Donald Trump has already taken a hit in his approval rating over the economy, but a CNN conservative was met with pushback for blaming former president Joe Biden for an unexpected increase in consumer prices.
Recent polling shows that 62 percent of voters believe the current president hasn't focused enough on the economy in his first month after promising to bring down prices on Day One, but Republican strategist Brad Todd made excuses for Trump and agreed with his recent Truth Social post calling the increase "Biden inflation."
"I mean, he's focusing on a lot of things," Todd said, "and he's delivering the kind of speed and pace of change that I think the people who voted for him wanted, and I think most of his voters are pretty enthusiastic about what's happening. The key to bringing down prices is to bring down the cost of energy and make energy a lot more abundant and a lot more affordable, and to increase the horizon so that more investors get into the energy sector. That's not something that happens immediately, and he did say he's going to start bringing down prices on the first day. He didn't say immediately, 'I'm going to take my hand off the Bible [on Inauguration Day], and the price of eggs is going to drop in half.' Let's be clear about it, and I do think this has a comprehensive energy. I mean, the Biden administration deliberately pushed up energy prices, it was part of the playbook. It's going to take a while to bring them down, but once we do that other prices will follow."
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Fellow panelist Elliot Williams broke in to disagree with Todd's premise.
"A conversation you and I have had separately, and I was confounded by – how long can they keep blaming Joe Biden?" Williams said.
"As long as it's his fault," Todd interjected.
"No, because, you know, last week 'Biden inflation up' was the social media of J.D. Vance," Williams replied. "Now, and the question is, is it a month? Is it six months – a year? At a certain point, the Trump administration owns the economy, and I'm just wondering how long it is that they have to keep making."
Todd argued that Trump could continue blaming Biden for the economy because their political fortunes were so intertwined.
"We're in a unique political situation where Joe Biden was elected as a reaction to Donald Trump and Donald Trump was re-elected as a reaction to Joe Biden," Todd said, "and so I don't know that you can take these two men without putting the other one in the frame."
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