Steve Bannon guest says the Trump administration does not understand affordability concerns: “You can't fix a problem if you don't understand it. And the White House does not understand it.”
Jim Rickards: “80% of the population is being left behind. And that's what the White House doesn't see and you have to see that to really address what people are concerned about.”
Published
Citation
From the February 25, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
JIM RICKARDS (GUEST): Where this fell down and where I'll be - by the way, I voted for Trump 6 times in primaries and general elections, so I'm on his side, but where he, I would say failed, this has to do with the politics of it. Where do we go between here and the midterm? Did he move the needle?
You know, John Solomon had a very good analysis. He said the Democrats don't have any issues except I hate Trump. They actually do have one. It's the affordability issue. The White House was slow to realize that. I think Susie Wiles was important in kind of getting them focused on that, but they still don't understand it.
The White House does not understand the affordability issue. They're talking about a lot of things. When Trump said inflation is plummeting, it's not plummeting. Actually, the latest data, it's about the same, up a little bit by some measures, down by others, but it's not really moving a lot.
But here's the thing, we don't have prices going down. When you say inflation is slowing, they're still going up, and they're going up a very high base.
Now, was this Biden's fault? Absolutely. This was the Democrats and Biden's fault. The Inflation Reduction Act, which was a trillion-dollar fraud, and then the COVID Act, which Biden put in, which was another trillion dollar, you know, bonanza, that's what caused the inflation.
But at this point the American people don't care. They're like, OK, yeah, we get it. The Democrats caused it. That's why we elected Trump. But now what are you going to do about it?
And you can't fix a problem if you don't understand it. And the White House does not understand it.
And here's why. They're looking at, you know, GDP, inflation, household income, etc. They're important numbers and some of them are, you know, mildly positive in that sense, but they're all averages. And the White House doesn't understand that an average hides as much as it reveals.
So even if the average favors you, you have to look behind the average and say, OK, what's the degree distribution, not to get geeky, but it's like, OK, an average is just a whole bunch of people, add them up, divide, there's your average.
But what's behind it? What's the skew? And what you find is that income is, you know, 80 or 90% of the gains on average are going to 10 to 20% of the people. Which means 80% of the population is being left behind. And that's what the White House doesn't see and you have to see that to really address what people are concerned about. So theatrics, great. Policy, great. I think the fact that you said very little about the war with Iran was revealing, that means the war is coming.
But on the big issue, which is affordability, which is what the midterms will probably turn on, I think the White House still doesn't get it.