Gaslighting Americans on Inflation Is a Bad Idea

Now, I stand behind few in my contempt for legacy media, but it's far more likely that the average voter thinks prices are high because they've actually been in a supermarket during the past year. Yet, Trump officials have apparently landed on a strategy of gaslighting consumers. This was tried not very long ago. The Biden administration constantly waved away "transitory" inflation. No issue did more damage to the administration.

"Grocery prices are actually down significantly under Trump," National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said on CBS News last weekend. Inflation, as Hassett knows, has been tempered but is still compounding. We're doing better than historic 9% year-to-year increases we saw during the Democrats' self-destructive mishandling of the post-COVID economy. But 3%-plus on top of those spikes isn't going to placate many. Trump averaged 2.46% inflation during his first term, when prices had been relatively stable for years.

Back in 2022, Democrats let their ideological preferences trump political prudence by ignoring warnings from economists about pushing through the Inflation Reduction Act during a hot economy. Indeed, Biden told Americans that the price tag for the bill was "zero." His advisers, when they weren't mocking inflation worries as a "high-class problem," made the preposterous case that more spending would mitigate the problem.

It didn't. One MIT Sloan study found that government spending was responsible for 42% of the 2022 inflation spike. Biden never recovered.

Hitting consumers with billions in sales tax increases in the guise of tariffs over the last year isn't a much better strategy for Trump. Most economists predicted that tariffs would contribute to price hikes, and yet Trump's love of protectionism trumped pragmatism. The president has been pulling back on his historic tariffs since Liberation Day, though plenty have already contributed to economic uncertainty and inflation.

"You're going to see some substantial announcements over the next couple days in terms of things we don't grow here in the United States," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also claimed prices were down, promised on "Fox & Friends" this week.

Wait, did the administration just learn about comparative advantage? Because tariffs were allegedly instituted to help American workers and industry. Fruit prices have gone up. Ground beef prices have spiked 13%. Coffee has jumped 19% — 66% higher than in 2019. Americans like these things.

Rather than admit it was a mistake, Trump has taken a page from Biden by blaming "gouging" and big greedy corporations for inflation. This strategy never works, either.

Remember that one of the other arguments for tariffs was that revenue would bring down the debt. The United States federal debt accelerated to its highest level ever last quarter, reaching $38 trillion. Trump has not cut any spending. That also threatens inflation. At the same time, Trump has launched a relentless campaign to convince the Federal Reserve to keep cutting interest rates for more easy money.

On top of that, the president wants to dump billions of tax revenues from tariffs back into the economy via $2,000 checks to middle- and low-income Americans — even as Washington keeps borrowing. Some people might fall for this kind of populist ruse. It's short-sighted economically as we know from the last time Washington helped spike inflation by mailing out checks.

There's no magic bullet to bring down prices. The president can only do so much. One thing he can do is no harm. But even if voters are wrong, no politician has ever convinced the electorate to change their minds about the economy. Wide majorities in virtually every poll now say their grocery, utility, health care, housing and fuel costs have all gone up during the past year. Most of them are feeling the aggregate cost of inflation.

