2026-10-02T15:28:12.133Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统为共和党即将到来的2026年中期选举失利找到了新借口：问题出在宣传策略，而非执政成果。
而问题在于，这番话里确实有几分道理——只是并非特朗普想要表达的那层意思。
过去两天里，特朗普反复抛出了这一所谓的解释。
“我们在宣传推广方面做得极差，而治理国家的表现却极为出色，”他周三在白宫表示。
“所以我说，我们的公共关系工作做得很差，但管理工作做得很棒——而后者才更重要，”他周四在达拉斯下飞机时补充道。
随后在德克萨斯州登顿的一场活动中，他说道：“我们唯一做得不好的就是公共关系。换句话说，我们的表现堪称 Phenomenal（卓越），但……也许我们在宣传方面做得很差。”
首先需要明确的是，这已是政客们屡试不爽的老调重弹。从政者往往会辩称，问题不在于自己的政绩有多出色，而在于未能让民众理解这一点。
卡玛拉·哈里斯在2024年竞选期间曾表示，她和乔·拜登没有“为自己的政绩争取到足够的赞誉”。2014年中期选举后，巴拉克·奥巴马将其团队的宣传问题称为“政治宣传的失败”。2012年共和党副总统候选人保罗·瑞安在竞选失利后也提出了类似观点。
而且通常来说，这类说辞确实有一定道理。
但对特朗普而言，这更多不过是一个方便的借口。他显然不仅面临宣传问题，还存在政绩问题——包括在选民认为最重要的议题上的表现。
而如果说宣传确实是问题所在，那主要是因为他的宣传策略——尤其是在经济议题上——糟糕透顶、适得其反，且从未真正做出改变。
有合理观点认为，美国经济的实际状况并不像民众想象的那么糟糕。但这种说法站不住脚，原因很简单：并非特朗普及其政党没有充分谈论这一点——持续的通胀和高油价无时无刻不在美国人眼前上演。
特朗普在2024年大选中借拜登政府时期以及新冠疫情期间的通胀飙升获益。但他非但没有像他承诺的那样迅速压低物价，反而推行了不受欢迎的政策，险些加剧了通胀问题——尤其是他的全球关税政策以及与伊朗的战争。
通过这些政策，特朗普几乎完全为经济后续走向承担了责任。
当前的通胀率（3.4%）高于他就职时的水平（3%）。每加仑4美元以上的油价每天都在提醒普通美国人，特朗普自行发动的伊朗战争给他们带来了直接成本，但几乎没有美国人明白这场战争的意义何在。
其结果是：据美联社-NORC民调显示，2022年中期选举前仅有44%的美国人将高物价主要归咎于拜登，而如今已有65%的美国人将其主要归咎于特朗普。
最近的马凯特大学法学院民调显示，64%对18%的美国人认为特朗普的政策提议将继续推高通胀。仅有41%的共和党人认为这些政策会降低通胀。
而特朗普在这些议题上的言论进一步加剧了这些问题。
首先，特朗普犯下了过度承诺的严重错误。
他承诺将油价降至每加仑2美元以下，但当前油价已超过4美元。他承诺将抵押贷款利率压低至3%以下，但当前利率已超过7%，达到2023年以来的最高水平。他承诺“在12个月内将你的能源价格削减一半”，但能源价格持续攀升。
他还承诺在就职首日就结束俄乌战争，并声称“不会发动战争”——这两项承诺他都已打破。
特朗普向来喜欢许下诸多宏大承诺，民众或许会忽略其中一些。但在涉及自身钱包的问题上，民众不会轻易放过。特朗普在他本应兑现的核心议题上搞砸了。
第二个原因是他对通胀问题全然无视且不屑一顾。
他没有体察美国民众在物价上涨方面的痛苦，也没有提出应对问题的方案，反而不厌其烦地虚假宣称物价实际上一直在下跌（尽管美国人在日常生活中就能看清真相）。他还荒唐地将民众对经济负担的担忧称为一场“骗局”。他也明确表露，相比解决通胀问题，他更热衷于华盛顿那些不受欢迎的翻新工程——比如宴会厅、倒影池和凯旋门。
即便特朗普对这些问题不屑一顾，副总统JD·万斯却采取了不同的策略，他在公开和私下场合都表示，应该认真对待并解决美国人的经济担忧。但特朗普并未附和这一观点。
民调结果再次证明，这对他的政党而言已是何等严重的问题。
哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）新闻民调显示，78%的美国人认为特朗普政府没有足够关注降低物价。CNN民调显示，73%的美国人认为特朗普“没有足够重视国家最重要的问题”。
第三个原因是特朗普及其团队一味指责拜登。但这一套说辞早已过时。
特朗普如今已就任总统20个月，并承诺会迅速轻松地解决这些问题。这意味着，“我接手的就是烂摊子”这种说辞，已经很难再获得选民的同情。而这位总统又通过其撼动经济的政策，进一步加剧了这一情况。
我早在2025年4月就曾撰文探讨过此事——就在特朗普宣布“解放日”全球关税政策后不久。即便在当时，NPR-PBS-马里斯特学院的民调就显示，60%的美国人认为当前的经济状况主要源于特朗普的政策，仅有39%的人认为主要是“遗留问题”。
这与其他近期总统的情况截然不同，包括特朗普的第一任期。这也进一步印证了，他已将自己与经济的走向牢牢绑定。
到次月，路透社-益普索民调显示，59%对37%的美国人认为，如果美国陷入衰退，那将是特朗普的过错，而非拜登的。
如果美国人在17或18个月前就得出了这样的结论，他们真的会突然改变想法吗？当然不会。
这也让最近几天的情况更具警示意义。
