Sarah McCammon / Tamara Keith / Domenico Montanaro (primary hosts; multi-voice label primarily Sarah McCammon)

Consumer confidence is low.

And yet the president continues to say that the economy is good.

Tam, what is behind that cognitive dissonance?

There are a lot of things going on.

Part of it is that Trump is out there trying to claim credit for areas where prices have gone down, things like egg prices.

He says gas prices are way down.

In reality, they're about the same as they were a year ago, maybe a couple cents higher, depending on the day.

He has sort of a different conception of the economy than a lot of regular people do.

Right.

He is extremely focused on the stock market.

Almost every day he talks about how well the stock market is doing, except yesterday because it did not do so well yesterday.

But he talks about record setting, record setting.

Everything's a record setting.

401ks are super hot.

Which is great for people who have a 401k.

Yeah, that leaves out about 40% of Americans.

And for people who are living paycheck to paycheck, hearing that everything is awesome is not helpful.

So a White House official not authorized to speak on the record told me that the president is going to change the way he talks about the economy.

This person said that the president is going to

talk about the wins, but he's also going to talk about how much more work needs to be done to make sure that people who are feeling economic pain get the relief that they need.