Trump rants nonsense about transgender people instead of fixing affordability crisis at Pennsylvania rally

On Tuesday, in northeastern Pennsylvania, President Donald Trump mounted the stage promising a sermon on economic revival. What unfolded instead was a familiar sprawl of grievances, boasts, and culture-war attacks, most sharply aimed at transgender people, delivered in a rambling speech that repeatedly veered away from the affordability crisis dominating voters’ daily lives.

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The rally in Mount Pocono drew roughly 600 to 700 attendees and marked Trump’s first domestic campaign-style appearance in months, kicking off what the White House says will be a yearlong blitz of stops ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when Republican control of Congress and Trump’s legacy will be on the line. Trump himself acknowledged the political shift. “You know, when you win, you say, I can now rest,” he told the crowd. “We have to win the midterms.”

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Trump insisted prices are falling rapidly and mocked “affordability” as a Democratic buzzword. “They have a new word. They always have a hoax. The new word is affordability,” he said, before conceding moments later, “I agree the prices were too high.” But his attempt to dismiss the issue collided with the persistent reality confronting American households: housing costs remain punishingly high, grocery prices are still elevated, and medical expenses threaten to drag millions of families under.

Rather than outline a detailed economic plan to meet those pressures, Trump repeatedly pivoted to attacks on transgender people, using them as political shorthand in a broader campaign against cultural change. “We don’t have men in women’s sports,” he declared, randomly, to boos. “We don’t have to sell transgender to everybody.”

Related: Here are all of Trump's executive orders that have targeted transgender people — so far

Minutes later, he escalated the rhetoric into mockery: “I think transgender for all is a great, great thing for the Democrats to be talking about—transgender for every member in your family, if they’re not feeling well that night, let’s just change their sex.”

The structure of the speech followed a pattern that has defined Trump’s rallies for nearly a decade: sweeping claims about economic dominance, denunciations of the press, attacks on political enemies, and prolonged digressions. “Our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country,” he insisted, falsely.

Trump also described fossil fuel production as the master lever for affordability, repeating that energy prices alone dictate the cost of nearly everything else. “When energy comes down, your other prices come down,” he said, promoting oil, gas, and coal while denouncing wind and climate policies.

Yet outside the rally hall, many Americans continue to experience a different reality. While inflation has slowed since its 2022 peak, prices for housing, child care, insurance, and food remain significantly higher than before the pandemic, and wage gains have failed to keep pace.

Related: Donald Trump bizarrely blames transgender rights for looming government shutdown

Throughout the rally, Trump layered his message with racially charged and ethnocentric attacks, returning to familiar targets and themes. He singled out Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Muslim lawmaker, claiming she “does nothing but bitch” and telling the crowd she should be “thrown the hell out,” a line that prompted unchallenged chants of “Send her back.”

Trump also resurrected his earlier rhetoric about “shithole countries,” saying the United States should accept immigrants from places like Norway instead of Haiti, Afghanistan, or Somalia—moments after an attendee shouted the slur and Trump replied, “I didn’t say shit hole. You did,” before recounting the 2018 Oval Office exchange in which the term first surfaced. He pointed to ongoing fraud prosecutions in Minnesota to cast Somali Americans broadly as criminals, telling the crowd to “get them the hell out of here” and asserting, without evidence, that they “hate our country.”

Transgender people, meanwhile, emerged as recurring targets as Trump stitched cultural resentment into his broader narrative of national decline and restoration. His remarks landed amid an aggressive nationwide campaign against trans rights, with dozens of state laws restricting gender-affirming care, bathroom usage, and other public accommodations.

By night’s end, Trump had spoken at length about tariffs, coal, charts, and personal loyalty. He invited guests on stage and praised allies. He mocked opponents and the media. But the affordability crisis, invoked repeatedly as a term of derision, remained largely unexamined in policy terms.