Here is a useful rule for listening to Donald Trump: when he warns you about what someone else will do, check what he is doing himself.
He said Democrats would make gas expensive. Gas just set a record for October. He calls communism the greatest threat America has ever faced, then spent this year toasting the most powerful communist leader on Earth and calling him an old friend. He says he’ll run the government like a business. Six of his companies ended up in bankruptcy court.
Treat the rule as a question, not a verdict. Put the promise beside the decision, the accusation beside the record, and the sales pitch beside the bill. None of that requires a conspiracy theory. It requires a calendar and a receipt.
The “communist threat” he keeps inviting to dinner
At Mount Rushmore on July 3, Trump called communism a “mortal threat to American liberty” and ranked it above both World Wars, Pearl Harbor and 9/11. [1] He didn’t name his targets. He didn’t need to. The speech followed a run of primary wins by socialist-backed Democrats, and he pivoted from the communist “menace” straight to the November midterms. [2, 3]
Now look at where he spent his year:
- January, Davos. He called Xi Jinping an incredible man who has done amazing things, and said he has always had a very good relationship with both Xi and Vladimir Putin. [4, 12]
- May, Beijing. On a state visit to a country the Chinese Communist Party has run since 1949, Trump met Xi inside the party’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound, called him an old friend and said he had great respect for him. [5]
- September, Washington. He hosted Xi for a three-day state visit, complete with a formal dinner and a trip to the National Archives to see the Constitution. Two more meetings are planned before year’s end: one in China, one at his own Doral resort. [6]
That is not a misreading of China. Its constitution expressly establishes Communist Party leadership. [7]
None of this is new. In 2023 he called Xi a brilliant guy who runs 1.4 billion people with an “iron fist.” [8] In 2024 he praised Xi as brilliant again, called him a dear, dear friend and repeated the iron-fist line. [9, 10] The admiration isn’t for China’s economy. It’s for the grip.
Presidents should negotiate with China. Keeping channels open and preventing conflict are responsibilities of the office, and a state dinner does not prove ideological agreement. Praising an iron grip is something else. That is a choice, and Americans are entitled to question the judgment behind it.
A fair correction to the usual talking point: Russia is not communist. The Soviet Union and its Communist Party collapsed in 1991. Today’s Russia is an authoritarian state with power concentrated around Putin, a former KGB officer, and meaningful political opposition severely restricted. [11] That makes the point sharper, not weaker. In February 2022, as Putin moved to carve off parts of Ukraine, Trump called it “genius” and said Putin was a very smart man. Two days later Russia invaded. [12]
The admiration keeps paying out. On October 9, after a call with Putin, Trump announced a Russian diesel deal with temporary U.S. sanctions relief. The administration sold it as lower fuel costs; critics warned it would weaken pressure on Moscow while doing little for consumers. [13] A week later, two days before they were due to take effect, he suspended the sweeping Russia sanctions he had signed into law in September. Ukraine objected. A Kremlin envoy called it historic. [14] That tradeoff deserves scrutiny, not applause simply because Trump calls it a solution.
The concern is not that every leader Trump praises shares an economic doctrine. It’s his ease with men whose power depends on freedoms Americans should never surrender, while he treats Americans who vote differently as enemies. He can recognize a foreign adversary as someone worth talking to. For Trump, “communist” is not a foreign-policy position. It is a label for the opposition.
He said she’d raise gas prices. He did.
In August 2024, Trump warned that a Harris presidency would bring gasoline at $10 a gallon or more. [15] He promised to cut energy costs, gasoline included, in half within his first year, and talked about gas below $2. He told the Economic Club of New York that Harris could not bring down the price of anything. [16, 17] Gas was about $3.30 at the time and falling. [18]
Here is the receipt:
| When | National average, regular ($/gal) | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 2024 | about $3.30 | Trump promises to cut energy costs in half [16, 17, 18] |
| January 2026 | about 10% below a year earlier | Gas down one year in; the promise to halve energy bills unmet [19] |
| February 28, 2026 | $2.98 | Pre-war price; the U.S. and Israel launch strikes on Iran [20] |
| October 8, 2026 | $4.36 | Highest ever for the time of year; first October above $4 [21, 22] |
| October 27, 2026 | $4.27 | Still above $4 [23] |
Prices are nominal. AAA’s October mark is a seasonal record, not an all-time or inflation-adjusted one. [21]
Diesel, which moves our trucks, tractors and groceries, hit $6.28 on October 8, up from $3.68 a year earlier and just off its record of $6.53 on September 22. [22] That cost shows up in everything that rides on a truck.
Presidents do not set pump prices. Oil markets, refinery capacity and demand all matter. But presidential decisions matter, too. The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and the disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz drove much of this increase, and Trump bears responsibility for his decision to launch it and for its consequences. [20]
And whose fault does he say it is? Not the war he started. He has blamed refinery closures in blue states and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. [24] Those attacks have added pressure, particularly on diesel. That does not erase the war. He has also told reporters fuel costs are not very high, while his own Energy Secretary says prices may not get back under $3 until 2027. [25, 26]
He took the credit when gas fell under $3. [19] He can’t hand off the blame now that his war has pushed it past $4. He warned you Democrats would make gas expensive. Then he did it, blamed Democrats, and called a deal with Putin the fix.
The grocery picture is more mixed, and it deserves accuracy. Food-at-home prices fell 0.1% from August to September and are up 1.8% from a year earlier. Overall annual inflation reached 3.7%, pushed up by gasoline. [27, 28] Slower inflation means prices are rising more slowly; it does not mean earlier increases went away. Trump cannot claim personal credit for the good numbers while assigning every bad one to someone else.
Running the government like his casinos
Trump’s pitch has always been that he is a businessman who knows how to run things. Atlantic City remembers it differently. His companies went through six Chapter 11 filings between 1991 and 2009, five involving casinos. [29] Those were corporate filings, not personal bankruptcies, and the industry had bad years. Still, it takes a special talent to lose money running a casino, where the house is supposed to win.
The same approach now runs the federal government. The civilian workforce shrank 12% between September 2024 and January 2026. Treasury lost 24% of its staff and Health and Human Services lost 20%. The one big agency that grew was Homeland Security. That measurement starts before Trump’s inauguration, and most departures were resignations or early retirements rather than layoffs. [30]
The cuts were not targeted at waste. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found the administration had cut nearly 10% of federal personnel by November 2025, mostly before Congress passed the budgets and without telling Congress where. [31] The nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service warns of dangerous gaps in food safety inspection, Social Security processing, veterans’ health care and disaster response. [32]
Those are not abstractions in Kansas. They are the meat inspector at the packing plant, the person who answers the phone when your mother’s Social Security check is late, the VA clinic appointment, and FEMA when the tornado comes through. Fewer employees is not the same as efficiency. An honest scorecard measures wait times, errors, total costs, and whether agencies can still do the work Congress assigned them. A business owner who fires the people who keep the doors open is not cutting fat. He is selling the furniture to pay the light bill.
The deeper worry is power. A government can lose employees while its president gains control. In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order putting the so-called independent agencies, the regulators Congress deliberately set apart from day-to-day politics, under White House review, with a White House liaison inside each one. [33, 34, 35] The administration calls that accountability. The fair question is how much independent judgment survives when more decisions need one man’s approval. After Xi made himself president for life, Trump once joked that maybe America would give that a shot someday. [36] Jokes like that land differently when the checks keep coming off.
A promise to protect freedom should invite scrutiny of concentrated power, including the president’s own.
Why it keeps working
The people who believe him are not stupid. Most are our neighbors, and most are busy. The tactic works on busy people precisely because it is simple.
Accuse the other side first, loudly and often. When the accusation turns out to describe you, the charge already belongs to someone else. Repetition can make statements seem more credible; experimental research has documented that effect. [37] “Communist” and “Kamala’s gas prices” were said thousands of times. “Gas hit an October record” gets said once, in a story most people scroll past.
That research does not establish the motives of every voter or prove that every accusation is a deliberate strategy. People weigh different priorities, trust different sources, or tolerate conduct they dislike because they fear the alternative. And admitting you were sold something feels worse than paying too much for it. That is not a red-state flaw or a blue-state flaw. It is a human one.
None of that makes a false statement true. It does mean contempt is a poor substitute for evidence. The answer is not to call anyone a fool. It is to hand them the receipt and ask whether the same standard would apply if a Democrat were responsible.
The cautious vote
We cannot prove that every accusation Trump makes reveals something he secretly wants. That would go beyond the evidence. But there is a simple precaution: whenever he warns that someone else will abuse power or wreck the economy, compare it with what he is already doing. Communist strongmen? He’s at their dinner table. Expensive gas? He’s at the pump with you. Wrecked institutions? He’s holding the hammer.
So consider the cautious vote. Suppose you vote blue this November and the worst comes true. What would that look like?
- Teachers get paid closer to what they’re worth and stop leaving the classroom for jobs that pay the bills.
- Someone in Congress treats the price of gas and groceries as a problem to fix instead of a talking point to blame on someone else.
- College and trade school get cheaper, so kids from towns like ours can train for good jobs without decades of debt.
- The water coming out of the tap gets tested and kept clean by people who weren’t laid off.
- The ultrawealthy pay a fairer share, so the bill doesn’t land on the people who stock their shelves and drive their trucks.
That’s the nightmare scenario. These are legitimate public goals, and they should be debated on their merits. Calling them communist does not answer how they would work or whom they would help.
Democrats can fail, too. A blue vote does not guarantee cheaper groceries, better schools or competent government. Democratic policies have costs and tradeoffs, and promises require workable legislation, funding, implementation and oversight. Ask candidates for concrete plans, including which decisions belong to Congress and which belong to state and local government.
But a blue vote does put a check on one man’s power while pushing those priorities forward. You don’t have to love a party to notice that the man yelling “communist” is the one shaking their hands, and the man warning you about high prices is the one who raised them.
Vote blue, and make them earn continued support through results. A politician’s warnings about everyone else should never exempt him from scrutiny. Vote like you have read the receipt. Keep the receipts for Democrats, too.
What the other side would say
A fair reader will hear these counterarguments, so it’s worth knowing them:
- Talking isn’t endorsing. Supporters say meeting Xi and Putin is statecraft, not admiration. Nixon went to China and Reagan sat down with Gorbachev. They point to the trade truce with China and the 2025 sanctions on Russian oil giants as proof he pressures both, and the White House says pausing the new sanctions keeps Russia at the negotiating table. [14]
- The war, not the president, raised gas prices. The White House calls the spike a short-term cost of stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, notes Iran cut off the Strait of Hormuz, and points out gas fell about 10% in his first year and was under $3 before the strikes. Whether that war was necessary is the real dispute.
- “Communist” means local candidates. Supporters say his target is the wave of Democratic Socialists of America candidates who won primaries this year, not foreign governments, and that their platforms deserve scrutiny.
- Smaller government was the promise. The administration says the workforce cuts deliver a leaner, more efficient government, exactly what voters were told they would get. Critics and supporters disagree on whether services have actually suffered, and full data is still coming in.
- Grocery inflation has cooled. At 1.8% a year, food-at-home prices are rising far more slowly than in 2022. [27] Republicans also argue higher taxes on the wealthy can slow investment, and that teacher pay in Kansas is set mostly by the state and local districts, not Congress.
Sources
- The National News Desk / WCYB — Mount Rushmore speech, July 4, 2026
- States Newsroom / Wisconsin Examiner — Trump uses Mount Rushmore speech to allege ‘mortal threat’ from communism, July 5, 2026
- Ground News / AP — Mount Rushmore communism speech
- Gulf News — Trump on Xi and Putin
- Xinhua via Botswana Daily News — Xi, Trump have private meeting in Beijing, May 15, 2026
- Associated Press / ABC30 — Xi’s Washington state visit, September 25, 2026
- Constitution of the People’s Republic of China — Article 1
- BizPac Review — Trump on Xi at 2023 Fox town hall
- The Guardian — Trump’s remarks about Xi, July 21, 2024
- Mediaite — Trump on Xi at the 2024 Economic Club of New York
- Freedom House — Russia, Freedom in the World 2026
- blue News — Trump on Putin
- Council on Foreign Relations — Trump’s Russian Diesel Deal, Explained, October 19, 2026
- Al Jazeera — Trump puts on hold new Russia sanctions he signed into law, October 17, 2026
- American Presidency Project — Trump’s York campaign remarks, August 19, 2024
- PolitiFact — MAGA-Meter, energy-cost promises
- CNN — transcript, September 6, 2024
- BNN Bloomberg — gas prices, 2024
- NPR — January 20, 2026
- Investopedia — Gasoline prices and the Iran war, April 20, 2026
- AAA — Pump Prices Remain at Record Highs for Autumn, October 8, 2026
- RV Travel / AAA — Gas prices highest ever for this time of year, October 8, 2026
- AAA — State Gas Price Averages, accessed October 27, 2026 (live page; figures change)
- Reuters / L’Orient Today — Trump blames Democrats and Ukrainian refinery attacks, October 5, 2026
- Yahoo / The Independent — fuel prices and the Energy Secretary’s outlook
- Newsweek — fuel prices and the Energy Secretary’s outlook
- Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Price Index, September 2026, released October 14, 2026
- Supermarket News / BLS — grocery prices
- PolitiFact — Trump’s corporate bankruptcies, June 21, 2016
- Reuters via Hawaii Tribune-Herald — Federal workforce reductions, March 4, 2026
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — federal personnel cuts
- Federal News Network — Partnership for Public Service findings
- White House — Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies, February 18, 2025
- Executive Order 14215 (GovInfo)
- K&L Gates — analysis of Executive Order 14215
- Trump’s president-for-life remark about Xi
- Bell and colleagues — Research on repetition and truth judgments, 2025