event on a tour to tout his self-proclaimed success in lowering the cost of living since returning to office.
In a meandering 90-minute speech in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, the president called affordability a “hoax” (a position he has repeated in recent weeks) and criticized Democrats and his predecessor, Joe Biden, for high prices. “We are bringing them down,” he insisted Tuesday evening.
Trump also claimed that he was “crushing” inflation and that “inflation is stopped.” Although inflation fell from an annual rate of 3% in January to 2.9% in August, it remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
Politico’s poll also presents more revealing numbers on specific instances in which Americans must forgo vital services. 27% of respondents said they had skipped a medical exam due to cost in the past two years, and 23% said they had missed a prescribed dose for the same reason.
