Deluded Trump declares inflation is 'solved'

President Donald Trump on Tuesday ridiculously declared that inflation is "solved" and that he, our wonderful Dear Leader, has fixed our affordability problems! Hooray!

"Inflation, we’ve solved. It’s done," Trump said in an interview with Fox News ahead of a speech in Iowa meant to gin up support for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterm election. "We have it good where prices are coming way down. ... You notice they don’t mention affordability anymore. That’s like an old-fashioned word."

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It goes without saying, but magically declaring that you fixed a problem doesn't make it so.

Inflation is still over the Federal Reserve's 2% year-over-year target, and vast majorities of Americans still say they are being squeezed by high prices.

Consumer confidence is at the lowest level since 2014, with Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, saying in a news release, “References to prices and inflation, oil and gas prices, and food and grocery prices remained elevated.”

The Democratic polling outlet Navigator Research conducted a focus group with Trump supporters in January, finding that many regretted their vote, with some focusing on Trump’s failure to address the affordability crisis he promised to tackle.

Here’s what some of those focus group members had to say about Trump’s first year in office:

“[T]here's really nowhere where I can look at and say that we're doing better than we were with the last administration when it comes to the economy,” a Hispanic woman from Georgia said.

“All of our prices have gone sky-high for necessities. Our utilities have raised, our mortgage, the interest rates, the food in the grocery store. Everything has gone up except my wages, and it's making it harder and harder to make ends meet,” a white woman from Arizona said.

“People voted Trump because we thought we were going to get lower costs of living, to some degree at least, and everything has just increased in price,” said a Black man from Georgia.

In fact, a YouGov/Economist poll from earlier this week found inflation/prices as the top issue for Americans.

It's for this reason, among others (gestures wildly at news from Minnesota), that Trump's approval rating is around the lowest it's been since he retook office just over a year ago.

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Trump knows the economy is a problem for him. That’s why he traveled to Iowa to give a speech about it, and it’s why he plans to give more through the midterms, according to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

But if his message is lying about prices rather than giving concrete proposals about how he'll correct them, then this tour could have the opposite of the intended impact.

"Lying about prices is like lying about shootings caught on video—people can see for themselves," Jessica Riedl, a conservative economist with the Brookings Institution, wrote in a post on X. "They can see food and housing prices, they get the medical bills. Everyone knows you are lying because they live it daily. Trump is just replaying Bidenomics in policy and rhetoric."

Democrats are already mocking Trump’s insane declaration that he magically fixed inflation and that everything is affordable for everybody again.

“Easy for a billionaire to say. Trump only cares about enriching himself and other billionaires,” Sen. Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote in a post on X. “He wouldn't know ‘affordable’ if it hit him in the face.”

Given that the fate of democracy rests on Democrats wresting back control of at least one chamber of Congress in the midterms, let’s hope Trump keeps using this message in his campaign rants. 

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