Reagan's 1980 question, asked again: David Frum on wages, prices and tariffs
The short Saturday episode of The David Frum Show ran far ahead of everything else The Atlantic posted that day, and its comments read like a stack of household bills.
The AtlanticStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 50,756 views a day, 16 times a normal first day on this channel (3,161).
Are You Better Off Under Trump? The Numbers Say No | The David Frum Show
An old question, a new answer. David Frum opened the Saturday episode of his show at The Atlantic with the line Ronald Reagan put to voters in his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter, and spent the next few minutes answering it with figures of his own. In fourteen hours the video passed 38,000 views. A new upload on this channel usually ends its first full day at around 3,000.
The chapters lay out the argument in order. First comes a national mood that, as Frum describes it, has turned sour in 2026. Then wages are set against rising prices, tariffs are presented as a hidden tax, and the episode closes on debt and the policy choices behind it. The description calls it his explanation of why President Trump's approval rating has fallen so far two years into his second term. The title already gives away his answer to Reagan's question.
The comment section filled quickly: before the first day was even over, it held more than twice the comments of a typical full first day. Much of it reads like a household ledger. Viewers list what their groceries, insurance and student loans cost now, and homeowners write about low mortgage rates they would lose if they moved. Others write in from Canada and Australia, and one viewer went back to Reagan himself, to the economics degree he earned at Eureka College.
The same Saturday brought other political pieces to the channel, among them Simon Shuster on a possible Russia sanctions deal and Matt Viser on Democrats' impeachment plans. Each stayed at a few thousand views. Frum has now run past the channel's usual pace twice in a few days, after his conversation with Eric Holder about the midterms, as we reported here.
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- Channel
- The Atlantic
- Subscribers
- 981,000 ▲ 4,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 1,787,507
- Channel views, pace per day
- 61,335 (on a normal day: 454,910)
- Video published
- October 3, 2026
- Video views so far
- 38,780 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 50,756
The numbers
For a channel whose uploads usually start slowly, a first day like this one stands apart, in views and in comments.
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The Atlantic was founded in 1857 in which city?
The Atlantic Monthly was founded in Boston in 1857 by a group of writers that included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
