A Fox News host admitted that surging grocery and gas prices are sinking Donald Trump’s standing with voters just weeks before the midterms.
Fox News’ Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume made the case on Wednesday’s episode of Special Report, pointing to a Fox News survey released hours earlier that found 63 percent of voters say the Trump administration has made the economy worse, up 11 percentage points from a year ago.
The poll was released on the same day Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh announced the central bank’s first interest rate hike since 2023, a quarter-point increase driven largely by inflation tied to the war in Iran.
“The Fed is concerned about the same thing that our polling that came out today suggests the American public is concerned about,” Hume said, before reading from the survey.
“That’s the issue that helped elect Donald Trump, and I’m talking about inflation. Right now, the question has been raised, ‘Has the Trump administration made the economy better or worse?’ Fully 63 percent say he’s made it worse, and that’s 11 percentage points higher than the number of people who thought that last year.”
Hume went on to cite more grim figures from the same poll, noting that 62 percent of respondents called grocery prices a “major problem” for their families, while 61 percent said the same about gas prices.
“The president was elected in the hope, I believe, that inflation could be brought under control,” Hume continued. “And to some extent on many products it has, but when it comes to gasoline, it reflects on the Iran war, and groceries, which have continued to go up. The problem is worse. And this is plaguing the Republicans… and it’s certainly plaguing the president. And it’s driving down his approval rating.”
His comments came just hours after Trump, 80, called on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, only for Warsh to announce a rate hike instead, citing persistent inflation concerns.
Trump’s approval rating has been sinking across nearly every major poll. A University of Massachusetts Amherst survey from August put his approval at just 32 percent, while a separate poll found Democrats leading Republicans 51 percent to 43 percent on a generic congressional ballot.
Special Report host Bret Baier then aired a clip of Vice President JD Vance urging voters to give Republicans “another chance” in the November midterms, a line Hume didn’t let slide without pushback of his own.
“Bret, he has a point,” Hume said. “The economy is growing, jobs are pretty plentiful. The poverty rate, I believe, hit its lowest point in modern history just about now. So, the economy is doing, in many respects, quite well. There’s growth. There’s the things you want. But this business with prices is just, it’s just killing this administration and the president’s party.”
