Transcription
On day 38 of the government shutdown, and after an election that saw Democrats dominate across the country, President Donald Trump is turning his focus to one of the central issues that fueled his 2024 campaign. Inflation is way down, the big. The biggest thing is inflation. The second biggest thing is energy. Energy is way down. And what's also down? Gasoline. Also, the biggest thing is inflation, and it's way down.
The reason that I want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it's far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden, and the prices are way too. Pretty angry there. Here's the issue. Inflation is actually real. Many prices are not actually falling. They are actually rising. And the American people, you every day when you go to the grocery store, when you buy gas, you see it. You feel it every single day.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in September, the annual inflation rate rose to 3%. Driving that increased gas prices, which rose more than 4% from August. Groceries are up under President Trump. Consumer Price Index data shows that average grocery prices were 2.7% higher in September of this year than they were in September of 2024.
Polls show not just that the American people are noticing higher prices, but also know that they are blaming President Trump for it. 71% of Americans say that they're spending more money on groceries now than they did last year. That's according to a Washington Post poll that was conducted late last month. And 59% of Americans blame President Trump, either a great amount or a good amount, for the current rate of inflation.
Now, President Trump can often convince his supporters to see things his way through relentless repetition. He has convinced millions of Americans to believe, for instance, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. To believe that January 6th was something, anything other than a violent insurrection. But inflation. Inflation is a different thing. People see the prices going up. They feel the prices going up, and they believe their own eyes, their own experience over anyone else's insistence to the contrary, even if it's the president of the United States telling them that they aren't feeling it.
"We have dramatically reduced inflation from 9% down to close to 3% as the U.S. president." Yes, yes, yes. "I told you, we're gonna have a soft landing. We're going to have a soft landing. My policies are working." Start right in that way. Okay. So economic growth is up. The price of inflation is down. Real incomes are on going are up, and the price of gas is down. Over the last year, prices are down on everyday items and one gallon of gasoline to a gallon. The milk, folks are beginning to feel it. People didn't believe him then. They're not believing President Trump.
Now let's get off the sidelines and head into the arena. My panelists here, chief Washington correspondent for Puck News, Leon Caldwell, CNN political director, and our Washington bureau chief, David Chalian. Democratic strategist Adrian Elrod, Republican strategist and CNN commentator Sir Michael Singleton. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here.
David Challen, I mean, we can't help but flashback to all the times that Joe Biden insisted. He insisted prices were coming down. Everything was going to be like all of the economic indicators were good, right? People didn't feel it. It seems like the same thing is happening for President Trump.
It is. I mean, Joe Biden may have actually been factually incorrect with what he was saying with those economic indicators at that time. It did not matter. It doesn't matter what the facts are. What matters is what people are experiencing in their everyday lives. That's the fact that matters most politically. And Donald Trump, who may not be as aligned with the facts of the actual inflation rate and the like, again, even that doesn't matter. What matters is people experiencing it. And what I find so interesting is that this is not a left-right thing or a media thing. In the and Trump, from Trump's own aides, like his deputy chief of staff and political director James Blair, from Steve Bannon, people who have Donald Trump's ears. They came out of this election and saw it clear-eyed and have said, like, there needs to be a greater focus on affordability. And yet, Donald Trump is just saying we don't need to talk about affordability. He doesn't seem, he just seems a bit out of step with what the voters said this week. And I am sure he will get his footing at some point on it. But it's intriguing to see the discordant nature with what's going on inside his own circle.
And there have been plenty of Republicans who have sat at this table and argued that the president should be have been all along for all of these months since he was sworn in for the second time, talking about the issue that did get him elected, which was this perception that things were unaffordable in Joe Biden's America. And David Chalian mentioned James Blair, a top Trump adviser, talking to Politico about why these Democrats won. Let's watch a little bit of that. We'll talk about it on the other side. Take a look.
