Live updates: Trump calls affordability a hoax again in insult-ridden speech in Pennsylvania

President Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to debut a new economic message: Democrats drove up prices, “and we’re bringing them down.”

But even he didn’t seem fully convinced.

Trump at multiple points during his Pennsylvania speech undercut his own messaging, complained that his prepared remarks were boring and set off on long unrelated tangents.

“If I read what’s on the teleprompter, you’d all be falling asleep right now,” Trump said just minutes into a speech meant to reenergize voters about his economic agenda.

A few minutes later, he derided the cost-of-living issues that he’d traveled to the swing state to talk about, calling concerns about affordability “a hoax.”

“They always have a hoax,” Trump said, reprising his claims that voters’ worries about rising costs were a political ploy manufactured by Democrats. “The new word is affordability.”

The president eventually acknowledged that he’d been encouraged not to call affordability issues a “hoax” because it’d be misconstrued. But even then, he insisted that Democrats were unfairly blaming him for rising prices.

“I agree the prices were too high,” Trump said. “They say affordability. And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No, our prices are coming down tremendously.”

Trump’s trip to Pennsylvania marked the first of what the White House has promised will be a string of rallies around the country to tout his agenda and boost Republican lawmakers on the ballot next year.

The administration has sought to reboot its economic message, prompted by polls show increasing unhappiness with Trump’s performance on cost-of-living issues.

But Trump said Tuesday that it was his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who had to convince him to start traveling again.

“The chief of staff, and she’s fantastic, she said, ‘We have to start campaigning, sir,’” Trump said. “I said, ‘Already?’ They said, ‘We have to win the midterms and you’re the guy that’s going to take us over the midterm.’”