Trump’s Blame-Avoidance Pattern Under Scrutiny
“The buck stops here” is among the most famous phrases in presidential history — except with President Donald Trump, it almost never does. An analysis by AP News published Saturday examines the president’s consistent pattern of deflecting responsibility when things go wrong, contrasting his approach with the accountability principle established by Harry Truman.
Concerns about a weak economy and still-high inflation? Trump blames his predecessor, Joe Biden, even though the Democrat has been out of office for more than 18 months. The problem-plagued renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? The president insists it was marred by vandalism, even though the office of a prosecutor he appointed concluded the damage was due to shoddy workmanship. The increasingly unpopular war in Iran? Trump frames it as necessary corrective action for nearly 50 years of missed opportunities by earlier presidents.
A Pattern Dating to Trump’s First Term
Truman famously kept a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk as president. According to the Truman Library, the phrase derives from frontier poker games, where players would pass a buckhorn handle knife to the person whose turn it was to deal. Truman said during his 1953 farewell address: “The president, whoever he is, has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”
Trump once espoused similar beliefs, saying in 2013 that “whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.” Accepting the 2016 presidential nomination, he declared, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” But as president, he has often suggested that the solution and blame rest elsewhere.
“The buck stops with everybody,” Trump said in 2019 during a lengthy government shutdown. In 2020, on the same day he declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for a lack of COVID-19 testing.
“Taking responsibility being a characteristic of presidential leadership — or any kind of leadership — is absolutely true,” said Nicole Anslover, a history professor at Florida Atlantic University and author of “Harry S. Truman: The Coming of the Cold War.” Presidents before Trump “really usually take accountability,” she said.
‘We Inherited a Total Catastrophe’
Trump’s approval rating on the economy has fallen from 40% in March 2025 to 32% in July, according to Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling. About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say Trump’s economic policies have made conditions worse, according to Pew Research Center polling.
“The public certainly expects the president to be concerned about, and focused on, making life more affordable,” said Republican pollster Frank Luntz.
Trump instead points to Biden, under whom inflation hit a four-decade peak of 9.1% in 2022 before declining to 2.7% by November 2024. Last month, pressured by the Iran war, it was 3.4%.
“When we took office, we inherited a total catastrophe,” Trump said at a recent rally, later adding, “I inherited those high prices, just so you understand.”
Andrew Bates, a Democratic strategist and former Biden White House spokesperson, noted that Trump no longer mentions his campaign promise to “immediately end inflation” on Day One. “He may not remember having made those promises, but swing voters sure as hell do,” Bates said.
Same Pattern with Iran and the Reflecting Pool
The president has characterized the Iran war — now in its sixth month with no clear end in sight — as “a little excursion” or “detour.” He initially said it would be over in four to five weeks. About two-thirds of U.S. adults say the war has not been worthwhile, including about 37% of Republicans, according to AP-NORC polling.
On the Reflecting Pool, Trump has falsely suggested that Biden and Obama spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” trying unsuccessfully to fix it. His main defense has been vandalism, but at least four cases alleging that — including the most prominent case against an Olympic canoeist — have been dropped because of a lack of evidence, as NPR reported.
The president acknowledged in a recent Punchbowl interview that voters are angry, but he said they are not mad at him — they are mad at congressional Republicans. Trump believes his party can hold its congressional majorities after November, but he was clear that if Republicans lose, it won’t be his fault, echoing his comments before the 2018 midterms when he said he would not accept blame if his party lost the House, which it did.
What to Watch
With midterm elections scheduled for November 3, Trump’s low approval ratings pose a significant risk to Republican candidates. His unwillingness to accept blame sometimes leads him to deny that there are problems at all, potentially leaving GOP leaders in tight races with little reassurance for voters that their concerns are being addressed.
As Anslover noted, after more than 11 years in politics, Trump has proved he is not afraid to violate norms of presidential comportment. “For many Americans, it has either been a shift in how they view the presidency, or, like with so many things, they just feel empowered to say, ‘These are my priorities. My priority is not the facts,’” she said.
Whether voters will hold Trump accountable at the ballot box — or accept his framing that the buck stops somewhere else — remains one of the defining questions of the 2026 midterm season.