GOP strategists sweating over Trump’s 'extremely unhelpful' midterms gaffe

President Donald Trump let slip another disastrous gaffe during an Oval Office event this week, with The Hill reporting that strategists within the GOP are calling it "a doozy" and "extremely unhelpful" for the party's midterms strategy.

During a Wednesday event at the White House, Trump was pressed for a reaction to the newly released inflation report, showing that the rate had reached a three-year-high, despite the president's repeated insistence that he had "tamed" inflation after his return to power. In response, Trump said, "I love it, the numbers were great, I love the inflation," before going on a seeming tangent about oil barrels purportedly seized from Iranian ships, but the initial quote spread like wildfire online.

Given how much affordability is set to define the midterms for voters, and given how little empathy Trump has shown about the issue, many argued that he had let slip the perfect line for Democrats to run in attack ads for November.

Sources within the party are also echoing that feeling, from the opposite perspective, worrying that the president has once again made their lives more difficult heading into a make-or-break election season.

"Republican strategists tell Morning Report that Trump’s message runs counter to GOP efforts to communicate their focus on the economy to voters ahead of the midterms and puts members in the difficult position of having to defend the president’s comments," The Hill reported on Thursday morning, adding later, "Trump has on several occasions brushed off the economic and political fallout of the Iran war. He said last month that he wasn’t thinking 'even a little bit' about Americans’ cost of living in negotiating with Iran and doesn’t care about the midterms."

“It’s extremely unhelpful to any Republican who’s on the ballot,” former Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye told the outlet. “If you wanted to proactively get messaging wrong, this is how you would do it.”

He also noted: “It’s hard to see any argument where this could be spun favorably.”

Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist, told The Hill that it was vital for the Trump administration to "clarify very quickly that Trump thought the inflation number would be much higher and that he is confident the number will come down once hostilities end with Iran.”

“GOP members will need this air cover almost immediately so they can point to what Trump meant by this,” Bonjean said, citing the spin Trump himself gave in a New York Post interview shortly after the initial gaffe.

“Republicans have learned to shimmy and shake around the more colorful comments the President makes, and this one, admittedly, is a doozy. But his point is correct: A nuclear Iran is much worse than four percent inflation,” ex-Fox News host GOP political consultant Bill O’Reilly said. “If inflation is reasonable and trending downward in September and October, this quip will be forgotten. If it’s rising, we’ll be seeing about a billion ads on it before Election Day.”

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