Trump Lists 25 Top Achievements: What Matters Most To Americans - Newsweek

President Donald Trump posted a list of 25 claimed achievements to his Truth Social platform on Friday, presenting them as the record of what he called his “term three” ahead of the midterms.

Trump’s asserted policy wins range from taxes and employment to immigration, military operations and restrictions on diversity and transgender policies.

Among his stated accomplishments were tighter border controls, tax cuts, tariffs to support U.S. manufacturing, increased military spending, lower prescription-drug prices and a series of foreign policy and socially conservative measures.

But recent national polling shows voters judging Washington chiefly through the cost of everyday life, rather than the full range of policies Trump chose to highlight.

A Fox News poll conducted September 11 to 14 found 34 percent of registered voters named inflation or the cost of living as the country’s most important issue and 14 percent chose the economy or jobs, while a Marquette Law School Poll conducted September 2 to 9 produced a similar result among U.S. adults, with 37 percent choosing inflation and 16 percent the economy.

Households feeling pressure from prices, jobs, health care and retirement costs are therefore more central to the electoral argument than voters motivated principally by cultural disputes or foreign policy.

Newsweek contacted the White House for further comment on Saturday morning outside of regular working hours.

The clearest message from both polls is that voters are looking first at their wallets.

A September Fox News poll conducted among 1,211 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, found roughly three in ten naming the cost of living or inflation as the country’s most important issue.

And roughly one in seven chose the economy or jobs, the second most important issue named in the survey.

Immigration followed at eight percent, while crime, taxes, tariffs, foreign policy, national security and Social Security each drew two percent or less.

Marquette Law School reached a similar conclusion with a differently worded question and a different population.

Its September 2 to 9 national survey of 1,023 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points, found nearly four in ten selecting inflation and the cost of living.

One in six chose the economy, 10 percent cited the war involving Iran, Israel and the United States, and nine percent named Medicare and Social Security.

Immigration and border security stood at six percent, with crime at three percent.

Those findings make Trump’s tax, investment, employment, export and prescription-drug assertions the most electorally relevant part of his Truth Social post.

That does not establish that voters accept the claims, or that the policies have produced the effects described.

It shows only that these subjects overlap most closely with what respondents say matters.

Immigration remains a meaningful Republican strength.

Marquette found adults preferred the Republican Party over the Democratic Party on immigration and border security by 42 percent to 31 percent.

Republicans also led on crime, 38 percent to 23 percent. Democrats, however, held advantages on the economy, inflation, Medicare and Social Security, and health care.

That creates the central political tension.

Trump devoted substantial space to areas where Republicans retain an advantage, but the biggest voter concern lies in a field where the same poll gave Democrats the edge.

Marquette also measured Trump’s approval at 19 percent on inflation and the cost of living, compared with 49 percent on border security.

Cultural claims involving diversity programs, transgender policy, school curricula and English as the official language may energize parts of Trump’s coalition.

Neither poll, however, ranked those subjects among the leading concerns given.

Their electoral value is more likely to depend on turnout and intensity within particular groups than broad national salience.

Fox surveyed registered voters, while Marquette’s issue-priority result covered adults.

Each poll captured opinion during a short period, and a respondent naming one top issue may still care strongly about several others.

Trump described the following as achievements.

The list may supply Republicans with campaign talking points across almost every major policy field.

But polling indicates that its political test will be much simpler: whether voters believe life has become more affordable before they cast their midterm ballots.

Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.