Gaslighting them is political suicide.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 11/11/25: Trump's Filibuster Nuke Would Hand Dems the Keys To Remake America
• 11/04/25: Let's Talk About the Real Genocide of Christians in Africa
• 10/16/25: Obamacare Is a Massive Failure. The GOP Shouldn't Bail It Out
• 10/10/25: Why Aren't 'Ceasefire Now!' Activists Celebrating Trump's Gaza Peace Deal?
• 09/12/25: Israel's Strike on Qatar Should Have Happened Years Ago
• 09/05/25: An Open Letter to My Esteemed Colleagues at the International Association of Genocide Scholars
• 08/29/25: The President Doesn't Get to Dictate How We Express Ourselves
• 08/22/25: Is Socialism as Popular as the Media Think?
• 08/15/25: Save the Little Sisters of the Poor!
• 08/08/25: RFK Jr.'s War on Vaccines and Public Health Continues
• 08/01/25: Europe's Recognition of 'Palestine' Is a Cynical Joke
• 07/18/25: Legacy Media Still Covering for Biden
• 06/27/25: Trump Learned the Lessons of Iraq
• 05/30/25: We Have No Constitutional or Moral Duty to Subsidize Harvard
• 05/30/25: Welcome to the Intifada, America
• 05/16/25: Scapegoating Biden Isn't Going to Solve the Dems' Problems
• 05/09/25: The Pulitzer Prizes Have Become a Sad Joke
• 05/05/25: How Do You Do, Fellow White People? Tim Walz Says Hello!
• 04/25/25: Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes a Powerful Argument for School Choice
• 04/18/25: If Everyone Is an Expert, No One Is
• 03/31/25: The Left's Imaginary COVID 'Reckoning'
• 03/21/25: Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists -- Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
• 03/03/25: Mitch McConnell: A GOP Hall of Famer?
• 02/21/25: RFK's Dangerous Autism Lie
• 02/14/25: It's Time to End the EV Racket
• 02/07/25: If You Really Support Immigration, Stop Excusing Chaos
• 02/03/25: Trump's Gaza Proposal Makes Complete Sense
• 01/24/25: How Biden's Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power
• 01/17/25: Israel Makes a Deal With the Actual Devil
• 01/13/25: Why Javier Milei Matters
• 12/20/24: The Obama Doctrine Is Dead
• 12/13/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 12/09/24: It's time for a national conversation about left-wing violence
• 11/08/24: Don't Trash the Constitution to Dunk on the Libs
• 11/08/24: This 'liberation' will NOT be reported
• 11/01/24: HARRIS Is the Bigger Threat to the Constitutional Order
• 09/20/24: Fact checked! Harris Is the Extremist
• 07/13/24: Explain Yourself, Kamala Harris!
• 07/05/24: How Biden's Mental Decline Went From 'Misinformation' to Fact in a Week
• 04/12/24: Biden Is Now Chasing the 'Death to America' Voter
• 03/15/24: Turns Out Biden Lied About Hur, Beau, And Why He Pilfered Classified Docs
• 02/09/24: Why Biden Is Threatening to Veto Aid to Israel
• 02/09/23: Electric Cars Are a Scam
• 06/30/23: Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by 'Extreme Weather'
• 03/03/23: Questioning Biden's Ukraine Policy Doesn't Make You an 'Isolationist'
• 01/20/23: No ribbons? Don't hide behind religion!
• 01/13/23: On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses
• 04/29/22: Biden's Ministry of Truth
• 04/08/22: The Most Radical Abortion Law in the Nation
• 04/01/22: Recuse Yourself, Joe Biden
• 03/25/22: No, School Boards Are Not 'Banning Books'
• 03/11/22: Let Them Drive Teslas
• 01/28/22: It's Not Government's Job to 'Root Out' Misinformation
• 01/14/22: Biden's Big Elections Lie
• 01/07/22: Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble
• 12/24/21:AOC's Grasp on American Governance Is a 'Farce'
• 12/17/21: Dems Pivot from Build Back Better to Useless Extremism
• 11/19/21: Reckoning' Over Steele Dossier?
• 10/15/21: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
• 09/24/21: The most demonstrable political scandal still ignored
• 09/17/21: Sorry, AOC, The Rich Already Pay Their Fair Share
• 09/02/21: Why Isn't Biden to Blame for COVID-19 Deaths?
• 08/06/21: Biden's Unprecedented Attack on the Constitution
• 07/30/21: Jan. 6 Was Deplorable. It Was NOT a Coup
• 06/21/21: The Myth of Republican Obstructionism
• 05/21/21: What Does Putin Have on Biden?
• 04/16/21: Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
• 03/26/21: No to DC Statehood is far from GOP being reflexive
• 03/22/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights The Hypocrisy of the Filibuster Busters
• 03/12/21: Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due Process Rights
• 03/05/21: AOC's Terrible Minimum Wage Argument
• 02/12/21: The Dem Party Is Radicalizing against the Constitution
• 02/05/21: What NOT to Do with Marjorie Taylor Greene
• 01/15/21: Free Speech Is a Value Not Just a Right
• 12/31/20: It Can't Get Any Worse Than 2020. Here's a 2021 Political Wish List
• 10/26/20: Wanted: An Honest Debate about the Death Penalty
• 10/26/20: These are the questions 'Big Guy' Biden must be forced to answer about Hunter's emails
• 09/11/20: The Dems' Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election
• 08/28/20: Biden Is Underperforming Hillary in Battleground States
• 08/14/20: Kamala Harris, Imaginary Centrist
• 07/24/20: Who you calling a fascist?
• 07/17/20: Speech Police have finally gone too far
• 07/03/20: 'But Gorsuch' Is Still Trump's Best Argument
• 06/22/20: Welcome to America's Cultural Revolution
• 06/12/20: The color of my skin is not an indictment of my morality, nor does it strip me of my agency
• 06/05/20: What this son of immigrants knows about bulding bussinesses --- and the dismay of destruction
• 05/28/20: The Folly of Twitter's Fact-Check
• 05/22/20: Dems Warning Trump Will Reject Election Results Should Look in the Mirror
• 05/15/20: Obamagate Is NOT a Conspiracy Theory
• 05/08/20: Really, Joe --- due process is the opposite of justice?