If there were any doubts that the government is in the hands of a man out of touch of with reality, President Joe Biden himself laid them to rest on Wednesday with a claim about inflation even liberal Americans should have laughed at.
Standing in front of cameras, Biden boastfully announced, to a country that has been racked by soaring prices from virtually the moment he took office, that the United States had experienced “zero percent inflation in the month of July.”
And the social media outrage meter practically shattered with the response.
Biden set off the clamor with a statement in the White House before a bill signing ceremony.
“Before I begin today, I want to say a word about the news that came out today relative to the economy,” the president said. “Actually, I just want to say a number: zero.
“Today, we received news that our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July.
“Zero percent. Here’s what that means. While the price of some things go up, went up last month, the price of other things went down by the same amount. The result? Zero inflation last month. People are still hurting, but zero inflation last month.”
It’s nice to know that Blue-Collar Joe, the Man from Scranton, realizes “people are still hurting,” but the rest of his remarks show just how little that fact matters to Biden and his White House staff. What matters is the political spin, and spin is what the president had on offer Wednesday – in spades.
And many, many people weren’t buying it – at any price. That should have been the reality check the administration needs.
Definitely not anything to celebrate when people need to chose between food and gas to get to work pic.twitter.com/GNNbXSsxI7
— Marog (@MARROG79) August 10, 2022
I presume we just didn’t get the memo on the new definition of inflation.
— Denise (@Denise_John668) August 10, 2022
Liar.
— Jean Mayo (@LadyJMayo) August 10, 2022
That last one, calling Biden a “liar,” might have been a little harsh, since the president was talking about July versus June. But the problem is that a month-to-month inflation rate is virtually meaningless. What matters is a comparison on a year-to-year basis, and by that measure, Biden is a failure – and even Democrats have to know it.
Even Biden has to know it. Come to think of it, “liar” wasn’t too harsh at all.
Do you think Americans will see right through Biden’s claim?
It almost goes without saying that any Republican president trying to gaslight the country with word games like this wouldn’t have had the comments out for a minute before the “fact checkers” of the mainstream media were on the attack. If the Republican president were named Donald Trump, the attacks would have started before he even spoke.
The Democrat named Joe Biden doesn’t have that kind of coverage from the cheerleading mainstream media, of course. CNN’s slant — that inflation is taking a “breather” — was classic CNN.
US inflation took a breather in July, thanks to the falling cost of food and gas, as consumer prices grew at a slower pace than in previous months https://t.co/ic28b4qKbK
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) August 10, 2022
Still, there there were still signs that he’d gone too far with this nonsense on stilts.
As even the Biden-toadying USA Today noted, the inflation rate for July compared with July of last year was 8.5 percent – a far, far cry from the “zero percent” Biden had the effrontery to claim.
And what were the real items that actually cost more, in the real world, as opposed to the president’s “zero inflation” world? USA Today reported that still sky-high gas prices are coming down, but tempered that with, “Grocery prices, though, rose by 1.3% from June and are up 13.1% over the past 12 months …
“In July, breakfast cereal prices rose 2% from the prior month and 16.4% from a year ago. Chicken costs increased by 1.4% and 17.6% yearly. And eggs shot up 4.3% and 38% from a year ago.”
So, the prices of breakfast cereal, chicken and eggs — in a word, “food” — went up in the same month Biden was claiming Americans weren’t seeing inflation. And prices as a whole were up 8.5 percent over last year.
8.5% = zero. Go figure ?
— Elena (@ElenaKdotcom) August 10, 2022
So celebrate that prices are 8.5% higher than a year ago?
— Bill (@Bill_321) August 10, 2022
In the rest of his remarks, Biden cited economists’ definition of core inflation, a jobs report last week that showed 528,000 jobs created in June, to claim success for his efforts to “build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”
Biden was gracious enough to acknowledge that there are “challenges” — however, he still all-but-declared economic victory.
“First, the economic plan is working,” he said.
“Second, it’s building an economy that will reward work. … We’re on track.”
If by “reward work,” Biden meant rewarding Americans who work two or three jobs more than they did last year to afford the same things in their lives, sane Americans would agree that that’s not a “track” the country should be on.
The speech was just the latest proof that, come the midterm elections, voters cannot reward Democrats for taking the thriving economy the country enjoyed under President Donald Trump and destroying it from the White House and Congress.
Biden has done it with executive orders that have gutted the once-thriving energy sector, among other disasters. His party in Congress did it with a deceptively named “American Rescue Plan” that helped spark the current raging inflation without receiving a single Republican vote. They’re about to do it again with an even more deceptively named “Inflation Reduction Act.”
The president might be out of touch with reality, but Americans who put gas in their cars, pay their bills and … eat … have a vested interest in being in very close touch with how much money they have to spend.
For any American who doubted Biden’s Democrats need to be driven from power in November, the president’s nonsense should have laid them to rest on Wednesday.
And the fight for the White House is only two years away.
