After recent Democratic election victories, Trump and his sycophants have "doubled-down" and intensified their ongoing false and misleading narrative about the state of the U.S. economy.
This isn't surprising because with any attempt to push a false narrative, as time goes on it requires more and greater effort to keep it going.
Five recent, in-your-face examples highlight what's going on.
First, on December 11, 2025, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeatedly claimed that the current U.S. inflation rate has "slowed to an average 2.5% pace." Leavitt was challenged by reporters who said the current inflation rate is 3%, but Leavitt insisted that it's 2.5%.
There are four different ways to calculate the inflation rate, and the most widely used method uses the Consumer Price Index.
The most common and widely reported way to determine the inflation rate calculates a year-over-year percentage using the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This is done by using the last twelve months of available data. On November 10, 2025, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published data for the period September 2024 to September 2025 which shows an increase in consumer prices of 3.0%. This is the official rate of inflation as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The 2.5% figure stated by Leavitt is the average of the annualized rates of monthly CPI growth from January through September of 2025. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has cited the same number. According to an article on the FPA website entitled "Determining the Run Rate of Monthly Inflation":
The problem with using the annualized current month calculation to forecast the run rate of inflation is that it may be volatile and over- or understate what the current inflation run rate is.
If you do a Google search and look at Google Gemini (Google AI) results, it says the same thing.
By using a much less common, and less reliable way to determine the actual inflation rate, Leavitt and Bessent are gaslighting you. What they are doing is highly misleading because historically, whenever inflation data is published and reported by the media, it uses the traditional, most common way of determining it, not the method that arrives at the 2.5% figure Leavitt stated.
Second, on November 9, 2025, Trump posted the following on Truth Social (bold added for emphasis):
People that are against Tariffs are FOOLS! We are now the Richest, Most Respected Country In the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price. 401k's are Highest EVER. We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place. A dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone
The next day on November 10, 2025, Trump posted the following on Truth Social (bold added for emphasis):
All money left over from the $2000 payments made to low and middle income USA Citizens, from the massive Tariff Income pouring into our Country from foreign countries, which will be substantial, will be used to SUBSTANTIALLY PAY DOWN NATIONAL DEBT. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT
That same day, speaking from the Oval Office Trump said:
Without tariffs, we would be -- this country would be in such trouble, as they were for many years. That's why we owe $38 trillion. And one of the things we're going to do, we're going to issue a dividend to our middle-income people and lower income people of about $2,000. And we're going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt.
Despite what Trump has said, the U.S. was doing just fine before Trump's tariffs. And it can easily be argued that America is worse off because of them. As I've stated before, there is no "national emergency" regarding America's trade imbalance. That's nothing more than "hyper hyperbole" made up by Trump. In other words, a lie.
Experts have "done the math" on Trump's plan to issue $2,000 "dividends" from money taken in by his tariffs.
On November 18, 2025, the Tax Foundation published an article entitled "Tariff Dividends Would Cost More than Tariff Revenues Will Generate" states that that for 2025, the cost to issue "dividends" of $2,000 is considerably more than the cost of tariff revenue, and that for 2026, the costs are about equal (leaving no money to offset the cost of tax cuts or reduce the deficit in the near term). Specifically, the Tax Foundation calculates $2,000 "dividend" costs to be $279.8 billion to $606.8 billion. The calculations for tariff revenue are $158.4 billion for 2025 and $207.5 billion for 2026.
For comparison, the U.S. Department of the Treasury "Final Monthly Treasury Statement" for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 reports "Custom Duties" of $195 billion, which is more than the $158.4 billion calculated by the Tax Foundation, but still considerably less than the 2025 "dividend" costs of at least $279.8 billion calculated by the Tax Foundation.
Even if you take into account the fact that the first three months of fiscal year 2025 were before Trump's tariffs (the last three months of the Biden administration), that's still not enough additional tariff revenue to cover "dividend" costs. And, even if you look at projections for 2026, because "dividend" costs could be as high as $606.8 billion, there's no mathematical way that cost could be covered by 2026 tariff revenue.
This means that Trump's pledge to issue $2,000 "dividends" will result in an increase in the U.S. national debt.
