THE ECONOMY, STUPID

Trump, 80, Self-Soothes With Bonkers Chart

The president’s daughter-in-law had to explain the deceptive inflation data.

Donald Trump tried to defend his poor handling of inflation in his second presidential term by sharing a misleading chart on Truth Social.

During a frantic social media posting spree on Sunday, the 80-year-old president shared a video comparing the rates of inflation in his second term with those recorded under predecessors Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and George H.W. Bush.

The evolving chart features cumulative CPI-U inflation between months 18 and 48 of each of the last 10 presidential terms, with Trump’s second term conveniently falling to the bottom of the list by the end of the clip.

Deceptively, however, the clip sets Trump’s rate at the 4.71 percent inflation seen over the past 18 months and freezes it until month 48—as though prices will magically stop rising.

Trump also shared a screenshot of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump praising the misleading clip as a “great chart” on Instagram.

Lara Trump, who is married to the president’s second son, Eric, tried to offer an explanation by way of an asterisk footnote in her caption for the data.

“Trump II is only through Month 18 because, inconveniently, we have not yet developed time travel. This is cumulative CPI-U inflation, not the annual inflation rate,” she wrote.

Trump did not bother to explain why his figure remained the same for the following 30 months in his post sharing the chart.

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Biden, whose term in office was plagued by decades-high inflation in the wake of the COVID pandemic and the oil crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tops the chart for most of the clip.

Trump had made bringing down inflation and food prices one of his main 2024 campaign pledges.

However, the president’s disastrous policies, such as his sweeping tariff plans and war in Iran, have only intensified the financial hardships experienced by tens of millions of Americans.

As a result, Trump has been recording dire approval ratings on his handling of the economy throughout his second term, which could have disastrous effects for the GOP in November’s midterms.

As noted by CNN data guru Harry Enten, Trump is also recording unprecedentedly bad numbers on his handling of inflation. During the same period of his first term, his average net approval rating on the economy was plus 9 points at this stage, but it has plummeted to minus 33 points in his second term.

“Simply put, it’s inflation,” Enten said, while revealing a July CNN/SSRS poll showing Trump’s net approval on inflation was minus 50 points.

“I went back through the history books. I dug deeper into them than anyone has basically dug into any polling archive you could before, and no president before President Trump actually had a negative 50-point or worse net approval rating on inflation,” Enten said.

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