During his latest appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council and the top economist in the White House, presented all kinds of misguided arguments, but it was especially jarring to hear him make the case that Americans are satisfied with the economic status quo.

“If people were unhappy,” Hassett argued, “it’d show up in the data.”

It fell to host Jake Tapper to remind his guest, “It seems to be showing up in the data, just not the data you’re looking at.”

It was a fair point. Indeed, The Associated Press last week released its latest national poll, which showed 82% of Americans disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the cost of living. There was no reason to see this as an outlier: Similar recent surveys from CNN and Marquette University Law School also showed 80% disapproval for the president on this issue.

In case this isn’t obvious, it’s tough to get 8 in 10 Americans to agree on much of anything, especially regarding contentious political issues during an election season. But on affordability, the data suggests we’re approaching a near public consensus: On the one issue Trump was elected to address, he’s failing badly.

It’s a reality the president refuses to accept.

“Prices are all going way down,” he said during a Monday night rally in Nebraska, boasting about developments that have occurred only in his imagination. A few days earlier, Trump similarly declared, “We’ve done nothing but bring prices way down.”

The day before, the president published an item to his social media platform in which he claimed that consumer prices “are coming down, RAPIDLY.” Hours later, he again said, “We’re the ones bringing down the prices.”

The problem isn’t just that Trump’s rhetoric is wildly at odds with the American mainstream’s attitudes. It’s also the fact that his claims are delusional. Inflation has climbed since his second term began, and consumers simply aren’t seeing the rapid improvements the president keeps referring to.

It was against this backdrop that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Axios’ Mike Allen, “What we’re not going to do is do what the Biden people did and tell the American people how good they had it.”

I’m not sure if Bessent has been paying attention to his colleagues’ recent antics, but all they do is tell the American people how good they have it. In recent days, Trump has repeatedly insisted that the economic status quo is the greatest in the history of the United States, and as recently as Sunday, Hassett credited the Republican administration for having created an economic “boom” and a glorious “golden age.”

If members of Team Trump expect people to believe the White House’s weird happy talk over Americans’ own wallets, they’re likely to be disappointed.

The post With 8 in 10 Americans opposed to his handling of inflation, Trump turns to weird happy talk appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.