It also means that once again, just like he recently did regarding the lowering of prescription drug prices, Trump is spewing out numbers that just don't "add up." Once again, Trump is gaslighting and lying in order to make the American public believe something that is not true.
On November 9, 2025, in an interview with ABC News Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said:
The $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms, in lots of ways. You know, it could be just the tax decreases that we are seeing on the president's agenda — you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of auto loans.
In other words, the "dividend" might not really be check, or a deposit. Instead, in contradiction to what Trump said, the $2,000 is already "baked in" to other things the Trump administration is doing. If that's the case, then Trump is not leveling with the American public. Trump is trying to make it sound like there is a very real possibility that a "big check" will be coming soon in the mail. In other words, gaslighting.
Third, on December 8, 2025, Trump was interviewed by Politico reporter Dasha Burns at the White House. During the interview, when asked by Burns what grade Trump would give the U.S. economy, Trump said "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus."
Later in the interview, Trump said:
No, no, but ... but what you have to understand, the word affordability ... I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess. Prices were at an all-time high when I came in. Prices are coming down substantially. Look at energy. You and I discussed before the interview, energy ... energy has come down incredibly. When energy comes down, everything ... 'cause it's so much bigger than any other subject. But energy has come down incredibly. Prices are all coming down. It's been 10 months. It's amazing what we've done. If you think of gasoline a gallon, they had it at $4.50, almost $5.00. You go to some of the states, you had it at $6.00. We hit, uh, three states two days ago, $1.99 a gallon. When that happens, everything comes down. Now everything is coming down. Uh, with beef, I've just opened that up where beef is gonna start coming down pretty substantially.
Taking Trump's claims one at a time, first he claims that he "inherited a total mess" and that prices were at an "all time high when I came in."
Yes, egg prices were high at the start of Trump's second term averaging about $4.95 per dozen, but even after Trump took office those prices continued to rise to a high point of about $6.23 per dozen in March before rapidly decreasing. For the record, high egg prices are the result of an outbreak of avian flu in U.S. poultry which began in 2022, not the economic policies of the Biden administration.
Yes, gas prices rose to a high of about $5.20 per gallon in June of 2022 during the Biden administration. At the start of Trump's second term the U.S. national average price of gas was about $3.14 per gallon. That number rose to about $3.26 per gallon in early April, then declined significantly in the last quarter of this year. For the record, decreasing gas prices are primarily the result of a surplus in crude oil supply and decreasing demand.
Regarding inflation, yes it's true that during the Biden administration the inflation rate reached 9.1% (for the 12 months ending in June 2022), it's also true that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for the 12-month period ending December 2024 (at the end of the Biden administration) shows the inflation rate at 2.9%.
BLS data for the 12-month period ending September 2025 (during Trump's second term) shows the inflation rate at 3.0%.
In other words, the inflation rate at the end of Biden's term is essentially the same as the September 2025 inflation rate during Trump's second term.
Based on this data, Trump's claim that prices were at an "all time high" when he took office is categorically false. It's a lie, designed to mislead the American public, just like his grading the economy as "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus."
Based on this data, does this sound like a "total mess" as Trump claimed?
Next, Trump claims that "energy has come down incredibly." As I previously noted, yes, gas prices have come down considerably over the past few months, but Trump conveniently fails to mention the fact that the price of electricity is up 5.1% and that the price of natural gas is up 11.7% (in the 12 months ending September 2025).
Trump's claim (perhaps referring only to the price of gas) is highly misleading at best because it doesn't account for increased costs of electricity and natural gas.
Trump said that the price of beef "is gonna start coming down pretty substantially." Trump says a lot of things, all the time, and many times his words are just bluster and smokescreens to gaslight and confuse the American public. Time will tell if and when beef prices decrease, and by how much.
In addition to Trump's false claims during the Politico interview, he also made similar false claims during a December 2, 2025 cabinet meeting (fourth example), and at a December 9, 2025 campaign rally in Pennsylvania (fifth example).
A December 2, 2025 article on the CNN website entitled "Fact check: Trump delivers long list of false claims at Cabinet meeting" debunks numerous false claims Trump made at the cabinet meeting, and a a December 11, 2025 article on the FactCheck website entitled "FactChecking Trump's Economic Speech" debunks numerous false claims Trump made at the Pennsylvania rally.