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Trump’s 2026 affordability message competes with foreign policy push

In the closing weeks of 2025, President Donald Trump gave a prime-time speech on affordability and launched a swing-state rally tour that his advisers said would show voters his focus on domestic concerns - a messaging push intended to ramp up at the start of the year.

But the president’s first major act in the new year was a military operation in Venezuela that led to Trump on Jan. 3 saying that the United States will “run” the South American country indefinitely. In the following days, Trump issued threats of military action in Iran and Colombia, hinted at U.S. intervention in Mexico and renewed his interest in taking ownership of Greenland.

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The result has been a muddled opening message of the midterm election year, with Trump making clear that he has no plans to back down from a growing list of foreign entanglements, while the White House tries to assure voters that the president is delivering on promises to make life more affordable.

Mindful of the looming midterm elections, White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have sought to cast the Venezuela mission as one that will ultimately improve U.S. security and domestic quality of life, arguing that the capture of President Nicolás Maduro will stem the flow of illegal drugs and Venezuelan criminals from entering the United States. Trump, meanwhile, has also suggested that domestic gas prices will continue to drop as a result of his administration taking control of Venezuela’s oil sales. On Friday, he hosted U.S. oil executives at the White House to discuss the situation.

Administration officials have long cautioned that more significant economic relief would come later in 2026, when the White House says policies have had time to kick in, said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist who ran a pro-Trump super PAC during the 2024 election. Projecting strength on the administration’s foreign policy in the meantime, he noted, makes sense.

“What are you going to say for the next six months? ‘It’s coming, it’s coming?’ Or you talk about doing things that also help the country,” Carney said.

Republicans are desperate to keep control of both the House and Senate, which would defy political history in a midterm election. They’ve seen shrinking approval in polling and know the GOP’s ability to carry out more of Trump’s agenda will be blocked if Republicans lose control in Congress.

Trump’s diffuse focus has taken attention from issues Republicans have tried to make the focus of their midterm messaging, said Republican pollster Brent Buchanan, the president and founder of the political polling firm Cygnal.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Buchanan said. “You do these big wins on affordability, and then they’re covered up by an ICE raid or a presidential capture operation.”

But contending with complex issues now allows Trump to be more incisive about the economy later in the year, when more voters are tuned in, Buchanan said.

“It’s not that he’s not doing anything about affordability. It’s that his team is realizing that there are macro global issues that have to be solved now … and they’re willing to take the pain now for the benefit at the right time.”

Amid Trump’s ongoing efforts to “rebuild” Venezuela’s oil infrastructure and ensure continuity of government there, Trump continued to hold domestic policy meetings this week, twice meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and others from the department to discuss health care, according to a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss his meeting schedule. Trump also met with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner about housing affordability this week, and he gathered with his trade team to discuss tariff policy, the official added.

White House advisers are making plans for the president to resume his domestic affordability tour, which kicked off in December with rallies in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, with a visit next week to another swing state, according to the senior White House official, who said the details were still being finalized. Trump and several Cabinet officials will then set off later this month for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

On Wednesday, Trump announced broad strokes of a housing affordability initiative that will include limiting private equity groups from buying up single-family homes - an effort that could blunt Democrats’ planned messaging this year about housing issues. But details of that plan are still being ironed out, along with the White House’s strategy to tackle health care costs, the White House official said. Trump said he would reveal more about his affordable housing plan not at an upcoming rally, but when he speaks in Davos to an international audience of business, government, academic and other cultural leaders.

On Friday evening, Trump posted to Truth Social that he was “calling for” credit card companies to cap interest rates at 10 percent effective Jan. 20, though he did not say how he would ensure compliance. “Please be informed that we will no longer let the American public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging interest rates of 20 to 30%, and even more,” Trump wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Washington Post that Trump “will be announcing more plans in the coming weeks and months to lower the cost of living for Americans and continue the positive economic trend that we are seeing.”

She said Trump remains focused on livelihood in America even as he carries out ambitious foreign policy projects.

“Lowering prices and rebuilding our economy has been and will continue to be the top priority for President Trump,” Leavitt said. “The president has duties to fulfill as commander in chief and the leader of the free world, but his core focus always remains on the American people and our country.”

Limited polling conducted since the Venezuela operation hasn’t shown a notable effect on Trump’s overall approval rating, which the president has struggled for months to improve. A Post average of national polls in December and early January found Trump with 40 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval - marking a worse rating than midyear but a slight improvement over his lowest polling position in November.

Americans are split largely along partisan lines about the U.S. sending the military to Venezuela to capture Maduro, with Republicans broadly supporting the operation and Democrats opposing it, Post and Reuters/Ipsos surveys found. But the Reuters poll also found that nearly three-quarters of Americans say they’re concerned the U.S. will become “too involved” in Venezuela, a sign that Trump could eventually face blowback from voters if U.S. action there increases.

Don Scoma, 72, a retired employee of the city of New York who now lives in Delray Beach, Florida and who voted for Trump in 2024, said he’s not sure whether the president will be able to deliver on all the things he’s taking on, something that will make it hard for voters to see him as a leader who gets things done for everyday Americans.

“I think he’s trying to do too many things at once, therefore his focus is fragmented to an extent,” said Scoma, who identifies as a political independent. “He’s trying to do things in the Middle East. He has Ukraine. He’s dealing with Russia. He’s dealing with Europe. He just invaded a South American country.”

“I don’t think it’s having a negative effect on America in a broad sense, but I don’t think people are going to like how fragmented he’s become.”

But a laser focus with messaging is, characteristically, not Trump’s approach. On Tuesday, the president went to the Kennedy Center to meet with House Republicans and strategize about this year’s midterms. Through an hour and a half of remarks, he meandered through dozens of topics, at one point boasting about not reading from “this crazy teleprompter” and joking about his verbal “weave.”

Trump outlined a set of what he said he sees as winning messages: a health care push focused on lower drug prices, cultural issues such as opposing transgender athletes in women’s sports and cracking down on violent crime. And he instructed Republicans to set internal disputes aside and focus on a disciplined message that he believes can carry them in November, while at one point reiterating his own fear of being targeted by Democrats: “They’ll find a way to impeach me,” he said.

In response to questions from The Post, a White House official pointed to a list of economic accomplishments since Trump reentered office nearly a year ago, including inflation cooling more than experts expected; a drop in gas prices and slight reductions in the cost of some groceries; mortgage rates and rent prices falling; and tax cuts passed in last year’s Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill.

Affordability will probably be a prominent theme in Trump’s State of the Union speech in late February, according to White House advisers.

Robert Blizzard, another Republican pollster, said Trump’s focus on foreign policy will matter most if voters feel domestic policy is stalled as a result.

“The risk isn’t Venezuela or focusing on Arctic security with Greenland,” Blizzard said. “It’s the lack of tangible economic wins people can feel week to week. Republicans need the White House to keep affordability front and center rhetorically and continue to show measurable progress voters can understand.”

Carney, who worked in the George H.W. Bush White House, said some past presidents have “had a difficult time” spreading out their focus but believes Trump is an exception.

The U.S. military footprint in Venezuela should be minimized, he said - voters probably won’t mind running basic operations there, but “they care about body bags at Dover Air Force Base and sending hundreds and thousands of troops to pacify Venezuela.” And if people feel like they have more money to spend at the grocery store just ahead of midterm voting, then the administration could succeed at messaging both.

“Ultimately, people have to feel better about their personal economy come Labor Day,” Carney said. “And if that’s the case, then the midterms will not be the bloodbath that everybody on the left is predicting and hoping for.”