In recent years, as inflation has risen to the top of Americans’ list of concerns, every new report on the consumer price index has generated attention, but the latest CPI data was of particular interest this week for electoral reasons: This was the final report ahead of the midterm elections.

If it showed good news, Republicans would have a new talking point at a critical moment, offering the GOP an opportunity to argue that conditions are starting to improve. If it showed bad news, Democrats would point to fresh evidence of Republicans failing with less than three weeks to go before Election Day.

Unfortunately for American consumers — and the incumbent majority party — the latter prevailed.

The data, released Wednesday morning, showed consumer prices climbing quickly, largely as a result of the war with Iran, as wages failed to keep up with inflation for the sixth month in a row. This came on the heels of deeply discouraging data on U.S. job creation, creating a brutal one-two punch for the White House at the worst possible time.

Donald Trump’s rhetoric on the economy was a mess before the figures were released — just five days before the data reached the public, the president falsely claimed that consumer prices were “coming down very fast” — and it was hard not to wonder how the Republican would respond to the news that discredited everything he’s been saying for months about the affordability crisis.

As it turns out, his pitch included four main elements:

1. Denial: At a Wednesday-night rally in Montana, the president assured supporters, “We have very little inflation.” That not only positioned Trump against reality, it also put him at odds with the deep frustrations of the American mainstream.

2. Presenting made-up data: At the same Montana event, the president claimed that the inflation rate reached 1.7% in recent months — I have no idea how he arrived at this false number — adding that this was an improvement from 19%. Never in recorded U.S. history has the CPI ever reached 19%.

3. Rewriting recent history: Once again trying to blame Joe Biden for his failures, Trump claimed, “We inherited the worst inflation in history.” That’s not even close to being true, in part because the worst inflation in history happened 46 years ago, and in part because the inflation rate was down to 3% when Trump’s second term began — which was lower than it is now.

4. Literally unbelievable happy talk: “Your prices have come way down,” Trump added, hours after his own administration released data showing that consumer prices had gone up.

In other words, confronted with evidence of his own failure on the nation’s most pressing issue, the president apparently couldn’t think of anything coherent to say at all.

The latest Fox News poll, which was released hours after the CPI data, found that only 22% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of inflation. Given his latest nonsense, there’s no reason to assume that figure won’t sink lower.

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