In Monday's White House briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre admitted what most Americans already know to be true: prices on everyday goods are still surging amid inflation that surged to forty year highs under Biden's economic policy.
"On Wednesday we will have new CPI inflation data and we expect the headline number — which includes gas and food — to be highly elevated," Jean-Pierre told reporters. For context, May's Consumer Price Index jumped one full percentage point from April, hitting 8.6 percent year-over-year. For the White House to be trying to manage expectations ahead of Wednesday's release for June suggests there's much worse yet to come.
Karine Jean-Pierre expects upcoming inflation numbers from June to be "highly elevated." pic.twitter.com/vXL0t3F1v4
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022
As usual for the Biden administration, Jean-Pierre's warning was also accompanied by the obligatory refusal to accept any responsibility for the spend and print economic policy that Biden has embraced and which has spurred red-hot inflation to continue setting records despite Biden's initial denial that any issue existed or was merely a "high-class problem."
The surging inflation the White House expects on Wednesday was "heavily impacted by the war in Ukraine," Jean-Pierre said trying to keep up the Biden administration's appearance of zero fault in the pain facing Americans' wallets. She added, in a new excuse, that "June's CPI data is already out of date" because prices have fallen since June, Biden's press secretary argued. Never mind, apparently, that every CPI release follows the month it measures because...that's how inflation, employment, and every other economic metric released by the Department of Labor works — they're not real-time numbers, they're a measure of the previous week/month/quarter/year.
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When asked in a separate question about a new poll showing that 63 percent of Democrats believe the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction under Biden's leadership, Jean-Pierre again proclaimed that President Biden knows what Americans are feeling.
REPORTER: "63% of Democrats believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. How do you explain that?"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022
KJP: "We understand what the American people are feeling." pic.twitter.com/wvwL6vDU8H
But even that answer, which is dubious given the White House's previous messaging on surging inflation, the broken supply chain, and a formula shortage, is a condemnation of Biden's leadership. If he knows what Americans are feeling — which is pain, something of a Carter-era malaise — then his failure to act is even more damning.
Jean-Pierre's answer on polls in general made it as clear as can be: Biden supposedly knows what Americans are feeling — as she just said — but the White House refuses to "pay attention" to their pain.
KJP: "We're not gonna pay attention to polls. That's not what we're gonna do here." pic.twitter.com/QLN96K185h
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022
The lack of awareness or attention paid to Americans struggling under Biden was reemphasized by Jean-Pierre when she stated that the U.S. economy is "strong."
KJP: "We have a strong economy." pic.twitter.com/DjAzRIRgKO
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022
Using the White House's past playbook for dealing with runaway inflation as a guide, calling the economy "strong" is only further evidence that the economy is diving into a recession. The question then becomes who Biden and Jean-Pierre will blame for that mess right before the midterms?
Inflation, again, is at 40-year highs. More than 353,000 Americans left the labor force in June. The U.S. economy is still down 200,000 jobs from where it was before COVID hit. There's 700,000 more Americans who aren't in the labor force but want to work compared to February 2020. We've already logged one quarter of GDP shrinkage, and projections for Q2 are already down as much as 2 percent — which would mean a definitional recession for the United States.
What Karine Jean-Pierre finally confirmed on Monday was the simple truth that too many Americans have been forced to confront: President Biden and his administration know that the economy is trash, they know Americans are hurting under Democrats' agenda, but they won't pay attention to the pain — made evident by polling — or focus on mitigating it because to do so would be to abandon their dystopian leftist policies. They won't give up their "transition" away from fossil fuels, end to coal-fired power, or woke social spending that contributed to and kickstarted inflation in the first place.
No, Biden and his team are all-in on their harmful policies, and they're going to blame everyone but themselves, no matter how bad the polling gets or how bad their midterm losses turn out to be.
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