Despite Costs Soaring Under His Watch, Trump Tries to Jack Mamdani's 'Affordability' Message

In the wake of a top-to-bottom shellacking of Republicans across the country in Tuesday's elections, President Donald Trump is making a concerted effort to co-opt the "affordability"-focused messaging that catapulted the once-obscure democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to become New York City's next mayor.

MSNBC columnist Steve Benen notes that before Election Day, Trump had never once uttered the word "affordability" in his more than a decade using Twitter/X. But since Tuesday, it's been all he can talk about.

After Democrats romped in virtually every important race from Virginia to California to New Jersey, the president explained that it was because "they have this new word called affordability" and Republicans "don't talk about it enough."

He followed it by claiming that “2025 Thanksgiving dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving dinner under [former President Joe] Biden, according to Walmart. My cost are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats ‘affordability’ issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!”

He later claimed, completely falsely, that America was nearing "almost $2 for gasoline," and that Republicans "are the ones who've done a great job on affordability... they said we lost an election on affordability. It’s a con job."

Focusing aggressively on the cost of living and blaming his opponents for it being out of control has worked for Trump in the past. Polls from his 2024 reelection showed that inflation and the cost of living were the leading issues under Biden that drove voters away from Democrats and into Trump's camp.

But Mamdani will enter office with the status of an outsider and a slew of untested policy proposals meant to concretely address New York's untenable cost of living, like a freeze on rent hikes, free public transit, and the opening of public grocery stores.

Trump, on the other hand, is nearly a year into his second presidential term, during which he has often downplayed voters' concerns about rising costs, even telling them they'd need to endure "some pain" in order to reap the benefits of his agenda.

Under his watch, and often directly due to his own policy decisions, the crisis of affordability that drove him to the White House has only accelerated, with 2.9% yearly inflation in August, the last month for which there is data due to the government shutdown.

His claims about both grocery and energy prices are both untrue. Energy prices have actually increased by 10% since Trump took office, and the average regular gas price was not nearing $2 per gallon, as Trump claimed, but more than $3 as of Monday.

While high energy costs can be attributed to external factors like increased power demand from artificial intelligence data centers and energy bottlenecks resulting from the war in Ukraine, the New York Times editorial board noted last month that "Trump energy policies are not helping—and will soon make matters worse."

The foremost culprit is his slashing of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax credits and investments into renewable energy sources like wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles. As the board explained:

Energy prices are likely to rise the most in states that have not prioritized clean energy, including Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma, experts say. The repeal of the tax credits alone may push electricity prices almost 10% higher than they would be otherwise by 2029, according to National Economic Research Associates, a consulting firm. Gas prices will also increase over the next decade, according to Rhodium Group, a think tank, as consumers who would otherwise have driven electric cars continue using vehicles that burn fossil fuels.

Grocery prices have also spiked by 2.7% since last year, increasing each month except one since he took office. Some of the products that have seen the most dramatic increases are those impacted by Trump's aggressive tariff regime, both because they are frequently imported like coffee or bananas, or commonly exported like beef, and subject to the retaliatory tariffs of countries against which Trump has waged his trade war.

His "mass deportation" agenda, meanwhile, has gutted the nation's agricultural labor force, which is 80% foreign-born, causing supply shortages and, as a result, higher prices for domestic goods.

On the other major plank of Mamdani's affordability agenda, the uncontrolled cost of housing has also been supercharged by Trump's policies. His tariffs have caused the cost of building materials to spike, slowing the rate of housing construction.

And as a record high 22 million renters are considered cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing, Trump's 2026 fiscal year budget proposed to slash rental assistance by nearly 43%. In September, ProPublica also obtained two plans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) expected to place burdensome new work requirements and time limits on those living in public housing, which could jeopardize assistance for 4 million people.

While Trump has made a sharp pivot toward "affordability" rhetoric, his actions amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has become the longest in US history, have belied that commitment.

Though Trump acknowledged that Tuesday's Election Night drubbing suggested Republicans were "losing" the shutdown, Republicans have insisted they won't come to the table to negotiate to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that caused the impasse in the first place.

As a result, Americans are already beginning to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket as the enrollment period for next year begins. And if the GOP refuses to extend the credits, over 22 million Americans are expected to see their premiums more than double on average in 2026, according to KFF.

And contrary to fighting the rising prices of food, the Trump administration has used the shutdown to choke off food assistance to 42 million Americans eligible for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) in defiance of orders from two federal judges.

Under a proposed plan to only partially fund the program, the average SNAP recipient would have their benefits cut by 61%, while millions will lose their benefits for November entirely, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

According to The Economist, Trump's approval rating has tanked to just 39%, while disapproval is at 58%. It's an all-time low over both his terms as president. By far the sharpest decrease in his approval rating has come on prices and inflation. Where he enjoyed a net +5 rating on the issue at the start of his term, it had utterly collapsed to -33 as of November 2.

"Trump could theoretically fix his political problems if he readjusts his policy framework and focuses on affordability, corporate power, and working with Democrats instead of the establishment GOP," said economic journalist Matt Stoller in a post on social media. "But there's zero chance he does that. He can't. He's George W. Trump."