“I Don’t Give a Damn”Trump is finally being honest about something
BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY
During the final sprint of any election cycle, candidates and their surrogates offer their closing arguments, what they believe is the best case for voting for them. Apparently, Donald Trump did not get the memo.
The president traveled to rural Georgia on Saturday night for a rally to support Republican candidates. There he delivered a marathon, meandering, please-make-it-end diatribe during which he actually said the following:
“I could just see the fake headlines: ‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ That’ll be the headline. But I said, ‘I don’t give a damn. I’m gonna say it: We’re making a freaking fortune.’”
Honestly, we could end this post right here. As we used to say when a politician steps in it, “check, please.” But let’s unpack this.
First of all, he was right about the headlines. “Trump brags about making ‘a freaking fortune’ as price of gas skyrockets at the pump,” from the Associated Press. And this from MS NOW: “Trump ignores his own team’s advice, celebrates higher oil prices.”
Now to the meat of the statement. “We” are not making a fortune. In fact, “we” were in bad financial straits even before the president started his war of choice with Iran and gas prices spiked. Now things are worse. A lot worse. The price of a gallon of gas has risen almost 44% since February. Diesel, which is needed to move most goods around the country and the world, is up nearly 68%. And winter is just around the corner, along with higher home heating costs.
Add to that Trump’s ill-conceived tariffs, rising mortgage rates, and inflation, and you have the highest consumer price index on record. Then there is this: Wages are not keeping pace, so consumers have less money to pay more for just about everything.
Oil companies, on the other hand, are rolling in dough. ExxonMobil has nearly doubled its net income from the same time last year to almost $15 billion. Chevron’s profits nearly quadrupled to $12 billion, according to The New York Times. So yes, Trump’s oil buddies have made billions. The rest of us? Moody’s Ratings estimates the average household has had to spend an extra $2,000 since Trump attacked Iran.
And the billionaire sitting in his gold-littered Oval Office sees no problem. “There’s a fake narrative that the Democrats talk about: affordability. They just say the word. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody,” Trump said.
Lying is Trump’s modus operandi. But there has been a shift in people’s willingness to blindly accept his lies. For the better part of the past decade, Trump has made his lies so outrageous, pervasive, and unrelenting that people either believed them or threw up their hands.
But now the lies are about things that voters experience firsthand, like affordability, which is a very real word that means a lot to almost everybody. With the price of gas staring consumers in the face every time they leave the house, Trump can’t simply tell folks it’s all a hoax.
Quinten Martinez, an Amazon delivery driver in South Texas, described his experience to the AP. He said Trump “likes to tout that we are the best economy in the world, but you don’t see any of the winning, you don’t see any of the ups that he’s talking about. You just see struggles for day-to-day life.”
But the disinformation and propaganda coming from the president persist. “We don’t have inflation, and tariffs don’t cause inflation. You know what they cause? Wealth,” he said at a rally in Montana. First of all, we do have inflation: 3.7% in September, which is up from August. Second, they do cause inflation because a tariff is essentially a tax passed on to the consumer, causing prices to rise.
But the most egregious part of this statement is that tariffs cause wealth. It is akin to saying “we’re all making a freaking fortune” because oil prices are up.
The wealth, the fortune Trump is speaking of, benefits comparatively few Americans. Counted among them, of course, is Trump himself. According to his own financial disclosures, Trump made millions on oil and gas stocks since the Iran war began. The value of his personal holdings of those stocks, some of which he purchased in March and then in August, has increased 43% since the beginning of 2026. The findings were made public in a report from Democrats serving on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.
Whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, or independent, if you are looking for well- thought-out, evidence-based closing arguments, you may want to consider what President Barack Obama said during weekend rallies in Michigan and Ohio.
He framed the midterms as a direct referendum on Trump’s “chaos and corruption.” Obama laid rising costs at Trump’s feet and highlighted his duplicity. “We have never seen a president excel at straight up grifting on your dime like this,” he said.
He went on to implore Americans to use the power of their vote to act as a “circuit breaker” on the administration.
“This election can be a course correction in America’s long journey towards a more perfect union… [I]f we’re willing to vote for change up and down the ballot, then this election might not just mark the moment this country began to move in a better direction. This will be the moment when we began leaving our worst impulses behind and started aligning our politics with our highest ideals,” Obama said.
On a personal note: Today has been a great day. The sun is out here in Austin and so are the voters, including this reporter. Casting a ballot, as I just did, was an especially satisfying experience. I believe this is the 37th time I’ve voted in a presidential or midterm election.
Here is my message to every eligible voter, whatever your political affiliation: If this worn and battered old journalist at age 94 can get to the polls, then surely so can you. Get help if you need it. With all due respect, just do whatever is necessary – mail in a ballot if it’s still legal in your state, but somehow, someway vote. Get your friends and family to vote. You will all feel better for it. So far, the early numbers I’m seeing are encouraging. Early voting, Election Day voting, mail-in voting. You choose. Just do it.
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Stay Steady,
Dan
NYA Thanks Dan Rather and Team Steady!