The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 30 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The economic news is suddenly getting worse. A number of major companies are announcing mass layoffs. Food stamps are about to expire for millions amid the government shutdown, and we just learned that health insurance premiums will soar when Obamacare subsidies end. Amid all this, Trump delivered a bizarre rambling boast about the economy, claiming laughably that he’s created a record number of jobs. Meanwhile, there are new signs that Trump’s plans for a glittering ballroom are backfiring badly with the public. It’s often said that Trump is dipping on the economy, but we think this could run even deeper than it appears. What if he’s widely perceived as totally out of touch on it as well? We’re unraveling all this with Elizabeth Pancotti, who tracks economic sentiment with the Groundwork Collaborative, where she’s the managing director. Liz, thanks for coming on.
Elizabeth Pancotti: Thanks so much for having me.
Sargent: So we’ve got tens of thousands of layoffs at companies like Amazon, UPS, Target, Paramount, Skydance, and more. The food stamps are expiring. We just got all this new information about how much health insurance premiums are going to go up. Liz, what’s happening out there? How bad is all this if you put it all together?
Pancotti: Well, it is really fitting that we’re getting all of this awful information the week of Halloween—perhaps the most spooky thing for spooky season.
Last week, we got inflation data and found that prices are up 3 percent over the last year—sticky, continuing to rise—and it is just stubbornly high and shows no sign of easing, especially given Trump’s lack of, you know, easing up on the tariffs, which are being passed on to consumers.
In addition to that, at the end of this week, we will see health care premiums spike—in many cases, more than double what they were this year—for the 25 million Americans who get their health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange.
And over the weekend, at the same time, the 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP food stamp benefits to buy groceries will be hit with no benefits deposited on their EBT cards as a result of the government shutdown.
That, all taken together, in addition to the layoffs, is really souring the sentiment of American consumers. The University of Michigan Survey of Consumers found that consumer sentiment slipped by 1.5 points last month and that long-run inflation expectations have ticked up. Consumers really have no confidence in the president’s economy or his campaign promises to lower prices.
Sargent: Well, Trump seems to have a very different impression of the economy right now. Here’s what he said Wednesday in South Korea.
President Donald Trump (voiceover): One hundred percent of all new jobs created in America under my administration have been created by the private sector. Think of that. The government created no new jobs. The private sector created the record number of jobs that we’re talking about. That’s a country. That’s really a success. It’s easy to create government jobs. I could say, add a lot of people to your payrolls. Just tell everybody, hire a lot of people. That’s what they used to do under the Biden administration, under Barack Hussein Obama. You had to ... They’d say hire a lot of people so we can make our numbers look good. I do the opposite. And we have we have real numbers. These are real numbers.
Sargent: Trump is really trying to argue that he created more jobs than were created under Biden. Is any of that true? Liz, what’s the real story?
Pancotti: No, I mean—and the president’s claim that 100 percent of his jobs have been created by the private sector is really funny, given the amount of public-sector jobs he has slashed as part of Elon Musk and Trump’s DOGE efforts.
And the Republican budget law passed this summer will really decimate both public-sector jobs and private-sector jobs in the health care and education industries, given the cuts to those programs.
I mean, more than 100 percent of the job growth under Donald Trump’s presidency this year has been in the private health care and private education social services industry. That is the only industry that is really growing this year—and it shows no sign of continuing that, given the massive cuts from this budget law.
And we’re seeing massive numbers of layoffs announced by big companies—Amazon, UPS, and others throughout the country.
Sargent: And can you straighten this out on whether Trump has created a record number of jobs overall compared to previous presidents?
Pancotti: He, in fact, has not. And there’s a funny line in the clip from South Korea where he says that, unlike President Barack Hussein Obama, he created private-sector jobs and Obama created public-sector jobs—which is so funny, because Obama cut public-sector [jobs]—public-sector jobs decreased under President Obama’s tenure.
But no, the president, both in his first term—massive amounts of job losses, given his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. And, you know, we have really seen a slump in the job market since the president took over, after a decent year last year under President Biden, and a couple years before that—great, tight labor market years.
Sargent: What do you read into the layoffs? Do you think that maybe the job market is really kind of teetering? How should we understand that?
Pancotti: I think that the layoff announcements from the big companies aren’t great. They are somewhat indicative of this AI boom. Amazon has said that they will try to automate a ton of their operations over the coming years. Some of these are a result of the AI boom, or natural attrition because of automation, or whatever.
But a lot of these are a result of companies dealing with the effects of Trump’s economic calamity—whether it be his tariffs or the cancellation of lots and lots of public investments into clean energy, given the rollback of the Inflation Reduction Act and just overall business conditions.
I mean, why, as a business, would you take a risk right now on hiring if you don’t have to? I think that the bigger thing that I worry about is layoffs among small businesses. We have seen hiring basically freeze for small businesses, and in many cases, they are doing layoffs. They are getting hit the hardest by Trump’s tariffs and the overall uncertainty in the economy, given declines in consumer spending—especially among low- and middle-income Americans.
And so I worry a lot more about kind of the “Main Street” layoffs than I do the big ones. But the big companies employ millions of people around this country, and we are starting to see that unemployment rate tick up—and the people who have been unemployed for a while are continuing to [be] so. These spells of unemployment are very long.
Sargent: Well, it seems like a really bad time for Trump’s ballroom to be dominating the news. His tearing down of White House structures—which is probably illegal—to build this gilded playroom for rich people is landing pretty badly with the public.
Some numbers: A new YouGov poll finds Americans disapprove of the destruction of the East Wing by 57 percent to 26 percent, and they disapprove of the plans for the ballroom by even more—61 percent to 25 percent.
CNN’s Aaron Blake, I thought, had an interesting point, which is that Trump has no concern whatsoever for the optics of all this. What do you think of all that?
Pancotti: Trump has continued to not have concern for the optics throughout his entire presidency—whether it be having all of the big tech CEOs attend his inauguration and canceling the outdoor activities for millions of Americans, or Elon Musk parading around the White House for months at record-low disapproval ratings.
His budget law is completely unpopular with the vast majority of Americans. And now he’s bailing out Argentina and tearing down the East Wing while millions of Americans can’t afford their groceries and their health care.
He seems to care less about his popularity this time around. And, in fact, we’ve seen him dip to really historic lows on approval on the economy. I don’t know—maybe he thinks the ballroom is a jobs program for construction workers.
Sargent: Yeah, possibly. I think it’s very plausible that the the ballroom fiasco is getting significantly worse for him now. If you think about it playing against the backdrop of all these bad economic headlines, and then sort of in the corner, there’s the sideshow where his family is getting rich off crypto schemes. That package altogether seems really bad. I got to think that the shrewder political minds in the White House are telling Trump, “This ballroom thing is getting out of hand.” What do you think?
Pancotti: I don’t know. I’m really curious to know—and Groundwork has polling in the field right now to find out the awareness on the East Wing.
I’ve seen pictures go around, and I’ve been to the East Wing, and some of the pictures I saw—I could not tell you that that’s where they were taken—that policymakers are throwing up on the site formerly known as Twitter.
I’m curious to see what awareness is. I think that American families are much more focused on how much money it costs to put their kids in costumes this Friday for Halloween, how much money their health care premiums and their groceries are going to cost. That is really where their focus is.
Trump is really trying to distract them from the fact that those prices are higher—and maybe he thinks that this will fix that problem, and it obviously will not. And I think the American people will see through that.
Sargent: I think it’s a powerful optic for people at the same time, though. It seems to really be resonating in a way that very few other things are. Not at all to say that, it’s more important to people than their own economic situations.
Pancotti: Amidst the backdrop of millions of people losing their health care and not being able to afford groceries—I mean, just look at the lines outside of food banks this month. I can’t imagine what they’ll be next month as we head into Thanksgiving and the Christmas season.