"Why does Oren Madani do so well last night? He relentlessly focused on affordability. People want to talk about communists. They can say all these things. But the fact is, he was talking about the cost of living. I think you'll see the president talk a lot about cost of living. As we turn the year and into the new year, the president is very keyed in to what's going on, and I think you'll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living."
So Leon Caldwell, I mean, he was certainly asked about it today, but his response was was quite frankly, angry.
Yeah. So I watched what James Blair said. Told Dasha, person close to the administration told me that a week ago that at the end of this year, because I was talking to them about costs and affordability, and this person said that the president is actually quite aware of the issues. And those conversations are happening within the White House about what to do, and that there will be a shift in focus to cost and affordability towards the end of the year, the beginning of next year. And so from my conversations, he is aware. But Donald Trump does not like to admit that he is wrong about anything. He deflects blame on pretty much everything, and it has worked for him a lot of times. When it was the Republicans' fault, they did poorly in the election on Tuesday because his name wasn't on the ballot. This could backfire on him.
Sure. Michael Singleton, we can put up, a graphic that shows the one year change in grocery prices for a variety of staples. Coffee, meat, beef, cereal, nonalcoholic beverages. Actually, we'd love to know the increase in price of wine and beer, but that's nonalcoholic beer. Just fruits and vegetables. Dairy. I mean, this again, contradicts what the president has been saying out loud, which is that prices are down. They are not down. They are up across the board. And the president, just a few minutes ago, that beef one, right. You can see 14.7%. So he's now writing on Truth Social. "I've asked the DOJ to immediately begin an investigation into the meatpacking companies." He's blaming the meatpacking companies for driving up the price of beef through what he says is illicit collusion, price fixing and price manipulation. He says he's going to protect our American ranchers.
Now, there are a lot of ranchers that are angry about a deal that he did with, Argentina, with foreign countries and, Brazil and other places about about this. But it's clear he understands that this is a problem based on that, except that he's insisting in public that it's not the entire party understands that it's a problem. I've talked to a number of people. You'll see a complete reorientation and focus, from Republicans in the House and also the Senate, as we focus and engage, on midterms of next year to recognize that prices, the cost of living, is still impacting a lot of Americans. When you look at the CPI, you've seen a fluctuation from earlier this year to where we are now, where the numbers have indeed gone up. We're acknowledging that we recognize that the voters have spoken, that it is something that they feel we haven't adequately answered. And so James is right. The president's going to reorient. It's going to take him a little time. This is typical President Trump. But but he'll get there. That said, I don't think, Casey, politically speaking, that my Democratic friends have necessarily presented an alternative case for how they're going to solve problems. I'm just saying it's high. Come vote for us. And that isn't necessarily a solution. So I think the Republican Party still has an opportunity to sort of, again, realign things, make our case to the American people to say what we can do differently.
Adrian, you were there when you were trying to convince voters to vote for Joe Biden. I was Kamala Harris. A lot of TV talk about it. The economy didn't feel great for people. I mean, what did you learn from that experience? And how does that play into what's going on now?
Well, I learned from that experience that you could have all the great statistics in the world. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and spend time talking about the 15.5 million jobs and, you know, 4% are still in your house or in my head, but it's the American people aren't feeling it. You lose, you first of all, you lose credibility. And secondly, then they get to the point where they're like, we don't trust you. You're lying. You're not doing anything to help us. And so I think what you're seeing with President Trump manifesting, really, I think what happened Tuesday night, he's not happy with the results. He's trying to find blame. The the bottom line is the American people aren't buying it. They know this. And they came out on Tuesday night and flipped multiple seats and outperformed in every single election. You know, Virginia went straight blue in every single county, for example. That is a testament to the fact that people are frustrated. They put trust in Trump, thinking maybe he will actually do something to lower prices. Instead, he is, you know, working with billionaires to demolish and rebuild the East Wing. You know, he's focusing his time on on trying to build up, you know, corporate interests and, and put more money in the pockets of billionaires. And it's not helping the average middle-class person. And that's what played out on Tuesday.