The Dictatorship
Trump faces voters angry about inflation. Biden had the same problem
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s problems with fixing the high cost of living might be giving voters a feeling of déjà vu.
Just like the president who came before him, Trump is trying to sell the country on his plans to create factory jobs. The Republican wants to lower prescription drug costs, as did Democratic President Joe Biden. Both tried to shame companies for price increases.
Trump is even leaning on a message that echoes Biden’s claims in 2021 that elevated inflation is simply a “transitory” problem that will soon vanish.
“We’re going to be hitting 1.5% pretty soon,” Trump told reporters Monday. ”It’s all coming down.”
Even as Trump keeps saying an economic boom is around the corner, there are signs that he has already exhausted voters’ patience as his campaign promises to fix inflation instantly have gone unfulfilled.
Voters are growing frustrated with Trump on inflation
Voters in this month’s elections swung hard to Democrats over concerns about affordability. That has left Trump, who dismisses his weak polling on the economy as fake, floating half-formed ideas to ease financial pressures.
He is promising a $2,000 rebate on his tariffs and said he may stretch the 30-year mortgage to 50 years to reduce the size of monthly payments. On Friday, Trump scrapped his tariffs on beef, coffee, tea, fruit juice, cocoa, spices, bananas, oranges, tomatoes and certain fertilizers, saying they “may, in some cases” have contributed to higher prices.
But those are largely “gimmicky” moves unlikely to move the needle much on inflation, said Bharat Ramamurti, a former deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council.
“They’re in this very tough position where they’ve developed a reputation for not caring enough about costs, where the tools they have available to them are unlikely to be able to help people in the short term,” Ramamurti said.
Ramamurti said the Biden administration learned the hard way that voters are not appeased by a president saying his policies would ultimately cause their incomes to rise.
“That argument does not resonate,” he said. “Take it from me.”
How inflation hit Biden’s presidency
Biden inherited an economy trying to rebound from the coronavirus pandemicwhich had shut down schools and offices, causing mass layoffs and historic levels of government borrowing. In March 2021, he signed into law a $1.9 trillion relief package. Critics said that was excessive and could cause prices to rise.
As the economy reopened, there were shortages of computer chips, kitchen appliances, autos and even furniture. Cargo ships were stuck waiting to dock at ports, creating supply chain issues. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 pushed up energy and food costsand the increase in consumer prices hit a four-decade high that June. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rates to cool inflation.
Biden tried to convince Americans that the economy was strong. “Bidenomics is working,” Biden said in a 2023 speech. “Today, the U.S. has had the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic.”
His arguments did little to sway voters as only 36% of U.S. adults in August 2023 approved of his handling of the economy, according to a poll at the time by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Trump might be his own worst enemy on inflation
Republicans made the case that Biden’s policies made inflation worse. Democrats are using that same framing against Trump today.
Here is their argument: Trump’s tariffs are getting passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices; his cancellation of clean energy projects means there will be fewer new sources of electricity as utility bills climb; his mass deportations made it costlier for the immigrant-heavy construction sector to build houses.
Biden administration officials note that Trump came into office with strong growth, a solid job market and inflation declining close to historic levels, only for him to reverse those trends.
“It’s striking how many Americans are aware of his trade policy and rightly blame the turnaround in prices on that erratic policy,” said Gene Sperling, a senior Biden adviser who also led the National Economic Council in the Obama and Clinton administrations.
“He is in a tough trap of his own doing — and it’s not likely to get easier,” Sperling said.
Consumer prices had been increasing at an annual rate of 2.3% in April when Trump launched his tariffs, and that rate accelerated to 3% in September.
The inflationary surge has been less than what voters endured under Biden, but the political fallout so far appears to be similar: 67% of U.S. adults disapprove of Trump’s performance, according to November polling data from AP-NORC.
“In both instances, the president caused a non-trivial share of the inflation,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. “I think President Biden didn’t take this concern seriously enough in his first few months in office and President Trump isn’t taking this concern seriously enough right now.”
Strain noted that the two presidents have even responded to the dilemma in “weirdly, eerily similar ways” by playing down inflation as a problem, pointing to other economic indicators and looking to address concerns by issuing government checks.
White House bets its policies can tame inflation
Trump officials have made the case that their mix of income tax cuts, foreign investment frameworks tied to tariffs and changes in enforcing regulations will lead to more factories and jobs. All of that, they say, could increase the supply of goods and services and reduce the forces driving inflation.
“The policies that we’re pursuing right now are increasing supply,” Kevin Hassett, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, told the Economic Club of Washington on Wednesday.
The Fed has cut its benchmark interest rates, which could increase the supply of money in the economy for investment. But the central bank has done so because of a weakening job market despite inflation being above its 2% target, and there are concerns that rate cuts of the size Trump wants could fuel more inflation.
Time might not be on Trump’s side
It takes time for consumer sentiment to improve after the inflation rate drops, according to research done by Ryan Cummings, an economist who worked on Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers.
His read of the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment is that the effects of the postpandemic rise in inflation are no longer a driving factor. These days, voters are frustrated because Trump had primed them to believe he could lower grocery prices and other expenses, but has failed to deliver.
“When it comes to structural affordability issues — housing, child care, education, and health care — Trump has pushed in the wrong direction in each one,” said Cummings, who is now chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
He said Trump’s best chance of beating inflation now might be “if he gets a very lucky break on commodity prices” through a bumper harvest worldwide and oil production continuing to run ahead of demand.
For now, Trump has decided to continue to rely on attacking Biden for anything that has gone wrong in the economy, as he did on Monday in an interview with Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”
“The problem was that Biden did this,” Trump said.
___
This story has been corrected to reflect that the increase in consumer prices, not consumer prices themselves, hit a four-decade high in June 2022.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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