The Propaganda Press Got It Wrong About The Economy — Again

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released Tuesday revealed that inflation rose just 3.4 percent year-over-year in April — the lowest annual increase since February 2021, when the Biden administration was in office.

According to economist for the Heritage Foundation E.J. Antoni, food prices in April declined for the first time since November of 2020 — “the last time Trump was president.”

Core inflation, which excludes the more volatile categories of food and energy, “remained stable at 2.8% year-over-year,” according to Wall Street Pit.

In short, inflation is cooling and the sky has not fallen. But if you’ve spent the last few weeks consuming the propaganda press’ coverage, you may have been expecting a financial collapse. For those immune to the doom and gloom headlines from the propagandists masquerading as journalist, April’s CPI report was unsurprising. For everyone else — particularly avid consumers of the left wing media’s economic doom casting, the report should be something of a wake-up call.

Back in February, CNN’s David Goldman mocked Trump, writing, “If Trump wants to fix the inflation crisis, he has a funny way of showing it.” According to Goldman, “Inflation appeared nearly defeated just a few months ago, but price hikes started accelerating again … Trump, who had campaigned on bringing prices down on Day One of his presidency, has instead focused his economic policy thus far on tariffs — also known as higher taxes.”

“Fearful that Trump’s tariffs will only exacerbate inflation, Americans are already beginning to sour on Trump’s economic plan,” Goldman wrote.

Of course, that fear-mongering came crashing down when just a few weeks later in March CNN’s Alicia Wallace reported that “US inflation cooled in February, but Trump’s tariff plans and trade war loom.”

But the data didn’t stop the fear mongering, with CNN’s Stephen Collinson writing in April that “Trump took the US economy to the brink of a crisis in just 100 days.”

According to Collinson, the U.S. had an economy “that the world envied” before Trump brought it “to the brink of crisis.”

“Americans were desperate for relief from high grocery prices and bought into Trump’s promise to make America affordable again,” Collinson wrote. “But the president deliberately and singlehandedly adopted policies that are almost certain to spike prices even more …”

And yet — that spike never came.

But CNN wasn’t alone in its alarmism.

The New York Times’ David E. Sanger wrote in April that Trump won after “voters bought his argument that he could skillfully manage the economy and this his policy prescriptions could both bolster growth and eradicate inflation” but that there was “rising inflation …”

According to MSNBC’s Zeeshan Aleem, Trump was, as of March, “turbocharging” inflation and “deliberately making” high prices “worse.”

And still the rate of inflation fell.

Even when confronted with evidence to the contrary, the propaganda press still hasn’t quite let go of the panic narrative. Wallace — again — reported that “Inflation slowed more than expected in April, despite tariff-related price pressures building.”

NPR’s Scott Horsley wrote: “Inflation cools in April — but tariffs could upend the picture in coming months.”

The Independent’s Rhian Lubin wrote “Inflation cools in April and egg prices drop to lowest mark in months — but fears remain tariffs could spike prices.”

The reflex is the same: acknowledge the data, then qualify it with fear-mongering. But, after the latest data report, their dire predictions look more like partisan wishing than serious analysis.