Trump Admits What Has Become Obvious - He Simply Doesn't Care About The American People Only Himself, His Ridiculous Ballroom, His Fellow Oligarchs

Another gauge of inflation, PPI, came in much, much higher than expected......

Morning all. Trump just came out and said it yesterday:

This was not a gotcha moment or AI slop. Here’s the video:

I sat down with Greg Sargent to talk about this wild press gaggle yesterday, Trump’s extraordinary statement, and what Trump’s economic failure means for the mid-terms. You can listen and read the transcript here. It’s a terrific discussion.

Yesterday, the main gauge of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), came in way above expectations at 0.6 for April. This morning another inflation gauge, the Producer Price Index, came in way, way above expectations at 1.4 percent for April. The consensus forecast was an increase of 0.5 percent. So 1.4 is almost three times what was expected. 1.4 percent is an annualized rate of over 16%!!!!!!!!

When I looked at the PPI report on the BEA website this morning I audibly gasped as it was so much higher than expected.

Let’s review what the other two main gauges of inflation tell us:

Again, on prices and costs, Trump’s agenda - tariffs, mass deportation, Big Ugly Bill - had caused inflation to rise prior to the war. You see it there in the data, clear as day. Now due to the war inflation has surged, significantly, rising faster than expected in this week’s two measures, and is starting to get baked into the broader economy. PPI measures the cost of goods to producers, costs which are eventually passed on to consumers, suggesting that we are now in a much more challenging and sustained period of higher costs even if the Strait of Hormuz were to open tomorrow. For remember higher energy prices are a force multiplier - they make anything that uses energy and transportation cost more - manufactured goods, food, business travel, vacations, etc. And these highly elevated producer costs we are seeing today are going to show up in goods we buy in the coming months……..

The inflationary dynamic is not easing. Brent crude starts the day at one its highest points of the war:

30 Year Treasuries are rising, nearing their highest level in 19 years. This is significant for this is a bench mark for borrowing costs across the economy - car loans, mortgage rates, credit cards, and our own debt. So when Treasuries rise everything gets more expensive for everyone, and a sign of inflation getting baked into the broader economy.

As I discuss with Greg the discourse around the economy in Washington is a bubble of bullshit that is about to burst. Listen to Speaker Johnson’s make the case here - everything was great, the war comes, is a blip, everything will be fine again soon. It’s literally magical thinking:

Everything was not fine before the war. Inflation was way above the Fed's 2% target and rising. Job growth and GDP growth had slowed. Slower growth and Trump’s tax cuts were making the deficit far worse. Then Trump launched his illegal, reckless, and failed war, and threw the global economy into a crisis rivaling COVID and the great financial crisis of 2008-2010. Perhaps the pain would be short, a blip, but that is not where we are now. Inflation has risen far more an expected in these two reports this week. It has begun cascading throughout the broader economy, and is no longer just about surging gas prices, which remain sky high today:

And what does Trump tell us he is going to do about it all? Yesterday he told us he doesn’t care about the pain he has brought. He doesn’t even think about it. Which of course is true, for Republicans facing a hostile electorate and a potential big blue wave, aren’t course correcting and doing things that will make people’s lives better. They continue to support Trump’s failed war; his ruinous tariffs; his destructive cuts to health care and food assistance; his unreformed and bloated ICE terror force; his unprecedented corruption; his rising interest rates and worsening deficit; and of course his outrageous tax cuts that are rewarding the wealthiest among us while all this pain is being inflicted on the American people, farmers, small businesses - all of us.

Look at this news we got yesterday. Remember that the official line from the GOP is that they did not actually cut health care and no one was going to lose their health insurance. The pain coming from these cuts is going to get worse as the year goes on……

As Greg and I discuss the reason the Rs are in such trouble, and so desperate to rig the maps, is there has not been a party so openly hostile to working Americans, and so clearly working for the oligarchs, in the modern era of US politics. As we’ve been hearing from the great candidates I’ve interviewed in recent weeks every one of these GOP incumbents we are working to beat have voted for the tariffs, for the war, for health care cuts, for ICE, for pain for working people and tax cuts and self-enrichment for the oligarchs. Trump gave away the game yesterday - his party simply doesn’t even think about the welfare of the American people, or they wouldn’t be doing so much to make their lives so much worse. Rather than do right by us they’ve decided to try to game the system…..

Which is why, my friends, it is time…..

To Get To Work, Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map

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