President Trump told Pennsylvanians “you’re doing better than you’ve ever done” and talked up his government as the best in history at his first rally in five months, focused on addressing the affordability crisis.
Trump’s recipe for regaining control of the economic narrative was to insist that “prices are coming down tremendously” despite persistent 3 per cent inflation, the same as when he took office, and with some of it caused by his tariffs.
He told a small venue filled with about 1,000 people in Mount Pocono, in a county Trump flipped from Biden in 2024, that he was returning to the rally stage because of Republican fears about next year’s midterm elections.
Underlining the party’s difficulties, a Democrat was elected as mayor of Miami for the first time in 28 years on Tuesday evening. Eileen Higgins won against the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate, Emilio González, fuelling fears that Hispanic voters who backed Trump in record numbers in 2024 are losing patience with him.
Fighting has also broken out once again between Cambodia and Thailand, one of Trump’s eight claimed peace deals. He said he would phone them on Wednesday to sort it out.
“If we keep going like this there’ll be nothing ever in history like it,” Trump, 79, said during a 90-minute address.
“Already they are saying better than Lincoln, better than Washington, better than anybody — the best ten months ever in the history of the presidency.”
Trump was speaking at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono on Tuesday evening
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Trump continued to pin high prices on the Biden administration despite polling showing that Americans increasingly blame him, as he spent much of the rally insisting things were far better and would improve more.
During the election campaign, Trump told a rally in Wilkes-Barre in the same swing region of north-east Pennsylvania that “starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down and we will make America affordable again”.
But while the cost of eggs and a gallon of petrol are down, other staples like beef and coffee are more expensive.
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“I have no higher priority than making America affordable again,” he said on Tuesday evening. “That’s what we’re going to do — and again, they [Democrats] cause the high prices and we’re bringing them down.”
Appearing to say the quiet part out loud, he added: “It’s a simple message … They said, we have to win the midterms and you’re the guy that’s going to take us over the midterms”.
At this point Trump called Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, “Susie Trump, do you know Susie Trump?” in an apparent verbal slip.
He then added: “They don’t use the word chief of staff anymore because of the Indians, got extremely upset. But now the Indians actually want their name used, which is true. They never didn’t want it used. But the chief of staff and she’s fantastic. She said, ‘We have to start campaigning, sir’.”
Trump inspects a speech belonging to Megan Hemhauser, a supporter who came on stage to speak about his “no tax on tips”
MATT ROURKE/AP
Trump’s speech highlighted three locals benefiting by thousands of dollars from the “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” measures backdated to January in his One Big Beautiful Bill act, passed in July.
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Trump defended his tariff policy, which has raised the prices of imports and taken in billions of dollars for the Treasury, saying that “smart people really understand it”.
He defended his extensive foreign travel — a subject of complaints from his Maga base — as vital to his efforts to improve the economy, saying that only “stupid people” would not understand that.
“I went to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE. I brought back four trillion dollars. They said he shouldn’t be travelling, he should focus on home. What the hell do you think I’m doing?”
In between the boasts about his achievements were reminders that he had only been back in office for ten months and appeals for patience. “We’re bringing it down and we’re coming down more … Takes a little time to come down,” he said.
Several charts were shown highlighting higher prices under Biden. “These are government charts, these are not made up by Donald J Trump,” Trump said.
He referred to affordability as a hoax, which has been his main line of counterattack in recent weeks, saying: “Prices are coming down very substantially but they [Democrats] have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability.”
Donna Zajack, another Trump supporter welcomed to the stage
MATT ROURKE/AP
Later he admitted: “I can’t say ‘affordability hoax’ because I agree the prices are too high.”
Trump also found time to warn Sir Keir Starmer again to open up North Sea oil drilling, saying: “If you look at UK, I told the prime minister, he’s a nice man, Starmer, I said, ‘You know, you have a great energy source in the North Sea. Use it or you’re not going to be in office very long’.”
Trump cursed several times, with references to the “stupid son of a b****” Joe Biden, the “s***” quality of his price charts and “s***hole” countries where he has paused asylum.
He returned to a recent theme of attacking immigrants from Somalia, saying “Why can’t we have some people from Norway? Sweden? Just a few … but we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
In his first term, Trump denied saying “s***hole countries” after senators said he used the phrase in a private meeting about immigration from Africa, but he embraced it last night.
During a passage about his global peace-making, he said that Cambodia and Thailand “started up today, tomorrow I have to make a phone call and I think they’ll get it. So who else could say I’m gonna make a phone call and stop a war of two very powerful countries? … So we’re making peace through strength. That’s what we’re doing.”