Cliff’s Note:
Inflation just hit 3.7%. Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden and said prices are going “down, down, down.” David Shuster did the arithmetic so you don’t have to.
Behind the paywall: David rips apart how Trump explains away his own numbers: a “blip” that won’t end, a hotel-lobby theory of prosperity, a jobs “record” that’s just population growth. Then there’s what Trump brags about instead. Insane.
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—Cliff
Just two weeks left to act!
by David Shuster
Over the last ten years, there has been a tradition in MAGA economics of measuring prosperity not by a worker’s earnings, grocery prices, or even what remains in somebody’s pocket after paying for gas, housing, and health care, but by what Donald Trump says. Under this system, most of the public may be growing poorer, the cost of living may be climbing, and the family budget may be coming apart at the seams. But none of that matters. Trump declares economic greatness and anybody who declares otherwise is a traitor and/or fake news.
Now, less than two weeks until the midterm elections, Trump and his administration deputies are leaning into the top issue for voters—the economy—and lying with an enthusiasm and intensity unknown to humankind.
At the White House Rose Garden, where Dementia Don announced a women’s health care task force chaired by RFK Jr. (oh the ironies), Trump also declared that consumer prices are, “coming way down. I’m seeing. Down, down, down.”
One almost has to admire the simplicity. There is no need for elaborate economic theory, no tiresome consultation with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, no investigation of the typical family finances. The President has seen it. Down, down, down. The case is closed.
Unfortunately for Trump and the GOP, the business of prices is conducted in the vulgar world of arithmetic, where Trumpian delusions have never been recognized as a unit of measurement.
According to Trump’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation was 3.0% when Joe Biden left office and Trump took over in January 2025. Now, inflation stands at 3.7%.
That does not mean every price is rising at the same rate, nor does it mean that the price level itself has jumped by that amount. It means that the pace of inflation has increased. The distinction is elementary, but elementary distinctions have a way of becoming inconvenient for the Trump buffoonery squad.
Trump’s defenders could reasonably argue that inflation is affected by many forces, that some prices fall while others rise, and that no administration controls every fluctuation in the market. All true.
But this is precisely why a President who makes wild claims about falling prices should be prepared to show his or her work. Otherwise, we are left with an administration demanding credit for the economy while treating unwelcome data as subversive threats.
At the same White House Rose Garden event, Trump said that China’s President Xi Jinping was at the White House a week earlier, when the visit had occurred about a month before. Does this confusion signify Trump has dementia? Add it to the list. But whether you believe or not that Trump’s brain is rotting, this incident does beg a more ordinary question: why must the public so often be asked to reconcile Trump’s pronouncements with the plain record of events and basic facts?
