Trump Branded Cost-of-Living Crisis a ‘Hoax’ as He Kills Housing Bill, Maggie Haberman Claims

Donald Trump has been accused of dismissing America’s cost-of-living crisis as a ‘hoax’ and torpedoing a bipartisan housing bill in Washington this week, after refusing to sign it unless Congress first passed his hardline voter ID measure, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

For context, Haberman laid out the charge during an appearance on CNN on Wednesday, telling anchor Kaitlan Collins that the housing legislation had been crafted to address soaring affordability pressures that pollsters say are at the top of voters’ concerns heading into November’s midterm elections. Instead of seizing on that, she said, Donald Trump chose to hold the bill hostage to his own top legislative priority, a sweeping voter identification law he has branded a ‘National Emergency’.

Donald Trump, Cost Of Living And A Killed Housing Deal

Haberman told CNN that the blocked bill was intended to tackle what Republicans’ own internal data describe as an ‘affordability crisis’ facing a broad slice of the electorate. The White House polling memo she and her co-author Jonathan Swan reviewed, dated December, reportedly warned that if Republicans hoped to ‘make gains in the midterms and not suffer’, they had to level with voters about rising prices and work out a credible plan to ease them.

‘This bill was supposed to deal with that, and the president just wasn’t interested,’ Haberman said. She added that, based on his behaviour, ‘He’s not behaving like somebody who cares.’ In her view, Trump neither appears convinced he will pay a political price for ignoring the problem, nor particularly inclined to change course in the short term.

It can be recalled that the SAVE America Act, which Trump now insists must pass before he touches the housing package, is a sweeping voter ID bill he has elevated above all other domestic priorities. He has repeatedly described it as his ‘No. 1 legislative priority’ and has urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota to scrap the filibuster so the measure can clear the upper chamber. Thune has so far refused, wary of detonating Senate rules at Trump’s request.

That standoff has left the housing bill in limbo and has deepened already fraught relations between the president and Senate Republicans. GOP senators have endured five failed floor votes on the SAVE America Act and many are openly frustrated at being dragged back to the same measure instead of banking a bipartisan win on housing.

Haberman: Trump ‘Not Behaving Like Somebody Who Cares’

Haberman’s assessment of Donald Trump’s stance on the cost-of-living squeeze goes beyond a one-off legislative fight. Speaking to Collins, she argued that the episode fits a broader pattern in how Trump now makes political decisions.

In case you missed it, Haberman and Swan were on CNN to discuss their new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. In it, they report that the president is now far less interested in polls than he was during his first term and is governing ‘on pure gut instinct’ to an even greater degree.

Collins pressed the point, asking whether Trump’s drift away from data and towards instinct could boomerang on Republicans in November. ‘Yes, I do think that what we are seeing right now is very in line,’ Haberman replied. She said the current dynamic was ‘similar to what we saw in term one’ in the sense that advisers and party allies experience him as erratic, but that it also reflects a deeper, more entrenched faith in his own judgement over evidence.

According to Haberman, the polling memo she and Swan obtained was blunt. Republican candidates were told they needed to be ‘honest’ with voters about the affordability crisis and to show they were ‘trying to find a way to deal with it’. That is hardly radical stuff. Yet around that same period, Haberman said, Trump publicly shrugged off affordability concerns and suggested the whole thing was a hoax whipped up by Democrats.

If that sounds mad to strategists staring at grocery and rent numbers, it apparently made perfect sense inside Trump’s own political imagination. The president has long preferred to attack problems as narratives created by enemies, rather than as material conditions that might require compromise or boring legislative grind.

A Party Chafing At Trump’s Demands

For context, Trump’s insistence on prioritising the SAVE America Act has come at a cost inside his own party. Senate Republicans have been increasingly vocal, not just on voting rules but on a range of policy rifts that have piled up in recent months.

Tensions have flared over the administration’s approach to Iran, with some senators questioning both its objectives and the way decisions are being communicated to Congress. Those complaints boiled over into what was described as a shouting match between Trump and Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana during a closed-door meeting at the Capitol. The clash underscored a sense among some Republicans that the president is asking them to walk the plank on issues that do not match their own priorities back home.

GOP senators have also grown weary of Trump’s repeated demands that they keep forcing votes on the SAVE America Act after five defeats on the Senate floor. Publicly, many still back the idea of tougher voter ID laws. Privately, there is clear irritation that they are being pushed into symbolic fights that do nothing to shield voters from rising rents or spiralling bills.

Some Republicans fear that killing a bipartisan housing bill so that Trump can campaign on a stalled voter ID package leaves them exposed to exactly the attack line Democrats are itching to use, that the party is more interested in voter restrictions than in helping people pay the rent. Whether that critique lands will depend, in large part, on how serious voters believe the affordability crunch really is. Trump’s suggestion that it is all a Democratic hoax, if it sticks to him, could be politically toxic.

Haberman’s broader contention is simple enough. A president who once obsessed over every swing-state poll and cable news chyron is now leaning into instinct, loyalty tests and culture-war fights, even when his own internal data warns of economic anger. Republicans on the ballot in November will find out soon enough whether that instinct was right, or whether Trump just walked them away from a rare bipartisan win on one of the few issues almost everyone agrees really does hurt.