Donald Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey on July 28, 2022

Early Tuesday morning, December 9, The Hill reported, in two separate articles, that President Donald Trump would be visiting Pennsylvania later in the day to sell an economic message that polls are showing to be increasingly unpopular. Choosing Pennsylvania made perfect sense, as it's a must-win swing state that Trump lost in 2020 but won in 2016 and 2024.

But journalist/Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes slammed the president's economic messaging as wildly erratic during a December 9 appearance on MS NOW — a reality that, Sykes emphasized, is reflected in Trump's weak approval ratings in polls.

When host Chris Jansing noted that Trump is attacking Democratic concerns over "affordability" as a "hoax," Sykes responded, "There's a lot of cognitive dissonance there."

The Never Trumper continued, "There is the lived experience that people have. You know, the Trump Administration likes to believe that they can have a bespoke reality, that they can bend truth and facts any way they want. But when people go into the grocery store, when they pay their electric bills, they see what's happening. And quite frankly, I'm getting a little bit of the vibes from the Biden years, where people were saying, 'Look at this chart, it's not real' — and people were saying, 'Well, look at my grocery bill.'"

Sykes argued that Trump's trip to Pennsylvania won't help him sell his economic message if voters believe he is contradicting himself.

Sykes told Jansing, "So on the one hand, you have, you know, Donald Trump, you know, trying to go to Pennsylvania to say that he cares, that he feels people's pain. On the other hand, he's saying that everything is wonderful — the economy is a plus, plus, plus — and anyone who talks about affordability is engaging in a con job. I mean, there's a real contradiction there. And it's one of the difficulties Trump iss going to have."