THE MORNING RANT: Beware the Concern Trolls Advising Trump to Abandon His Agenda Because of the Economy

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

We’re hearing that phrase a lot recently, especially after Democrats just won elections in three deep blue states that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. Illogically, three blue states continuing to vote blue is being used as an excuse by “concerned” pundits to call for President Trump to surrender the MAGA agenda and return to the destructive policies of the Biden-era.

Despite the drumbeat of “It’s the economy, stupid,” it’s not just the economy that matters. “It’s” also the mess from Biden’s open border, and it’s the woke propaganda mills that don’t teach our children, and it’s the chemical warfare that is being inflicted on our shores via imported fentanyl, and it’s the threat of jihadi violence, and it’s the invasion of women’s spaces by cross-dressing men, etc.

Not only can President Trump fight all those battles simultaneously, he must fight all those battles. That’s what we elected him to do. But there is suddenly a chorus of people demanding that Trump pivot to the economy and only the economy. Coincidentally, this chorus is heavily represented by the permanent Never-Trump pundit class from whom any political prescription should be considered a poison pill.

Those demanding that Trump abandon all his successful endeavors to focus on the economy are setting him up for failure. Deliberately.

There is also incredible dishonesty in the efforts of false-flag conservatives to blame high-prices on President Trump. Overall prices haven’t deflated from the Biden-era inflation crisis, and these subversive “conservatives” are now trying to blame Trump for prices elevated by Biden economic policies. They worshipfully remember Ronald Reagan stopping Carter-era inflation, but they know darn well that prices didn’t deflate once Reagan’s policies took hold. It’s no different now. Or they’ll get cute and claim that cutting inflation from 9.0% to 3.1% isn’t fast enough improvement, because inflation really needs to be 2.9%. They don’t actually care about prices or inflation, they care about damaging Trump’s ability to govern.

Above all else, these concern trolls want the outsourcing of jobs to resume, and they desperately want the tariffs benefiting American labor to be removed. These people despise the thought of an American-citizen doing a job that could otherwise be outsourced to unregulated, inexpensive foreign labor. For those jobs that can’t be offshored, they are also despondent that Trump has dried up the pipeline of off-the-books, illegal labor by gaining control of the border.

Here is but a small sample from last week of Never Trumpers offering some America-last economic advice to Mr. Trump:

“Gaslighting Americans on inflation is a bad idea” [Washington Examiner – David Harsanyi – 11/13/2025]

Hitting consumers with billions in sales tax increases in the guise of tariffs over the last year isn't a much better strategy for Trump. Most economists predicted that tariffs would contribute to price hikes, and yet Trump's love of protectionism trumped pragmatism.

“Trump Dismisses Economic Anxiety at His Own Peril” [National Review - Charles C.W. Cooke – 11/12/2025]

Irrespective of one’s view of the merits of tariffs per se, it ought to have been thoroughly obvious to President Trump that the imposition of a slew of draconian import taxes would make his goal of lower costs that much harder.

While Never Trumpers are going to Never Trump, what most concerns me is that I am seeing some good, solid, MAGA conservatives taking the bait and offering up their own “It’s the economy, stupid” columns / social media posts. It’s a trap.

Can you imagine the MAGA backlash if Trump announced that he was opening up the border again to lower prices via cheap, illegal labor. Or what if Trump announced that foreign fentanyl boats are welcome to resume trafficking fentanyl to our shores without fear of military attack, because the Trump administration is focusing exclusively on the economy. Those actions are actually what the Never Trump concern trolls are trying to bring about via a groundswell of “It’s the economy, stupid” advocacy from actual conservatives.

The economy matters, and so do all the other issues that resulted in Donald Trump’s election. Just as it took a few years for Ronald Reagan to undo the stagflation of the Nixon-Carter years, it will take President Trump a few years to undo the damage of the America-last economic agenda of the Bush-Obama-Biden years. Not fixing all that damage in just a few months won’t hurt President Trump near as much as if he backtracks on his signature accomplishments and does nothing but react to day-to-day economic headlines.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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