Blaming Trump for Inflation Is an Insane Lie
Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists are undeterred by reality in the effort to score political points.
It was only a matter of time before leftists impatiently started tapping their feet and saying, Well, Donald Trump, when are you going to fix inflation like you promised? Why are you failing?
Inflation, of course, was Joe Biden’s creation. He and his fellow Democrats unleashed that beast with their Orwellian-named American Rescue Plan in the spring of 2021. Prices skyrocketed almost immediately, with inflation rising from about 1.4% when Trump left office to a high of 9.1% in June 2022. Biden loved lying about that, claiming that inflation was 9% when he came to office. Before that, he kept telling us it was “transitory.”
Four years later…
The dirty little secret of inflation is that overall prices never really return to where they were. Life becomes and remains more expensive, and it’s cumulative — prices are 21% higher since January 2021, to be exact, though many things are more like 30%, 50%, or 100% more. That’s because Democrats continued feeding the fire with even more spending throughout Biden’s term.
Triggering and feeding inflation was easy. Subduing it is much harder.
The first inflation report of Trump’s second term illustrates this. Monthly prices rose a problematic and unexpected 0.5% — the worst since August 2023 — causing year-over-year inflation to once again reach 3%. Inflation has now risen four months in a row. Used cars and auto insurance played a big role, as did the price of eggs and groceries generally.
Cue Democrats and the Leftmedia to target Trump.
“Americans woke up this morning to bad news for their bank accounts,” pontificated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “They woke up to a grim reality that Donald Trump is not going to keep his promise to lower costs. Americans woke up to an era of Trumpflation, and unfortunately, this is only the beginning.” He added, “[Trump] said, ‘When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.’ Well, today is Day 23, and prices are up 3%.”
Give me a break. Schumer led the charge to ignite Bidenflation, and three weeks into Trump’s term, he wants to pretend like it’s all Trump’s fault. You might say Ground Chuck is flipping the hamburger too early.
@SenSchumer: “Donald Trump is not going to keep his promise to lower costs.” It’s “an era of Trumpflation.”
— Nate Jackson | Patriot Post (@NatriotJackson) February 13, 2025
Uh, someone is flipping that burger too early. pic.twitter.com/gRw8IUIW3v
The Leftmedia happily joined him. “Price growth sped up unexpectedly in January, posing an early challenge to President Donald Trump’s economic agenda,” reports NBC News in its first sentence. The New York Times’s first sentence parroted Schumer: “President Trump promised voters that, if elected, he would enact policies that would bring prices down on ‘Day 1’ in office.”
Yes, Trump’s particular form of marketing is defined by hyperbole. Everything is the worst or the best, and he’ll fix problems so fast it’ll make your head spin. You have to know when to take him seriously versus literally. Leftists specialize in wrongly taking him literally so as to discredit him.
The truth is that, tariffs notwithstanding, Trump’s economic policies will ease the four-year burden of inflation, but it won’t happen overnight. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” JD Vance observed last month. “It’s going to take a little bit of time” for prices to settle.
As for Trump, he took to Truth Social yesterday to explain, “BIDEN INFLATION UP!”
Insofar as Biden’s policies are still having an effect, this is absolutely true. Biden hampered energy production, saddled the country with expensive regulations and income redistribution schemes, and slaughtered 100 million chickens to stave off the spread of bird flu. There’s now a shortage of eggs, which cost more than ever, if you can even find them.
Trump could also spare some blame for the Democrat-dominated Federal Reserve, which prematurely lowered interest rates, including just before the election in a transparent attempt to help Kamala Harris. I dare say those rates will stay put for a while now.
It took Ronald Reagan years to solve the inflation puzzle left for him by Jimmy Carter. Team Trump is already working on the message that it will take time now to fix Bidenflation. “But,” asks veteran political analyst Byron York, “when will Trump deserve credit or blame for his efforts to lower it?”
The economy was the number one issue for voters, and Trump deserves a shot at restoring the prosperity he helped unleash from 2017 until the pandemic. He and his team must be on top of their game to communicate that he’s doing exactly that.
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