WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday said that key Republican ally Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had “lost her way” by saying that he’s spending too much time on foreign affairs and should be more focused on inflation.
The dispute reflects a fundamental challenge within Trump’s coalition after last week’s off-cycle elections, in which voters in the New Jersey and Virginia governor races flocked to Democrats in large part over concerns about the cost of living. The White House has recognized that it needs to do more to sell its efforts to address inflation to the wider public.
But Trump — who is investing significant time in his second term on foreign policy — defended his approach. The president has been claiming that he’s already beaten the problem of high prices.
“I don’t know what happened to Marjorie, nice woman,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on a day centered around meeting Syria’s leader and swearing in a new ambassador to India. “She’s lost her way, I think.”
Greene, a Trump advocate in Congress, told NBC News last week that “watching the foreign leaders come to the White House through a revolving door is not helping Americans.” She said prices remain too high and the president needs to focus on that rather than his recent emphasis on foreign affairs.
“It’s not reducing the cost of living.” Greene said. “It’s doing nothing about health insurance premiums. It’s doing nothing to solve the problems that are really plaguing vulnerable segments of our population, especially young people.”
Trump said he sees the presidency “as a worldwide situation” that requires a broader focus. “We could have a world that’s on fire, where wars come to our shores very easily, if you had a bad president,” said Trump, stressing that he “did not devote a lot of my time” to foreign affairs. He said Greene was “catering to the other side” and he was “surprised by her.”
Trump has insisted that the inflation problem stems solely from his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, whose popularity as president suffered when consumer prices hit a four-decade high in June 2022.
Inflation rates eased since the 2022 highs because of Federal Reserve rate cuts and the unsnarling of supply chains disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Still, voters were dissatisfied by the jump in prices and chose last year to return Trump to the White House.
Trump has yet to fully acknowledge that overall inflation has reaccelerated since he launched country-by-country tariffs in April. The consumer price index has increased from an annual rate of 2.3% in April to 3% in September.
Trump appears to be banking on voters trusting him over the publicly available economic data. “We now are at a very low point — we’re going to be hitting 1.5% pretty soon,” Trump said about inflation rates on Monday. “Food prices are way down. It’s all coming down. And the biggest decrease, of course, is energy.”
Gasoline prices have fallen from the highs hit during Biden’s presidency. But AAA reported on Monday that the average price at the pump was $3.07 a gallon, down less than two cents from a year ago.
