This is an excerpt from the May 12, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED, Bureau of Labor Statistics
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As Steve Benen noted, Tuesday’s inflation numbers directly contradict the White House’s increasingly absurd economic spin:
As April got underway, Donald Trump delivered an address to the nation about the war with Iran and took a moment to comment on the state of the economy. The president said that Americans are currently enjoying “the strongest” economic conditions “in history” (a spectacularly wrong assertion) and that there’s “no inflation.” As the month came to an end, Peter Navarro, the White House’s top trade adviser, similarly boasted on Fox Business, “Inflation is going down.”
It would have been great if these claims were true, but as is too often the case with the White House’s economic claims, they were not.
