White House forced to respond to Biden’s debunked inflation claim
By
Haisten Willis
May 15, 2024 4:02 pm
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The White House was forced Wednesday to defend President Joe Biden‘s dubious claim that inflation was at 9% when he took office.
Biden has said so twice now, but in reality, inflation stood at just 1.4% in January 2021. It did reach 9% — in June 2022, when he’d been in office for nearly 18 months. When a reporter brought up the discrepancy, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke to wider forces in the economy.
“The point he was making is that the factors that caused inflation were in place when he walked into the administration,” she said. “The pandemic caused inflation around the world by disrupting our economy and breaking our supply chains.”
The reporter had asked if Biden was deliberately misleading the public or if he just didn’t realize that inflation was at 1.4% when he took office.
“Reopening after the pandemic unavoidably increased inflation by unleashing pent-up demand,” Jean-Pierre continued. “Annualized core CPI [consumer price index] in the second term of 2021 was 9%. So he was talking about the factors that were in place that led to that.”
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3005344/white-house-responds-biden-debunked-9-percent-inflation-claim/