就在特朗普突然开始抱怨共和党宣传问题的同时，他却在加倍坚持那些让他陷入当前困境的论调。他在接受《时代》杂志采访时，花了大量时间大谈特谈美国人反感的白宫翻新工程。在得克萨斯州，他虚假宣称通胀已经下降，并称他的对手突然凭空造出了“经济负担”这个概念。而他和万斯也一直在强化指责拜登的策略。
这一切都毫无道理，而且一段时间以来一直如此。但特朗普不愿解决自己的政治问题，反而怪罪起了传声筒——哪怕他既是糟糕的传声筒，也是问题本身。
Trump blames the GOP’s problems on messaging. He’s right — but not how he thinks
2026-10-02T15:28:12.133Z / CNN
President Donald Trump has locked on to a new excuse for the GOP’s impending 2026 midterm losses: It’s the messaging, not the results.
And the thing is, there is some truth in there — just not in the way Trump intends.
Trump has rolled out this purported explanation repeatedly over the last two days.
“We’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion and an extremely great job of running the country,” he said Wednesday at the White House.
“So I say we’ve done a bad public relations job, but a great management job – and that’s more important,” he added Thursday upon landing in Dallas.
Then at an event in Denton, Texas: “The only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations. In other words, we’re doing a phenomenal job, but … maybe we’re doing a bad job in selling it.”
The first thing to note is that this is well-trodden territory. Politicians often maintain their problem is not how great they are, but failing to make people understand that.
Kamala Harris said during the 2024 campaign that she and Joe Biden hadn’t “taken adequate credit” for what they did. Barack Obama after the 2014 midterms called his team’s messaging problems a “failure of politics.” GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan argued much the same after his ticket’s loss in 2012.
And often, there is some truth in there.
But for Trump, this is more of a convenient excuse than anything else. He clearly has not only a messaging problem, but also a results problem — including on the issues voters indicate are most important to them.
And to the extent the messaging is the problem, it’s largely because his messaging — especially on the economy — is bad, counterproductive and hasn’t really changed.
There are credible arguments that the economy isn’t quite as bad as Americans think it is. But they fall flat for a simple reason, and it’s not that Trump and his party haven’t talked about it enough: Persistent inflation and high gas prices are constantly staring Americans in the face.
Trump got a boost in the 2024 election due to a spike in inflation during the Biden administration and amid the Covid-19 pandemic. But rather than drive down prices, like he promised to do instantly, he pursued unpopular policies that risked exacerbating the problem — especially his global tariffs and the Iran war.
With those policies, Trump took full ownership — more or less — of whatever happened next with the economy.
Inflation today (3.4%) is higher than it was when he took over (3%). And gas prices over $4 per gallon are a daily reminder of the direct costs to regular Americans of a war in Iran that Trump launched on his own but that few Americans see the point of.
The result: While just 44% of Americans blamed high prices mostly on Biden ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to AP-NORC polling, today 65% blame them mostly on Trump.
And a recent Marquette Law School poll showed Americans said 64%-18% that Trump’s policy proposals would continue to increase inflation. Only 41% of Republicans thought they would decrease inflation.
And Trump has compounded these problems by how he talks about these issues.
First off, Trump made the grave mistake of over-promising.
He promised gas under $2 per gallon; it’s over $4. He promised to bring down mortgage rates as low as under 3%; they’re over 7% and at their highest level since 2023. He promised to “cut your energy prices in half within 12 months”; energy prices have continued to climb.
He also pledged to end the Russia-Ukraine war on Day One and said he was “not going to start a war” — both promises he’s broken.
Trump has always made lots of big promises, and people might overlook some of them. But not when it comes to their pocketbooks. Trump dropped the ball on the one thing he really needed to deliver on.
The second reason is his utter neglect and dismissal of inflation.
Rather than feeling Americans’ pain on price increases and putting forward plans to deal with the problem, he’s instead falsely claimed — ad nauseam — that prices have actually been falling. (This despite Americans being able to see the truth in their everyday lives.) He’s bizarrely called affordability a “hoax.” He’s also made it abundantly clear he’s more interested in unpopular renovation projects in Washington — like ballrooms and reflecting pools and triumphal arches — than he is in addressing inflation.
Even as Trump has spoken dismissively of these issues, Vice President JD Vance has tried a different tack, arguing publicly and privately that Americans’ economic concerns should be taken seriously and dealt with. But Trump hasn’t echoed that.
And again, the polling bears out what a colossal problem this has become for his party.
CBS News polling has shown 78% of Americans said the Trump administration hasn’t focused enough on lowering prices. And CNN polling has shown 73% said Trump “hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.”
And the third reason is Trump’s and his team’s fixation on blaming Biden. But this argument went out the window long ago.
Trump has been in office now for 20 months and promised to deal with these problems quickly and easily. That’s already going to prompt less voter sympathy for the “I inherited this problem” argument. And then the president added to it with his economy-rocking policies.
I wrote about this back in April 2025 — shortly after Trump’s “Liberation Day” global tariffs announcement. Even then, an NPR-PBS-Marist College poll showed 60% of Americans said the current economic conditions were mostly due to Trump’s policies, versus just 39% who said they were mostly “inherited.”
That was simply not the case with other recent presidents, including Trump in his first term. And that reinforced how he had anchored himself to whatever happened with the economy.
By the following month, a Reuters-Ipsos poll showed Americans said 59%-37% that if the country fell into a recession, it would be Trump’s fault rather than Biden’s.
If Americans reached these conclusions 17 or 18 months ago, are they really going to be suddenly convinced of the opposite? Of course not.
And that’s what makes the last few days telling.
Even as Trump has suddenly started complaining about the GOP’s messaging problems, he has doubled down on the same messages that got him into this mess. He spent much of an interview with Time magazine obsessing over the White House renovations that Americans hate. In Texas, he falsely claimed inflation was down and that his foes had suddenly invented the concept of affordability. And he and Vance have only ramped up their blame-Biden strategy.
None of it makes sense, and it hasn’t for some time. But rather than fix his political problem, Trump would rather blame the messenger — even if he is both the poor messenger and the problem.
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