“People at the top are doing fine, people in the middle and lower income brackets are struggling a bit, to say the least.”

Donald Trump’s allies this week hyped up newly released data showing that the US economy grew by more than 4% in the third quarter of 2025, but economists and journalists who dove into the report’s finer details found some troubling signs.

Ron Insana, a finance reporter and a former hedge fund manager, told MS Now‘s Stephanie Ruhle on Tuesday night that there is a “split economy” in which growth is being driven primarily by spending from the top 20% of income earners, whom he noted accounted for 63% of all spending in the economy.

On the other side, Insana pointed to retail sales data that painted a very different picture for those on the lower end of the income scale. “When you look at lower income individuals, nearly half of them are using ‘buy-now-pay-later’ for their holiday shopping,” he said. “So we have this real split… People at the top are doing fine, people in the middle and lower income brackets are struggling a bit, to say the least.”