By Gram Slattery and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he has done “a very bad job” of explaining his economic record as his job approval rating sags under the weight of high gasoline prices ahead of the November midterm elections.
Trump, speaking to a supportive crowd at a Hispanic Heritage Month event at the White House, made the comment as he prepares to embark on a 32-day campaign blitz for Republican candidates ahead of the November 3 elections that will decide whether his party retains control of the US Congress.
“I’ve done a very bad job of explaining how good the country is doing,” Trump said, insisting that “the country’s doing better than it has ever done.”
Trump noted that the party in power usually loses congressional seats in the first election after a presidential election and urged his supporters to get out and vote.
“We have to turn this around,” he said.
Many American voters, however, increasingly give Trump low marks in public opinion polls for his management of the economy, which has been buffeted by his global tariff policies and a war on Iran that sent energy prices soaring.
US consumer confidence plunged to a near 12-1/2-year low in September, the Conference Board said on Tuesday, with households expecting a deterioration in business and labor market conditions over the next six months.
Consumers have been downbeat on the labor market, despite job growth accelerating in August after hitting a speed bump through much of the summer. Home prices have increased as well, adding to the strain from rising mortgage rates.
Trump travels to Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday with a stop in Alabama planned for Friday and one in Ohio on Saturday.
The Republican Party is pouring millions of dollars into seats once considered safe but are now viewed as competitive as voters grow weary of the economic fallout of the Iran war.
“We’re not getting the word out,” Trump said, referring to what he considers his strong stewardship of the economy.
“I’m going out because nobody’s selling it. We’re doing an extremely poor job of promotion, and an extremely great job of running the country. But we’ll get the word out. It should not be hard.”
(Reporting By Gram Slattery, Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu, editing by Ross Colvin and David Gaffen)
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