Today on the Playbook podcast, President Trump hits the road to sell his new message on the

cost of living, but voters aren't buying it yet.

We've got new polls showing just that and two more big state-level wins in Trump-supporting

districts for Democrats tell the same story.

And President Zelensky of Ukraine delivers his latest version of a peace plan today as Trump

continues to turn the screws.

Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard.

And I'm Megan Messerly.

It's Wednesday, December 10th.

Megan, it's great to have you back again.

Thanks for coming on. Of course. Always happy to be here, Jack. There was no Playbook podcast yesterday. No. No. We've got to listen to 45 minutes of Donald Trump with Dasha in the White House, as you know. That they did. And I'm sure listeners understand why we didn't do the normal version of this podcast yesterday. Megan, it's like 36 hours on since they had that

conversation. The reverberations of it are still echoing around DC and indeed around the world.

Trump obviously said a lot about Ukraine and Europe, which is pretty jaw-dropping stuff, and

we should get onto that later in this conversation. But I want to start with the affordability

thing, because of course,

Trump was speaking about this in a big speech last night. The line that just jumped out from the

interview was his assessment of his own economy. Right. I've forgotten how many pluses were in there

now. Five. Five plus plus. There you go. A plus plus plus plus. When he said that, do you think the people around him in the White House

were pleased to hear him describe the U.S. economy in those terms? Or do you think they were wincing

when he said that? You know, I think the people in the White House who worked with the president

for a long time are very realistic about how he's going to characterize things, right?

It's true to form for the president to say that he is the to characterize things, right? It's true to form for the

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