I think the picture it paints is awful. And I’m sure once it’s built, it’ll be decked out in gold and really a backdrop to what the rest of Americans are feeling—which is the complete opposite of this gilded age he’s trying to build for him and his donor friends.
He clearly just doesn’t care about this job. He’s not involved in the shutdown talks at all. He sent Vice President JD Vance to the Senate lunch yesterday. He has really not weighed in, other than having this one meeting with Democratic leaders.
He seems to not care that the government is shut down. He seems to not care about this legislation passed over the summer that will be the kind of, “crowning achievement” of his second term. He seems to really just care about building ballrooms and hanging out with his tech CEO friends. And I think that’s pretty emblematic of where his priorities are.
Sargent: I want to try to go big picture. I think it’s going to be hard for a lot of D.C. reporters and pundits to start to talk about Trump as being out of touch on the economy—because he did well with working-class voters in the election and because everyone keeps wrongly describing his plans as economic populism or whatever.
There’s almost this built-in assumption that he’s just got his finger on the pulse of what’s going on with working people. But if a Democrat did any of this, the story would instantly be that they’re totally out of touch.
Is there some way for Democrats and liberals—and people like you and people like me—to get it into the discourse a little more that Trump is completely out of touch on the economy?
Pancotti: I think we are already seeing this. Gallup had data out that revealed that 47 percent of voters believed Democrats would do a better job of keeping the country prosperous, while 43 percent believed Republicans would do a better job. That advantage is the largest Democrats have had since 2012.
This is a huge shift. I saw other data showing that party registrations are up for Democrats by four or five points over the last few months. I think people are realizing very, very quickly that this president is not working for them, is not bringing prices down, is really just in office to take gold bars from tech CEOs and build his little ballroom.
And so the nice thing is Trump is kind of doing that work for us. I think the bigger thing is that eventually Democrats are going to have to say, We are for X, not just We are against Trump.
And so I think the pivotal thing will be things like, you know, what we see out of the mayoral election in New York—Mamdani coming out and saying, Democrats are for making life more affordable for you and taking care of you and your family. And I think that that will be the way we seal this up.
The nice thing is that the president has really given a layup for that. The unfortunate part of that is that the American people are paying the price for that.
Sargent: Yeah, I think we’re going to learn a lot from the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections. I suspect that they will show that there’s this kind of move toward Democrats on the economy as well.
I just want to dwell a little bit more on the imbalance we’ve got in our discourse, because you’ve been following this stuff for some time—you’ll appreciate this. Under Democratic presidents, there are always these endless debates within the party about whether the president should dare say the economy is improving even a little bit. You know, if the president says that, everybody fears there will be this huge public backlash, everybody fears.
But then Trump just goes out and just makes shit up with abandon, and there’s never any debate like that among Republicans. Like, imagine some kind of equivalent to the ballroom happening under a Dem—you’d get, like, a thousand Dem operatives quoted lecturing in the press that “this is totally out of touch, that was a huge mistake.” Under Trump? Nothing like that.
Why do you think there’s this disconnect?
Pancotti: I don’t know. There is this interesting thing where Marjorie Taylor Greene, over the last two weeks, has caught a lot of flak from her party for saying, you know, the health care cliff for Affordable Care Act premiums—and premiums in general—are just rising. And she has gone out of step with the party line over the last few weeks to say, we really need to do something about this.
I don’t know that I trust Marjorie Taylor Greene to solve this problem or to put her money where her mouth is when push comes to shove. But you are, I think, realizing that this right-wing populism, so to speak, is not actually very populist.
And conversely, you’re seeing more centrist Democrats, like Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, run on utility rate price hikes. She’s declaring a state of emergency to prevent utility bills from rising. And I think that the more Democrats can take up that progressive populism, it’s really important.
