Trump scoffs at ‘affordability’ as he touts economic policies at Georgia rally

Trump speaks at Wheeler high school in Marietta, Georgia, on Wednesday. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters View image in fullscreen Trump speaks at Wheeler high school in Marietta, Georgia, on Wednesday. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters Trump scoffs at ‘affordability’ as he touts economic policies at Georgia rally President visits swing state to promote ‘Trump accounts’ and says high prices lingering from Joe Biden’s presidency Donald Trump scoffed at the word “affordability” as a political message, describing it at a campaign rally on Wednesday as a term concocted by Democratic political consultants to criticize his presidency. Yet even as the president dismissed the notion of affordability, he devoted much of his speech at Wheeler high school to touting the bread-and-butter benefits of his economic policies. US trade chief defends tariffs as Democrats say Trump ‘in denial’ over price hikes Read more “So I just want you to remember that if you’re paying a little bit more – a lot of it’s come down now, we got it coming down very rapidly actually,” Trump said in Marietta, an Atlanta suburb, casting higher prices today as a lingering effect of the Biden administration. Americans are broadly disappointed with Trump’s handling of the economy, with just 33% of voters approving in a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll , an assessment that could hurt his party’s hopes of bucking historical precedent and retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. The president was in Georgia , a politically divided state where high-profile contests for governor and Senate are playing out, to promote his newly funded “Trump accounts”, which establish tax-free investment funds for every child born through 2028, seeded with $1,000 from the federal government. Speaking before the president, treasury secretary Scott Bessent described the accounts as the “triumph of capitalism over socialism”, taking a swipe at New York mayor Zohran Mamdani. “Look around our campuses and classrooms today – apart from those here at Wheeler, of course – you will find that our students are being sold the seductive lie that government can solve every problem, redistribute every dollar and supplant its judgment for our own,” Bessent said. “In New York, the current mayor rose to power by repackaging failed ideals of the past as a moral cause of the future. But in Georgia, you know that beneath that youthful veneer lies the oldest impulse in politics which is to concentrate power and then to call it compassion.” Several Republican candidates joined Trump in Marietta, where the president likened US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat seeking re-election in one of the most closely watched races of the cycle, to the character Pee-wee Herman, portrayed by the late actor Paul Reubens. Polling shows Ossoff with a lead over the Republican nominee in the Senate race, US congressman Mike Collins, who was in Washington where his vote was needed to help pass a budget bill to fund the Iran war