Stephanie Ruhle says the anger now building around Donald Trump is bigger than partisan backlash. It is, she said on The Daily Beast Podcast with Joanna Coles, coming from Americans who feel the country no longer works for them — including some of the original MAGA voters who once bought Trump’s pitch that he was their man.
Ruhle argued that the public is not parsing the fine print of the Big Beautiful Bill. They are looking at their own lives, she said, and deciding that “this country doesn’t work for me.” She said that feeling is strong enough that some people who do not even identify closely with Trump anymore are saying they are ready to break the system.
The MSNBC host described the sentiment as an “Eat the rich” mood driven less by ideology than by frustration. Trump, she said, built support by telling disillusioned voters that jobs had disappeared and that they were forgotten. Now, she argued, the same people are seeing a different picture: a president whose wealth and power appear to be serving him first.
“Every single day, there’s another story out there about the grift,” Ruhle said, citing World Liberty Financial, Trump’s crypto business and his purchase of thousands of shares in companies he had just met with. Those examples, she suggested, have become shorthand for a broader sense that the system is rigged for people already at the top.
That anger is landing while Trump is back in the White House and his family’s business interests are under fresh scrutiny. The Trump Family Corruption Tracker compiled by House Oversight Democrats estimates that Trump and his family have made $2.5 billion from various digital schemes since he returned to office last January. The administration also tried to create a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to compensate political allies, possibly including Jan. 6 rioters, before the courts blocked it and the Justice Department said earlier this month it would abandon the effort.
The White House swatted Ruhle aside, calling her a “left-wing hack,” but her point was less about labels than about erosion. She said people do not need to know every line of the bill to feel the squeeze. They see prices, wages and opportunity, then see Trump at the center of power and conclude: “This isn’t working.”
That is the political risk Ruhle put on the table. She said Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were punished because Americans were still struggling economically, but Trump is different because, in her view, the pressures many voters feel are tied directly to his policies. Whether that turns into measurable damage for him in the midterms is still the unanswered question.
