“I have no higher priority than making America affordable,” he told a raucous crowd in the key battleground of north-east Pennsylvania.
Then he changed tack, almost within a breath, shrugging off concerns about prices as a smear put about by Democrats.
“You know they always have a hoax,” he said. “The new word is affordability.”
It was the president’s biggest rally in months and sounded the starting gun in the campaign for next year’s midterm elections.
He had one job to do: convince Americans that he understood their pain over stubbornly high prices for everything from petrol to beef and that he was committed to making groceries more affordable.
“And I can’t say affordability hoax because I agree the prices were too high. I can’t call it a hoax because it’s misconstrued,” he told the crowds.
It was the issue that powered him to victory last year, and now his top aides believe he is the man to change the debate on prices, enabling the Republican Party to avoid losing the House of Representatives next year.
But he has been hard to persuade, intent on portraying his administration as nothing but a success instead of admitting that inflation remains high. In fact it has ticked back to about three percent, about the same as when Joe Biden left office.
1 Comment
***The Telegraph reports:***
Donald Trump said prices were too high, claimed he had fixed [inflation](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/14/uk-gdp-economy-trump-tariffs-reeves-tax-ftse-100-markets/), but that it was all a Democratic hoax anyway during a rally on affordability.
The speech, effectively kicking off the battle for the 2026 midterm elections, the next major US raft of elections, had the US president’s supporters in guffaws, but leaves work to be done [on the issue dominating American politics](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/27/us-economy-faces-most-perilous-moment-yet/).
“I have no higher priority than making America affordable,” he told a raucous crowd in the key battleground of north-east Pennsylvania.
Then he changed tack, almost within a breath, shrugging off concerns about prices as a smear put about by Democrats.
“You know they always have a hoax,” he said. “The new word is affordability.”
It was the president’s biggest rally in months and sounded the starting gun in the campaign for next year’s midterm elections.
He had one job to do: convince Americans that he understood their pain over stubbornly high prices for everything from petrol to beef and that he was committed to making groceries more affordable.
“And I can’t say affordability hoax because I agree the prices were too high. I can’t call it a hoax because it’s misconstrued,” he told the crowds.
It was the issue that powered him to victory last year, and now his top aides believe he is the man to change the debate on prices, enabling the Republican Party to avoid losing the House of Representatives next year.
But he has been hard to persuade, intent on portraying his administration as nothing but a success instead of admitting that inflation remains high. In fact it has ticked back to about three percent, about the same as when Joe Biden left office.
**Read more**: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/12/10/trump-prices-high-fix-inflation-pennsylvania-rally-dispatch/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/12/10/trump-prices-high-fix-inflation-pennsylvania-rally-dispatch/)