“The point that [Biden] was making, uh, is that the factors that caused inflation was in place when he walked in — into the administration — when he took office,” she says.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did damage control Wednesday over Joe Biden’s repeated claims that inflation was at 9% when he took office when it was actually 1.4%.
During a press briefing Wednesday, Fox News’ Ed Lawrence asked Jean-Pierre why Biden falsely claimed twice this week that inflation was 9% when he took office in 2021.
“I wanna ask you about how the President talks about inflation. So, two times over the past two weeks, the President said inflation was nine percent when he came into office. Is the President misleading Americans on that? Or does it — just not realize that inflation was 1.4 percent when he came into office?” he asked.
Jean-Pierre bumbled almost as badly as Biden when spinning this one.
“So, you know, and, and thank you for the question, because I know that this — we got a lot of incoming on this yesterday and look, I — what the President was — the point that he was making, uh, is that the factors that caused inflation was in place when he walked in — into the administration — when he took office,” Jean-Pierre claimed.
Q: Why did Biden claim, twice in one week, that inflation was 9% when he took office — when it was really 1.4%?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Well, uh, you see…. pic.twitter.com/dsiZppXQr5
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 15, 2024
Listen to the rest of her explanation:
Let’s — as you know, the pandemic caused inflation around the world to be…uh…uh…by disrupting our economy and breaking our supply chains — as you know, we had to act quickly on dealing with the supply chain. He put together a task force. You saw the President do that. And just a couple of examples. Here are one example. Semiconductor shortages already existed when he took office. That increased costs on everything from auto parts to washing machines. By some measures, it accounted for one third of inflation in late 2021. Many countries saw worse inflation than we did, and obviously — and we have talked about this — we have been able to come out of that economic downturn in better in a better place than most of our counterparts across the globe. Reopening after the pandemic unavoidably increased inflation by unleashing pent up demand. Inflation increased quickly as we reopened. Annualized core PCP in the second term of 2021 was nine percent. And so, he was talking about the factors that were in place that led to — that led to that and look — and I said this earlier, going to say it again, we’re going to do everything as we’re talking about CPI, we’re going to do everything that we can — this President is committed to doing everything that we can to fight inflation and that’s what the President was trying to speak to.
Catch all that? The economy has never been better and rampant inflation was all Trump’s fault.
Watch the full WH press briefing: