Trump assailed former President Joe Biden on inflation, crime, and the border while making the case that his administration had taken steps toward fixing, and in some cases completely solved, these problems.

“Under the Biden administration, car prices rose 22% and, in many states, 30% or more. Gasoline rose 30% to 50%. Hotel rates rose 37%. Airfares rose 31%. Now, under our leadership, they are all coming down and coming down fast,” Trump said. “Democrat politicians also sent the cost of groceries soaring, but we are solving that, too. The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33% compared to the Biden [price] last year.”

The risk for Trump is that voters, who still say prices are too high, might not find his economic assurances any more convincing than Biden’s. The current president is underwater on the economy, once his strongest issue, by 13.5 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. 

Democrats, including socialist New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, won big in this year’s elections by running on “affordability.”

Trump did have new arguments and proposals. He unveiled a bonus for military personnel and argued he had defied special interest groups on prescription drug prices. He promised to name a new Federal Reserve chairman soon, having clashed repeatedly with the current one, Jerome Powell, over high interest rates. Powell’s term is expiring next year.

The president also emphasized the Democratic provenance of the federal healthcare law he zinged as the “Unaffordable Care Act,” which he blasted as a subsidy to greedy health insurance companies. He said Obamacare, as it is also known, was “created to make insurance companies rich. It was bad healthcare at much too high a cost.” Trump alluded to congressional Democrats’ role in the current premium increases, noting that certain tax credits are set to expire because they were passed in a party-line vote through the reconciliation process.

However, Trump is now the incumbent president, and Republicans control both houses of Congress, albeit narrowly. Falling inflation doesn’t necessarily mean that prices will come down, and they certainly won’t return to the pre-pandemic levels voters enjoyed during Trump’s first term in 2019. A recent poll by Echeolon Insights, a Republican firm, found that 74% would only accept a decline in prices as proof that inflation was finally under control.

That same poll found respondents gave Democrats the edge on lowering costs overall by a margin of 47% to 43%, a major reversal from the 2024 election.

Trump’s team is hoping for an economic turnaround as his policies, like the extension of the tax cuts, kick in, so voters won’t have to rely on his words by Election Day. That’s what happened under Ronald Reagan, but not soon enough for Republicans in the 1982 midterm elections. But by 1984, inflation had been brought to heel, and the economy was booming, helping Reagan win reelection in a 49-state landslide.

Trump is already in his second, nonconsecutive term. It is congressional Republicans who are counting on Trump to help them retain their slender majorities in the Capitol and set the party up for success in 2028. If Republicans lose the House, Trump could be facing the specter of his third impeachment. A Democratic majority would also make it difficult for him to pass any further legislation, especially on domestic issues.

“President Trump was clear tonight: the Biden-Harris Administration created the greatest affordability crisis in our nation’s history,” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), chairman of the House GOP’s campaign arm, said in a statement shortly after Trump’s speech. “On Day One, President Trump and House Republicans took decisive action and are already delivering results. After years of Democrat failure, some Americans are still struggling, but Republicans hear you, and we are on a rescue mission.”

“When I hear the Democrats talk about the affordability crisis that they created, it’s a little bit like, you know, Charles Manson criticizing violent crime,” Vice President JD Vance told a crowd in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, the day before the president’s speech. “Look in the mirror, my friend. You are the cause of the problem, and Donald J. Trump’s administration is the solution to the problem that you created.”

TRUMP TRAVELING TO KEY SENATE STATE FOR NEXT AFFORDABILITY ROAD STOP 

Democrats hope these arguments will seem backward-looking, much like Biden’s frequent condemnations of “my predecessor,” who became his successor. 

Pocketbook issues doomed former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign and returned Trump to the White House. Wednesday night was the beginning of his campaign to keep recent history from repeating itself.