The Corporate Media Rediscovers Inflation
David Catron
White House press briefings are often tedious affairs, but sometimes a reporter will ask a question so inane that it provides comic relief. On Jan. 29, for example, the Washington Examiner’s Christian Datoc put this howler to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “Egg prices have skyrocketed since President Trump took office. So, what specifically is he doing to lower those costs for Americans?” The average price of a dozen eggs escalated from $1.47 to $4.95 during former President Biden’s term, yet this crack reporter was laser focused on how “egg prices have skyrocketed” during the first nine days of the second Trump administration.
This is the narrative the corporate media have settled on and they are likely to stick with it. But the public probably won’t fall for it.
This is the journalistic equivalent of a toddler yelling, before Mom gets the minivan out of the driveway, “Are we there yet?” But this preoccupation with egg prices is not limited to Datoc. As Paul Kengor, our Executive Editor here at the American Spectator, noted last week, alleged “news” outlets like CNN are using egg prices as an analog for inflation in general and demanding to know why Trump hasn’t yet fixed it. Paul Krugman — who spent four years lying about Biden’s inflationary policies — has a photo of broken eggs beneath the title of his latest column, “Lies, Damned Lies and Trumpflation.” He affects concern that President Trump will attempt to control inflation by coercing the Fed to manipulate interest rates:
Right now the Fed is a quasi-independent institution run by technocrats, who set interest rates based on their assessment of what the economy needs rather than taking instructions from the executive branch. But Fed independence rests on political norms rather than any legal foundation. Given the fact that Trump has already shut down USAID, a blatantly illegal move, and effectively shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which also looks illegal, it’s surely possible that he can find a way to force the Fed to cut interest rates even in the face of rising inflation.
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Right now the Fed is a quasi-independent institution run by technocrats, who set interest rates based on their assessment of what the economy needs rather than taking instructions from the executive branch. But Fed independence rests on political norms rather than any legal foundation. Given the fact that Trump has already shut down USAID, a blatantly illegal move, and effectively shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which also looks illegal, it’s surely possible that he can find a way to force the Fed to cut interest rates even in the face of rising inflation.
