With his approval ratings at the lowest levels of his presidency and polls showing Americans believing that he has taken his expansive view of presidential power too far, President Donald Trump is headed to his Palm Beach, Florida social club to close out his year with a two-week vacation.
But before he could get away from the continued furor over the Epstein files and head off for leisure time, golf and parties on the Mar-a-Lago patio, the president had to convince voters at a Rocky Mount, North Carolina rally that whatever economic pain they are feeling nearly a year into his second term in office has absolutely nothing to do with him.
For the first 20 or so minutes after he took the stage, it wasn’t clear whether he would stick to that plan.
Trump, sounding hoarse and tired with his speech slurring at times, launched into a meandering, somnolent soliloquy that seemed more focused on recounting what he’d already told reporters several hours earlier, when he hosted pharmaceutical company executives at the White House.
He claimed the agreements with the drug makers, which will see them offer their products at lower costs on a website bearing his name, should be enough to help his party retain control of Congress next year.
“Your drugs are coming down at levels that nobody ever thought was possible. This achievement alone should win us for midterms,” he said.
Continuing his stream-of-consciousness remarks, the president began musing aloud about how he was “taking on the gigantic health insurance companies” by refusing to support extending tax credits that expire at the end of this year, causing premiums for millions of Americans to skyrocket.
He falsely claimed that the Affordable Care Act, the landmark 2010 health care reform law, was “created to make insurance companies rich” and tried to blame Congressional Democrats for the premium increases that will take effect next month.
“I want the money to go directly to the people so you can buy your own health care, and you'll get much better health care at a much lower price,” he said, without explaining how individuals could use the small amount he has proposed to give out to purchase health insurance at a lower rate.
Trump then suggested he could talk insurance executives into lowering premiums by calling them to the White House for a meeting in the same way he has browbeaten drug companies into lowering prices by threatening to tax pharmaceutical imports.
“Maybe they'll surprise us, but maybe we'll ask them for a 50% cut, and maybe they'll give it. You know, you never know. You saw what happened with the drug companies,” he said.
As he kept speaking, Trump interspersed his prepared remarks with racist rants about Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who he said should be thrown out of the country while accusing her of fabricating a story about her son being stopped by law enforcement recently, and mused aloud about how he workshopped a nickname for Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, his former ally who is resigning her seat at the beginning of next month.
It took nearly an hour until the president appeared to return to his prepared remarks by launching into a series of unverifiable claims about how “100 percent” of jobs created during his presidency so far have been in the private sector and boasting of how he is building a “Trump economic boom” with “these factories, auto plants [and] AI plants.”
He also boasted of having placed 25 percent import taxes on foreign cars, 50 percent import taxes on steel, and taxes as high as 50 percent on imported furniture “to save North Carolina's cherished furniture industry, which has been decimated by China.”
“I was very good at real estate, but I used to come to North Carolina to buy furniture for lobbies or furniture for hotels, and I was here a lot. I mean, you've been decimated, but it's coming back then, because I put tariffs on,” he said.
Trump’s stopover in North Carolina on his way to vacation was the second campaign-style rally he has held in as many weeks in what the White House has said will be a series of events meant to promote his administration’s economic record.
But thus far, it does not appear voters are buying what he is selling — whether from the White House or from the stump at his signature rallies.
A National Public Radio / Marist College survey released this week found that 57 percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s economic management, compared with 36 percent who approve — the lowest rating on this issue across his two terms in office.
While the polling data showed a split among partisans, with 81 percent of Republicans saying Trump is doing a good job and 91 percent of Democrats holding the opposite view, a full 68 percent of self-described independents say they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy.
It also showed that Trump’s overall approval rating has sunk to 38 percent — his lowest-recorded level of approval since the end of his first term in 2021.
As far as Americans’ views of “affordability” go, the survey did not present a rosy picture for Trump on that topic, either.
About 70 percent of respondents — including nearly half of Republicans — said that the cost of living in their neighborhood is not affordable at all or not very affordable. In contrast, about 30 percent of respondents said the cost of living in their area is affordable, marking a 25-point drop from June.
At the same time, roughly one in three respondents said that their personal financial situation has deteriorated in 2025. About the same share expect their financial situation to get worse next year.
A majority of respondents, 52 percent, also said the U.S. is currently in a recession. And slightly more said Democrats are better equipped to manage the economy than Republicans — 37 percent versus 33 percent.
According to the latest unemployment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans do have reason to be concerned.
While the U.S. economy added 64,000 jobs last month, the report stated that it shed 105,000 positions during the previous month in October. Further revisions by the Labor Department also saw 33,000 jobs removed from August and September payrolls as well.
The BLS report also showed the nation’s unemployment rate climbing to 4.6 percent, marking its highest level since 2021.
Overall, hiring momentum has clearly waned, hampered by uncertainty surrounding Trump’s tariffs and the lingering impact of the high interest rates implemented by the Federal Reserve in 2022 and 2023 to curb inflation.
American companies are largely retaining their existing workforce but remain hesitant to hire new staff as they grapple with integrating artificial intelligence and adapting to Trump’s unpredictable policies, particularly his double-digit taxes on imports from around the world.
In a statement, Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin panned the president’s performance as a “desperate” follow-up to his “delusional” address to the nation just days earlier, and said the rally on Friday was more of the same.
“North Carolinians are struggling, and they aren’t falling for Trump’s spin,” he said.
“Working families in North Carolina and across the country are fed up with having their food, health care, and hard-earned dollars ripped away from them so that Trump’s billionaire donors can attend Great Gatsby parties and enjoy massive tax handouts.”
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