WASHINGTON — Zigzagging from issue to issue, President Donald Trump has left his political allies struggling to keep pace with his pronouncements and lost precious time to drive a compelling message ahead of the midterm congressional elections, Republican strategists and people who’ve worked with him said.

The takeaway from recent polling is that voters worry most about high prices and the cost of living. But Trump has at times veered off pocketbook issues and made moves that are peripheral to the top-of-mind concerns of voters who will soon decide which party controls Congress.

The latest instance of Trump stepping on his party’s own messaging came on Friday.

In the hour before he held an Oval Office event focused on reducing prescription drug prices, Trump announced he was barring three news outlets from the White House grounds because he disliked their coverage. That caught even some members of his own staff off guard.

The media ban has dominated the news cycle for days, and rather than steer the conversation back to the savings Americans would reap from his policies, Trump amplified the furor.

Some Republican candidates in competitive races are increasingly distancing themselves from the president, believing that voters want a different focus and tack than what Trump is offering.

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., who is typically a staunch Trump defender, released an ad criticizing Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And GOP candidates in Iowa and Michigan have spoken out against the Iran war and its effect on prices.

Nearly two-thirds of adults lack confidence in the national news media, according to an NBC News survey in June sponsored by More Perfect, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing democracy. That makes the press a ripe target, though it isn’t clear that Americans want Trump to do something about it.

In an NBC News poll this month, registered voters cited inflation, government corruption, threats to democracy, jobs and the economy, the Iran war, immigration and healthcare costs as issues that loom largest; news coverage was not presented as an option.

“The president is out there touting his new arch,” Maura Gillespie, a Republican strategist, said of Trump’s plan to build a soaring arch near Arlington National Cemetery. “None of that addresses the gas prices being over $4. None of that addresses the younger voters who are struggling to afford their first home. None of that is landing.”

“Republicans need to steer their messaging away from Trump and divert their lane from him and focus on their constituents, because that’s the only thing that’s going to get them elected,” she added.

Trump often complains that news coverage fails to credit him for his successes. Labor and stock markets have proved resilient in Trump’s term, though wages are lagging inflation.

“The story no one is writing is how well the economy is doing in spite of the president’s lack of discipline,” said a person close to the administration, who added that Trump, 80, is growing “more impulsive with age.”

Speaking at the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump spooled out a list of accomplishments on his watch. He struck a triumphal tone as he cast the U.S. as a nation in the midst of a renaissance.

“Our economy is the envy of the world,” he said. “Our military is the most powerful on earth. Our technology is second to none and we’re leading in virtually everything. Our energy is fueling the planet. America is rising, our nation is growing, our power is expanding, our country is doing better than ever before.”

A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said in a statement: “The Trump administration has remained laser-focused delivering on the president’s long-term economic agenda on the home front. Continued private-sector job growth, booming investments, and month-over-month prices of beef, chicken, prescription drugs, and other essentials declining in the last two inflation reports are all proof that America’s positive economic momentum continues.”

In recent months, Trump has slalomed back and forth through the issues.

In April, he threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization. Hours later, he backed off. He called Iran’s leaders “very rational” in June, “scum” in July. In his United Nations speech, Trump revived his apocalyptic threat. He warned that he may need to “annihilate” Iran and “drive them into hell” if the regime doesn’t agree to a deal to end the war.

This month he announced that he would send every American a $5,000 check if Republicans win the midterm elections; a key Republican senator whose committee oversees spending plans told reporters he had seen no details of how Trump’s idea would work.

“He’s very unpredictable. He calls it trusting his gut,” a second Republican senator told NBC News, who, like others in this piece, requested anonymity to speak candidly.

The press ban

The latest thunderclap from Trump’s social media feed was his eviction of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House grounds.

A number of high-level White House aides were unaware beforehand that Trump had imposed the ban, and they struggled to explain it in the hours after it went into effect, according to conversations with four White House officials. Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles was absent from the building Friday when he announced the new directive, according to a person familiar with the situation, potentially leading to some of the confusion from the staff.

Still, aides sought to defend Trump’s move.

“Nobody close to the president was surprised at his action to hold the fake news accountable,” a senior White House official said.

Even Vice President JD Vance seemed at a loss as to how to explain the policy. Trump said specifically that he was “banning” the three outlets. But Vance, speaking to reporters Monday before heading to a campaign stop in North Carolina, said: “So, he’s not banning media outlets. What he’s doing is saying, ‘We’re not going to give you special access to the White House if you engage in what is effectively propaganda.’”

In an interview with the “TODAY” show, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked whether media outlets should be banned because Trump doesn’t like their coverage. Rubio defended the president’s decision, saying, “There aren’t a bunch of police officers or soldiers kicking down the doors of MSNBC or MS NOW, whatever it’s called, and arresting people and unplugging it from the grid. They’re just not allowed to work from the workspace at the White House.”

MS NOW reporter Akayla Gardner, CNN’s Betsy Klein and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett were all denied access to the White House on Saturday.

Klein and Haslett both had their White House press credentials confiscated when they sought to enter the grounds.

In his remarks Friday, Trump said, “We are banning them, yes we are, and there may be others to follow.” But a Trump adviser told NBC News on Tuesday “there are not” conversations happening inside the White House about expanding the ban to other disfavored outlets.

The TV networks have set up what’s known as a “pool”; they take turns covering the president as he goes about his public activities and sharing footage with other news outlets. CNN was supposed to provide TV pool coverage on Monday, but the White House barred them from their duties.

In response, the four other networks that are part of the TV network pool — NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox — refused to step in for the exiled CNN, meaning there was no TV pool coverage.

The repercussions were soon evident, potentially impeding Trump’s ability to deliver his message. Newsmax, a conservative outlet, tried to air the president’s remarks at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, but he couldn’t be heard.

“There’s no microphone because the pool cameras aren’t there. So maybe, Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit,” the Newsmax host said, adding, “So obviously, the ramifications are here. Can’t hear what the president is saying.”

Trump’s ban is now before a judge. All three outlets filed suit against Trump on Monday, arguing that their eviction violates both due process rights and First Amendment protections for newsgathering and speech. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon on the plaintiff’s motion for a temporary restraining order.

Trump has long lamented his media coverage. During his first term, the White House barred a CNN reporter, Jim Acosta, from the grounds following a contentious public exchange with Trump. CNN sued and the judge in the case — also Kelly — ordered the Trump administration to return Acosta’s press pass. In the end, the administration relented and restored the pass permanently.

In the new term, Trump has also talked privately about barring individual reporters and news outlets from the White House, but he refrained, according to two people familiar with those discussions.

By acting now, he may be distracting from a promising message for his party ahead of the midterms. Internal White House polling shows that Trump’s effort to reduce the cost of prescription drugs is his most popular issue, according to a White House official.

“He can and should be talking about the things that voters say are really important to them. And this [the media ban] is not it,” said Douglas Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee. “It seems to have come out of nowhere and it seems to have caught a lot of people by surprise.”

“We’re less than 45 days out from the election and for the last three days no voter has heard anything about what Donald Trump wants to do to lower prices,” he added. “That’s a problem for any Republican on the ballot.”

The second Republican senator rattled off a series of issues that he’d like to see Trump spotlight.

“He can go out and talk about the reduction in crime,” the senator said, “or controlling the border, or eliminating rules and regulations.”

“But he’s probably not.”

‘Be quiet’

A recent run of setbacks has soured the mood inside the West Wing, a senior White House official said. Even though Trump now has a handpicked chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, the board defied Trump’s wishes last week and raised interest rates.

The Supreme Court has blocked Trump’s attempt to use the Postal Service to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms, something Trump had hoped to do.

Gas prices have spiked since the Trump administration and Israel launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28, creating a slow-rolling backlash within the GOP.

Growing numbers of Republicans in tight midterm races are finding ways to distance themselves from Trump, whose approval rating in a new NBC News poll stood at 41%, a second-term low.

Rep. Ashley Hinson, an Iowa Republican who faces a tough race for the Senate, called for an “immediate end” to the Iran war in a social media post Monday. That’s an about-face from Hinson, who has voted against resolutions directing Trump to stop the war six different times.

“Iowans are being squeezed and shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran,” Hinson wrote. “We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices.”

On Friday, Trump got some unsolicited advice from an iconic figure in the cultural world. Pat Boone, the 92-year-old singer-songwriter, released a video on X that offered a heartfelt suggestion to the president.

“Right now, I feel like you’re very tired,” Boone said, looking straight at the camera. “And I’m worried that many of us haven’t prayed enough for you because I think you’re wearing out and you’re feeling the pressure and expressing yourself in ways that are not becoming to you — that are not presidential.”

“So may I recommend something very highly: that you be quiet.”