Fox News host Sandra Smith fact-checked President Joe Biden Wednesday following a video clip of remarks he made about inflation at the White House.
Biden claimed that inflation was lower during his administration than it was under the Trump administration during his remarks on pricing data released Wednesday showing that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 3.5% year-over-year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following a 3.2% year-over-year increase in February.
Smith called out Biden for his claims about inflation, calling them “false,” before proceeding to cite CPI data to refute the president’s claim.
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“We have dramatically reduced inflation from 9% down to close to 3%,” Biden claimed during his White House remarks. “We are in a situation where we are a better situation than when we took office, where inflation was skyrocketing and we were planning to deal with it.”
“Markets are down right now because they don’t know what the Fed’s next move is going to be and President Biden during the news conference a short time ago made a prediction that even though these inflation gauges keep coming out showing inflation is running hot and prices are still high, he believes there will still be a rate cut by the end of the year,” Smith said, before introducing guest Charlie Gasparino.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by over 470 points due to the inflation data when Smith reacted to Biden’s claims, and closed down 422.16 points Wednesday.
“Let me tell you, he just said on inflation, that inflation when asked if he is concerned about it, he said that inflation is better now than when he took office. That is just factually incorrect. That is false,” Smith added. “Right now, inflation year over year is 3.5%. When he took office in January 2021, it was running 1.4%, okay? He referenced prices are better off now than under the previous administration. That is factually incorrect. In fact, we put together this scroll using CPI data showing the price of just everything from new cars to clothes to shelter to the food you are putting on your table at home, gasoline prices over the past three years are up, Charlie. So why does this administration keep insisting that this is a better economic environment? It clearly is not.”
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The scroll on the screen showed that the CPI climbed by 7% for medical care, increased 11% for clothes, rose by 21% for food at home, climbed 19% for new cars and increased 17% for used cars while wages increased by 15% over the last three years, failing to keep pace with overall inflation during Biden’s term of office.
Biden currently has a 39.5% approval rating on the economy compared to a 57.6% disapproval rate, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls between Feb. 21 and April 9. On inflation, Biden has a 35.5% approval rating compared to a 62.2% disapproval rate, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls between Feb. 21 and April 9.
Even though the year-over-year inflation rate is down from a recent high of 9.1% in June 2022, prices have risen 18.5% since Biden took office in January 2021.
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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