11 June—When Donald Trump was pandering for votes in 2024, he bloviated, “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.” He repeated the patently feculent promise on any number of occasions. And even though he was clearly lying through his effulgent teeth—as campaigning politicians can’t help doing—any number of the gullible unwashed obviously (and predictably) took him at his word.

So after Trump’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report yesterday showing that inflation in the United States hit a three-year high of 4.2 percent, he boasted, “You know what I really love? I love the inflation. The numbers were great.” (Behind the scenes, will BOLS heads roll for not having made the numbers great for Trump?)

Of course, Trump didn’t really mean what he said yesterday. (Yeah, yeah, why should it have been different from what he says any day?) As a con man, demagogue, and politician he shouldn’t be expected to mean what he says. Ever.

Still, Trump later insisted that his bullshit was taken out of context. “I love the inflation numbers because of what I’m talking about,” Trump insisted. “The numbers are going to be phenomenal because what’s showing is that despite the fact that we’re in a war, the numbers are much lower than anticipated, and when we’re out of that war, the numbers will be at lower numbers than they were even before it started.”

Much lower than anticipated? Well, not all that much higher than anticipated, anyway. Because in truth, economists had anticipated inflation to jump from 2.4 percent to around 3.3 percent when Trump decided to join Israel’s not unjustified fray without the consent of Congress—on top of the 0.7 percent jump anticipated from Trump’s tariffs.

Of course, Trump expects inflation to “come down like a rock” once his undeclared and illegal war ends. And that was parroted in fancier language by White House flunkies who insisted that the administration is focused on an affordability agenda and expects energy prices to plummet once regional stability is restored.

On the other hand, don’t forget that inflation had soared to 9.1 percent in 2022, up from a not undesirable 1.4 percent when Joe Biden took office in 2021. The astronomical—for the United States—inflation occurred during the height of the COVID panic, to be sure, and there certainly were things beyond control of the Biden maladministration, like supply-chain issues. But, all things considered, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was a deceptively named failure. Like Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill . . .