Here’s Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett on the news eight days out from the midterms, claiming “The affordability crisis is a myth.”

It’s not mythical at all, as I and others have explained in great detail. Ben Casselman does a nice job of going right down the middle on the issue in a recent Daily episode, wherein he points out, as I often do, the set of solid-to-strong macro-indicators, including spending, GDP, productivity, and low unemployment. “But there’s this big glaring thing that is wrong and that is affordability. And that, of course, is the issue that matters most to a lot of voters.”

Hassett admits that gas prices are up but agrees with his boss that they’ll “drop like a stone” after the war is over. No news on when that is, and, in fact, they’ve been hinting at post-mids escalation. But as I detailed the other day, Trump’s just blowing smoke, as usual. Crude is getting out of the region at close to pre-war levels and yet, as the figure shows, energy price-pressures persist.

On this price, Hassett’s taking his lead from Trump, who, as Krugman reminds us today, framed it this way in one of his rallies the other day: “The United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars. I don’t give a damn, I’m going to say it — we’re making a freaking fortune.” (Again, not seeing how this rallying point helps campaigning Rs, but that’s me…)

Hassett chimes in that the Americans are $1 trillion richer since Trump took office, which looks to me like the increase in real GDP (in ‘26 Q2 $), which, for the record, is nothing special—it’s consistent with stable, trend GDP growth. That’s fine, and a lot better than the alternative, but these guys can’t really think higher oil company profits and GDP growth is an answer to affordability?

Why would a White House official dismiss “the issue that matters most” to a plurality of voters? He might believe that it’s a myth. These folks are in a bubble on everything, but especially on the economy. After all, Hassett’s just echoing Trump, and you can’t go out to the cameras and say “the president’s wrong about this one…”

But you can not go out there. Unless I’m missing a higher dimension play here that the normal human mind cannot comprehend, this is an “October surprise,” but for your opponents. I’m sure that as I write this, hundreds of D campaign ads are pasting in this clip.

Far more interesting to me are two recent articles about what Ds can and should do about affordability should they pick up one or both houses. In the interest of not getting over my own skis pre-mids, I’ll say little here and get back to this once we know the outcome.

David Lynch at the Washington Post makes a fair point here: