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I blame the media.

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My "key issue" for this next election is to not give this buffoon, another 4 years in office.

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About 85% of the recreational vehicles sold in the United States are built in and around Elkhart County, making it a popular stop for politicians to tout their visions for U.S. manufacturing – including President Donald Trump, who staged a rally here last May.

And yet this uniquely American manufacturing sector has been caught in the crossfire of Trump’s trade war, according to interviews with industry insiders and economists, along with data showing a steep sales decline amid rising costs and consumer prices. The industry has taken hits from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum and other duties on scores of Chinese-made RV parts, from plumbing fixtures to electronic components to vinyl seat covers.

Shipments of RVs to dealers have fallen 22% percent in the first five months of this year, compared to the same period last year, after slipping 4% in 2018, according to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association.

The RV industry’s woes illustrate how even the most “American” of manufacturers, the kind of industries Trump has vowed to protect, can be heavily exposed to tariffs in a world of globalized supply chains.

Tariff-related price hikes have forced manufacturers to pass on some of the increased costs though higher RV prices, which in turn has contributed to slower sales. As dealers cut orders, many plants furloughed workers or reduced hours, including Renegade, which has reduced its headcount of 160 by about 10 workers since May at its two factories here.

Michael Hicks, a Ball State University economist who tracks the industry, said its decline is far worse than he or other analysts expected and could signal a wider economic downturn. RV shipments have fallen sharply just before the last three U.S. recessions. (For a graphic on RV sales and past recessions, see: tmsnrt.rs/2XCPbL2 )

“The RV industry is a great bellwether of the economy,” said Hicks, because the vehicles are an expensive and discretionary purchase, easily delayed by consumers who start to worry about their financial stability.

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Every year, the public gets a window into the White House's views of the economy when the administration publishes the Economic Report of the President. Typically, it is a dense but interesting read, offering a data-driven assessment of the economy, and highly anticipated by economists, policymakers and others who care about economic policy. However, the Trump administration's 2019 report is a sharp departure from those of previous administrations.

This year's report misconstrues well-established facts, cherry-picks data, relies on economic theories widely rejected by mainstream economists and entirely omits critical subjects. I correct the record in the Joint Economic Committee Democratic response to the report, which is mandated by law, and was released Thursday.

The report claims full credit for economic conditions that President Trump mostly inherited from President Obama. At the time of President Trump's inauguration, the unemployment rate was 4.7% and trending down, while the economy had added jobs for 76 straight months. Moreover, the average monthly job growth during the last two years of the Obama administration was stronger than the first two years of the Trump administration. Even so, Trump implausibly has claimed that he has achieved an economic turnaround.

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Trump has so far missed one of his biggest goals for the economy

President Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for reelection in 2020 with the slogan "Keep America Great." But he hasn't delivered on a central promise he made the last time he was a candidate: that the economy would grow at a rate of 3% or higher in each year of his term.

Gross domestic product was lower than originally reported in 2018, the Commerce Department said as it reported second-quarter results Friday, despite a $1.5 trillion tax-cut package and increased government spending. The revision to 2.5% growth from 2.9% last year followed a similarly disappointing read for 2017.

Trump and administration officials have blamed the Federal Reserve for the misses. But the GDP report showed that a drop in business investment and exports weighed on activity between April and June, which economists said was partly a result of the global tariff wars Trump ignited last year.

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Unfulfilled economic promises by an incumbent would typically loom large in a reelection bid, according to David Kochel, a Republican strategist who worked on presidential campaigns for Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. But talk of the economy has at times taken a backseat to heated clashes with Democrats in recent months.

"He prefers a campaign focused on hot-button issues like immigration and an appeal to identity politics as a way to stir the base," he said. "He talks about the economy almost as an afterthought after he's riffed through his greatest hits like The Wall, The Squad, and The Socialists."

Kochel added: "That said, if a growing group of voters believes the economy is headed in the wrong direction and consumer confidence starts to erode, it could rise to the top of the list of concerns voters have and ultimately cost the president support he should be able to count on in a strong economy."

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After two gruesome mass shootings in a 24-hour span, some Republicans are raising alarms that their opposition to new firearm limits is making the party toxic to the suburban women and college graduates who will shape the 2020 election.

“Republicans are headed for extinction in the suburbs if they don’t distance themselves from the NRA. The GOP needs to put forth solutions to help eradicate the gun violence epidemic,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor and oil-and-gas executive who supports President Donald Trump.

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Suburban women in some swing House districts overwhelmingly want tighter gun laws, a new poll conducted by a Republican firm has found. In fact, preventing gun violence has surpassed health care as the most important issue in the eyes of these women, including independents.

But in the wake of two recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Congress and President Donald Trump are showing few signs of taking action to pass even basic legislation to curb shootings, including a bipartisan universal background check bill that was the most popular measure among the women surveyed.

First reported by the Washington Post’s James Hohmann, the Public Opinion Strategies poll commissioned by the Republican Main Street Partnership surveyed 1,000 women in five congressional districts: Colorado’s Sixth, Kansas’s Third, North Carolina’s Ninth, Pennsylvania’s First, and Virginia’s 10th, some of which have been personally affected by high-profile gun violence. Colorado’s Sixth Congressional District, for example, is home to Aurora, where 12 people were killed by a shooter at a movie theater in 2012. It’s also close to Columbine High School, the site of the 1999 high school massacre.

The poll found a vast majority of the women surveyed want Congress to pass several gun control measures; in addition to the 90 percent who supported a universal background check bill, 76 percent of women polled also said they wanted Congress to ban the purchase and use of semi-automatic weapons like AK-47s and AR-15s.

Though these women’s priorities might change before November, 2020, none of this is good news for Republicans in battleground states and districts.

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Three days after a pair of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas that left 31 people dead, President Donald Trump was preoccupied with visions of a Rose Garden ceremony.

His daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, had proposed the idea of a televised Rose Garden appearance as a way to nudge her father toward supporting universal background checks. The president had recently suggested he was open to the gun-control measure, tweeting, “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform.” To be sure, this was similar to how he’d responded to other mass shootings during his 31-month presidency, and each time, the push for action fizzled. But the prospect of a Rose Garden ceremony, his daughter thought, where Trump could sign a document and call it “historic” and “unprecedented”—and receive positive media attention—might be the best chance of yielding real change.

For a moment, it looked like it just might work. “He loved it. He was all spun up about it,” said a former senior White House official who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity in order to share private conversations. On August 7, the president picked up the phone to discuss the idea with Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association. “It’s going to be great, Wayne,” Trump said, according to both a former senior White House official and an NRA official briefed on the call. “They will love us.” And if they—meaning the roughly 5 million people who make up the NRA’s active membership, and some of Trump’s electoral base—didn’t, Trump reportedly assured LaPierre, “I’ll give you cover.” (The White House did not return a request for comment for this story.)

“Wayne’s listening to that and thinking, Uh, no, Mr. President, we give you cover,” the former senior White House official said in describing the conversation. The president reportedly asked LaPierre whether the NRA was willing to give in at all on background checks. LaPierre’s response, the sources said, was unequivocal: “No.” With that, “the Rose Garden fantasy,” as the NRA official described it to me, was scrapped as quickly as it had been dreamed up.

Earlier this afternoon, according to a person briefed on the call, the president told LaPierre in another phone call that universal background checks were off the table. “He was cementing his stance that we already have background checks and that he’s not waffling on this anymore,” the source told me. “He doesn’t want to pursue it.” In the call, the source added, Trump said he wanted to focus now on “increasing funding” for mental-health care and directing attorneys general across the country to start prosecuting “gun crime” through federal firearms charges from the Justice Department.