It didn’t take long for the liberal whackadoodles over at CNN to prove MRC Business right — AGAIN — about the media’s selective outrage over the issue of inflation under President Donald Trump vs. his predecessor Joe Biden.
CNN political commentator and apparent amnesiac Keith Boykin arguably pulled off the consummate brain fart of the week when he was kvetching to Republican colleague Scott Jennings over how “inflation is up” under Trump on the August 19 edition of NewsNight.
When Jennings retorted that inflation was “coming down” after receding 0.4 percent in the month of June before ticking back up a meager 0.1 percent in July, Boykin kept trying to double down: “No, inflation is up … I’m asking — I’m speaking right now!” The year-over-year inflation rate slowed to 3.4 percent in July from a 3.5 percent in June, despite the ongoing energy shocks of the Iran War.
Jennings kept cornering Boykin, the former Clinton White House assistant: “What was the highest rate during Biden? What was the highest rate during Biden?” Boykin wouldn’t answer, and instead kept trying to argue a strawman that inflation was “three percent under Biden.” So a three percent inflation rate that jerked up to 4.2 percent in May 2026 then slowed down to 3.4 percent in a matter of months is not “coming down” by Boykin’s standards, right? So what in Sam Hill was Boykin doing August 10, 2022, throwing confetti around on Twitter that inflation was — *checks notes* — “starting to come down” under Biden when inflation spiked 8.5 percent year-over-year in July after peaking at a 40-year high 9.1 percent that June? Even the month-over-month rate for the July 2022 figure didn’t show any signs of receding. The monthly rate was in fact flat. Double standard much?
“There was no inflation during Biden. You heard it here on CNN!”
Scott Jennings calls out Keith Boykin for forgetting how bad Biden's inflation was.
The average inflation under the Biden admin was 5%, it's only 2.9% under this Trump term. pic.twitter.com/c83ErteiKG— Media Research Center (@theMRC) August 20, 2026
As Jennings quipped sarcastically, “There was no inflation during Biden. You heard it here on CNN!”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose nearly 500 points today after the Labor Department reported that inflation is starting to come down.
Here’s a few unexpected snippets from business and economics commentators this morning. pic.twitter.com/GCkbVhx4Ev— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 10, 2022
MRC Business recently released a study with CNSNews using BLS data to calculate the five-month average annual consumer price inflation rate spanning the entirety of the Iran War to date (March-July 2026) and juxtaposed it to the same period during 2022 (March-July), when the U.S. was not at war. Both time parameters reflect Trump and Biden’s second year in office. The numbers weren’t even close. The five-month average annual rate of consumer price increases spanning the Iran War (March-July) averaged 3.6 percent. During the same period in 2022 under Joe Biden, with no war underway, the inflation rate averaged a whopping 8.6 percent.
Guess what? The disparity in the spin the leftist media covered the economy during both periods writ large was just as stark, and CNN proper was right in the middle of it. Following reports that the U.S. GDP had contracted two consecutive quarters — which was the generally accepted definition of a recession before the media arbitrarily chucked it out the window — CNN bloviator-in-chief Brian Stelter brought Bidenomics apologist Paul Krugman on during a July 2022 Reliable Sources segment to dismiss that narrative entirely and sugarcoat the inflation situation: “Inflation is high, though maybe inflation is coming down. What does it matter whether you use the R-word or not?” Remember: Inflation for the month of July 2022 only slowed mildly to 8.5 percent from its June peak of 9.1 percent.
But when inflation did peak in June 2022, CNN reporters Lucy Bayly and Alicia Wallace also tried to downplay the 9.1 percent inflation rate for Biden in June by relying on perceived distortions from volatile energy prices and instead hyped up how “core inflation appears to have leveled off, and expectations are for it to continue to come down in the year-over-year comparison.” But the problem was that June 2022 core inflation sat at a huge 5.9 percent rate and would later see an eye-popping uptick to 6.3 percent rate for August two months later.
But compare the aforementioned examples to how CNN is grossly embellishing the relatively tamer inflation rate under Trump in the face of the Iran War. CNN Business senior reporter David Goldman outlandishly rubbed his crystal ball during the May 26, 2026 edition of CNN’s The Situation Room that Americans wouldn’t see oil dip below $70 a barrel or $3 per gallon of gasoline until 2032 because of Trump and his war with Tehran.
Sheesh, no wonder Boykin chose to memory-hole Bidenflation.
