#cost-of-living — Trump Fail

The Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, Posted an AI-Generated Fantasy of Himself, Eric and Lara Trump, and an Elon Musk Cameo Spraying Champagne on a Gold Luggage Cart Through the White House to Pitbull's "Don't Stop the Party" — a "Let Them Eat Cake" Spectacle So Tone-Deaf, With Americans Unable to Afford Groceries and Gas, That Even Prominent Conservatives Called It a Gift to Democrats Before the Midterms

Late on September 26, 2026, Dan Scavino — the deputy White House chief of staff and one of Trump's longest-serving aides — posted an AI-generated video depicting a lavish after-party for the state dinner Trump had just hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping. In the clip, Scavino, in a tuxedo, sprays champagne while riding a gilded luggage cart through the White House alongside his wife and Eric and Lara Trump, set to Pitbull's "Don't Stop the Party"; it opens with Elon Musk flipping through party photos, including one of Trump galloping through the White House on horseback, before the president himself strolls into frame. It was meant as a celebratory flex. It was received as "let them eat cake." The backlash was bipartisan, and the sharpest cuts came from the right: conservatives noted that Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, and mortgage payments while the "People's House" is depicted as a confetti-strewn champagne bash. Carrie Prejean Boller called it "tone deaf"; The Dispatch's Jonah Goldberg sneered that it was "precisely the midterm messaging the GOP needs from the Deputy White House Chief of Staff." With the Republican Party trying to make affordability its central pitch before November, a top White House official published a fantasy of gilded opulence — and handed the other side the image for free.

The War Trump Promised Wouldn't Hurt Americans at the Pump Has Pushed Gas to Roughly $4.10 a Gallon — Up From $2.98 in February, Likely the Most Expensive August on Record — as His Own Strait of Hormuz Standoff Chokes Off the World's Oil Chokepoint, With Ship Traffic Collapsing From Around 130 Vessels a Day to Nearly Zero and His Officials' Promise That the Price Spike Would "Subside" Now Six Months Old

When Trump launched his war on Iran in February 2026 and the resulting standoff shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil passes — his administration assured Americans the price spike would be brief and would soon subside. Six months later it has done the opposite. By late August 2026, the national average for regular gasoline had climbed to roughly $4.10 a gallon, up from $2.98 on February 28, and AAA indicated it was on track to be the most expensive August on record. The cause is not a mystery or a foreign plot: it is the direct consequence of Trump's own war and his refusal to end it. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which normally sees around 130 ships a day, had collapsed to a handful — five vessels one recent Saturday, none registered the following Sunday — while Brent crude pushed near $89 a barrel. Trump's response has been to escalate the rhetoric that keeps the strait closed, threatening to "bomb the shit out of" Oman, the country mediating a reopening. Every dollar added to a gallon of gas is a tax on every American who drives to work, and it traces back to a war launched on a threat the intelligence never found and kept going long after his own generals concluded it could not be won. The president who ran on lowering prices has delivered, through a war of choice, the highest summer gas prices in the country's history.