'Outright falsehood': Economist befuddled by Trump's 'break with reality' during interview
A high-profile economist was befuddled by a series of claims President Donald Trump made on Tuesday during an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Trump joined Ingraham on "The Ingraham Angle" on Tuesday, where the two discussed topics ranging from his future successors in the Trump family, the White House ballroom renovation project, and the impact of Trump's tariffs on the U.S. economy. At one point, Trump claimed that beef prices are elevated because "farmers are doing well." He also claimed that coffee prices would soon come down because "we're going to be removing some tariffs."
Justin Wolfers, economics professor at the University of Michigan, reacted to Trump's interview on CNN's "The Source" with host Kaitlan Collins.
"Look, every word the president just said is a lie, and worse than that, it's such a lie that I worry that there's literally a break with reality inside the man's mind," Wolfers said. "I can tell you that because I'm a statistics nerd, and you can go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They've got people in supermarkets all across the country, and almost every category of goods or services sees the prices rising."
"There's a reasonable argument to be had: Is inflation too high? Is inflation too low? But we have inflation. It's positive," he continued. "And it's not just the nerds at the BLS who see it when companies are giving their earnings reports; they're telling us they're raising their prices in every single viewer on the other side of this television set knows exactly what's happening, which is that prices are rising."
"I don't understand the logic of looking us in the eye and telling us an outright falsehood," he added.