STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump spoke last night in Des Moines. It's the start of an election campaign that's more than nine months away.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Iowa Republicans are defending an open Senate seat and other positions in a state they normally would expect to win without much effort. 2026 is shaping up to be a year that takes effort. The president wanted to focus on a top voter concern, the economy. He's distracted from it by attacking Venezuela, trying to take over Greenland and an aggressive mass deportation campaign that has horrified many voters, especially after federal agents killed two people, all of that this month.
INSKEEP: Whew. That's a lot. NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben is here to tell us what he said to move back to the economy. Danielle, good morning.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey. Good morning.
INSKEEP: Was the president able to focus?
KURTZLEBEN: For the most part, yeah. I mean, you really got the feeling that he was trying to talk about something new after federal officers, like you said, shot and killed those two people in Minneapolis. Trump's tone last night was pretty typical for him. He was just trying to sell the economy as megastrong.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Just after one year of President Trump, our economy is booming, incomes are rising, investment is soaring, inflation has been defeated. Our border is closed. Totally closed.
KURTZLEBEN: But data contradicts Trump's message here. I mean, inflation has cooled, but it's still elevated, and the job market appears to be slowing. And importantly, Americans don't feel that the economy is doing well. Trump's approval on the economy is double-digit negative right now. Now, all of that said, Trump brought in a lot of his usual attacks, including, as he often does, mocking Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar. Now, notably last night, someone in her town hall in Minnesota confronted and apparently sprayed her with something before getting tackled by security.
INSKEEP: Yeah. I guess we'll just note that she seemed to be OK and continued the speech - insisted on continuing her speech. Now, Michel told us why Iowa is politically important, but let's mention why it might be politically vulnerable for Republicans. It's a rural state. Lots of farmers hurt by Trump's tariffs. How did he try to sell those tariffs?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, he used his usual tariff arguments. He said the tariffs will drive new investment and that he's using the tariffs to strong-arm other countries on things like pharmaceutical prices. All that said, Trump did try another avenue of farmer outreach we really haven't heard him do much. He said he'd push Congress harder to loosen environmental restrictions on the sale of E15, which is a high ethanol blend of gasoline. But ultimately, Iowa farmers still know that tariffs have driven up the price of machinery and hurt soybean sales to China.
INSKEEP: Danielle, you mentioned that Minneapolis didn't come up, but did we learn anything more yesterday about what Trump is doing there?
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah. I mean, just before the speech, he did an interview with Fox News' Will Cain, in which Cain asked Trump whether removing Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino from Minneapolis constitutes a pullback. Here's how Trump responded.
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TRUMP: I don't think it's a pullback. It's a little bit of a change. Everybody in this room that has a business, you know, you make little changes. You know, Bovino's very good, but he's a pretty out there kind of a guy, and in some cases, that's good. Maybe it wasn't good here.
KURTZLEBEN: So in other words, he's really just trying to brush all of this aside.
INSKEEP: How much does the economy really matter to voters?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, right now, it's a case of everything and. I mean, plenty of people have feelings about Greenland right now, Minneapolis and the price of milk all at the same time. Now, come the midterms, yeah, the economy will matter, but it's hard to separate out what one issue is driving an election. People vote based on feelings. Do they feel safe? Does the government care about them? So Trump won't be on the ballot, but his approval is negative, and his party pretty much does his bidding at this point. So his continuing choices are going to really matter.
INSKEEP: We make a choice to listen to NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thanks so much.
KURTZLEBEN: (Laughter) Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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