Mara Liasson

I think it's a top issue right now.

If it goes away, just like the border is now secure, if ICE disappears, we know that the National Guard is being removed from cities.

We know he's backed off from tariffs.

In other words, if he changes his approach, I think this will not become top of mind in November.

And again, this is something that Trump can control.

He can't control the economy very well.

No president can.

But he can control how ICE operates.

And the interesting political question is to see if he decides to change tactics in the next couple of months.

I mean, even just because... No, and they're going to be in political ads in November.

Well, to a certain extent, but then again, we're going to have two competing messages in the fall and it'll depend on what people are seeing on their screens at that time.

I would say they're feeling pretty bad.

I mean, some of them mentioned some good things like gas prices going down, but they talked about groceries and health care and housing being too expensive.

One woman said the state of the economy sucks.

Everything is spiraling out of control.

The cost of living, layoffs, businesses are closing.

It was a pretty dire view.

I think they are willing to give Trump some time to fix it.

There was a big debate about whether it was his economy, whether he was at fault or was it still Biden's fault.

But I think that nothing in our focus group diverged from national polling, which shows that people are very, very sour on the economy.