Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
President Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on the false notion that the policies put in place by President Joe Biden (along with Vice President Kamala Harris) had created economic chaos and out-of-control inflation.
This was untrue. In fact, economic data showed that conditions improved in most categories under Biden. Unemployment rates improved, especially in contrast to the economic downturn that occurred under Trump’s mishandling of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Regardless, Trump promised to fix all of the purported problems—like soaring egg prices—on “Day 1” of his presidency.
That didn’t happen and in recent weeks, economic conditions have worsened. Trump’s actions since he was sworn in on Jan. 20, from slashing the federal workforce via Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to his haphazard and widely derided tariff announcements, have led to rising fears of an economic slowdown and possible recession.
The major stock indices fell for multiple days in a row in response to Trump’s unpredictable actions. But despite his extensive history of pointing to the market as validation or repudiation of economic action, Trump now says the markets are merely experiencing a “period of transition.”
And Trump’s not the only one who is shrugging his shoulders.
His fellow Republican elected officials are downplaying recession fears and making excuses for Trump’s erratic tariff actions. Pro-Trump conservative media outlets like Fox News are all-in as well. On a recent episode of her prime-time show, host Laura Ingraham told viewers to “ignore” news of the market melting down.
Why is this happening? Because Trump said so and the right’s guiding principle since he was elected in 2016 is simple: Do as he says.
The party that howled when former President Barack Obama bailed out the auto industry was quiet in 2020, when Trump bailed out farmers suffering as a result of his trade war with China. When the jobs market was rocked during Trump’s first term, the same Republicans who spent nearly a decade chastising Obama for slow job growth didn’t have much to say.
More recently, after falsely accusing Biden of politicizing the justice system, Trump installed a weird acolyte who authored Trump fan fiction as the head of the FBI—with near-unanimous support from GOP senators.
The Republican Party is now in thrall to Trump’s cult of personality and has abandoned the few tenuous principles that conservatives once prioritized.
Essentially, if Trump tells his supporters that the Earth is flat, they will turn on a dime and repeat the falsehood. Outlets like Fox News soon amplify the lie and build an echo chamber between themselves, Republican leaders, and Trump, repeating nonsense until it becomes a shared reality.
The Trump cult is so far gone that Republican voters are now cheering as their own relatives and friends are fired from their federal jobs at the capricious behest of his co-President Musk. But those same MAGA-philes didn’t even blink when the president turned the White House into a car lot and encouraged people to buy his buddy Elon’s $80,000 Teslas.
The mass delusion has now convinced many of those same supporters that they just have to tolerate rising prices for staple products, even though they likely would’ve rioted against paying more than $9 for a dozen eggs under a Democratic president.
For decades, conservatives have obliviously voted against their own interests when supporting candidates who cut social services and enact tax policies that hurt red state residents more than the rest of America. But under Trump, voting against their interests has become a point of pride—because as long as they please their cult leader, all is well.
