The Biden administration tried to cope with widespread economic anxiety by gaslighting the public, insisting everything was fine, inflation was “transitory,” and the economy was actually booming despite what people were seeing around them every day. This approach did not end well for the Democrats.
But the Trump administration, rather than learning from its predecessor’s mistakes, seems to be copying this approach, particularly on social media. Official White House accounts are posting glowing rhetoric about an economic “golden age” that flits between straining credulity and outright lying.
For example, the White House’s official Rapid Response account just posted a clip of White House adviser Stephen Miller claiming, “Under [President Donald Trump], in the last few months, we have seen the first significant reductions in prices and the cost of living since the last time President Trump was in office.”
Miller and other officials are just parroting a narrative the president himself keeps repeating.
“Our prices are coming down very substantially on groceries and things,” Trump said earlier this month. “They’re already at a much lower level than they were with the last administration.”
This is not true. Prices have continued to rise under Trump. Overall, consumer prices have risen 1.7% since January, when Trump resumed office, according to his own administration’s federal data.
There has been no “deflation.” Prices haven’t gone down.
Now, an honest supporter of the Trump administration could argue that the rate at which prices are increasing is way down from the highs of the Biden era and that the current administration is taking steps to lower prices and get energy costs down, which could ease price pressures in the long run.
But simply claiming that prices are going down when they are not is fundamentally dishonest and not going to resonate with people. Yet that’s what the administration keeps doing on social media.
For example, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cited data from the takeout delivery app DoorDash to claim that “inflation has been tamed, everyday prices are beginning to drop.” That’s right: She ignored the Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing the opposite and instead cited much more scientific data from DoorDash.
Yet this data is not nationally representative, as it mostly comes from cities, and its narrow “baskets” of goods measured are skewed by a few items that have significantly fallen in price, such as eggs. More broad, rigorous data from the BLS show that grocery prices have risen 1.4% since Trump took office and food away from home is up 2.6% over that timeframe.
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In yet another example of this dishonest rhetoric, the president took to social media to tout that Walmart’s Thanksgiving basket fell in price 25% this year as “irrefutable proof” that grocery prices have fallen, despite the federal government’s own data. Yet Trump left out that the basket includes fewer items this year, so of course it costs less!
To be clear, there are plenty of economic numbers the Trump administration could point to, such as strong economic growth figures or falling gas prices, to promote a positive narrative about the results it is delivering so far. But simply telling Americans the reality they see at the store every day isn’t happening isn’t honest, and it’s not going to work, no matter how many dishonest posts White House propaganda accounts put out.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.