But yeah, you do have this issue where, in the party, there is a group of centrists that really like to lecture people. You know, we at Groundwork were talking about greedflation in early 2022, and every economist in town—and every person who was stacked in President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers—was yelling and hemming and hawing over the things we were saying. And lo and behold, when President Biden finally said these companies are ripping you off, people agreed with him.
So yeah, there is this aspect of, some Democrats—I think we can get in this habit of talking down to people, or of shapeshifting so much that we really don’t say the thing that we mean.
And again, with Mamdani, I think he is calling the shots as it is. And the more I think the party turns to that—you know, when he says that Andrew Cuomo doesn’t care about lowering the prices for you and your family—that is a really important thing. And I think the more Democrats can say that about Donald Trump, that is the way to break him.
You do have this issue where he just lies. I don’t know that Democrats should lie—but the nice thing is, we don’t need to right now, given what’s going on.
Sargent: Yeah. You brought up these numbers—Gallup numbers—showing that Democrats kind of have this advantage on the economy in a sense, over Republicans, in a way that we’ve never seen before.
And as you point out, there’s kind of a through line with all these candidates, and it really crosses ideological lines in a big way. You’ve got Zohran Mamdani, who’s a democratic socialist, and you’ve got Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, who are both pretty centrist Democrats—certainly not democratic socialists—but they’re all talking the same language.
And it’s all aimed right at the cost question, at exactly the moment when Trump is really tanking on costs. I think he was down by 31 points in a recent poll on costs and inflation.
Is there really the prospect for a reversal of fortune for Democrats here? I mean, candidly, it’s still pretty tough out there for Democrats. Can they actually grab the mantle of the cost issue and take it from Trump, or not?
Pancotti: I hope so. I hope they understand that the assignment is there and that the path forward is there.
I will say, I think, we’ve been doing a bunch of work on this to try to say—we find in all of our message testing and all of our research, when we talk to voters, this is the number one thing they talk about. We’ve talked to Trump supporters. We’ve talked to people who switched from Biden to Trump. We’ve talked to people who supported Trump in all three elections where his name was on the ballot for president.
And across the board, all voters just want to be able to put food on the table for their family and have a little bit of breathing room—that if your kid falls at the playground, it’s not going to put you into bankruptcy. And it just seems like real malpractice for politicians on either side of the aisle to not address that head-on.
And I think the Democrats are really getting the point there. And the nice thing is, Trump is not doing himself any favors between his tariffs and the rest of his policies, where he just continues to drive up the cost of both essentials and just the little extras, right? It’s just more expensive to take your kid to Disney World these days.
Sargent: And Democrats can connect it to the ballroom since it’s such a potent symbol, right? What might that look like? What could the Democratic discourse look like if they do that? Just to close this out.
Pancotti: Yeah, I think whether it’s the ballroom or Argentina, this is really what we did with Elon Musk successfully. I think during the DOGE thing, Democrats were really able to immediately—and this is, you know, here at Groundwork—we fielded a poll in very early January and got the results out to try to tank Elon Musk, to show people that Elon Musk was taking the approval of the Trump administration very early on.
And I think presenting Democrats with those opportunities—to show them where they can capitalize on this, whether it’s the ballroom or Argentina—to say, look, Trump campaigned on lowering prices on day one, that is what he vowed to do. And when he got into office, he handed Elon Musk the keys to the car—and he crashed it.
While you were standing in the line at the food bank, he was focused on building a gold-trimmed ballroom or sending your taxpayer dollars over to Argentina, instead of making sure that you could afford your health care.
So really, regardless of what the opportunity is, the thing is, this guy screws up every single day. And so capitalizing on that and pivoting back to an affordability angle, I think, is the path forward here for Democrats.
Sargent: Yeah. As long as Democrats sort of start with the basic premise that Trump is in a weak position right now, it sort of really unspools from there. Elizabeth Pancotti, thanks so much for talking to us. That was fantastic.
Pancotti: Thanks so much.