While the left now openly highlights the cost of living in the U.S. under President Donald Trump, corporate media pundits and Democrats remained largely silent as former President Joe Biden oversaw a surge in prices.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump promised to address the rampant rate of inflation that took hold during Biden’s term, which, on average, remained above the average rate of inflation during Trump’s first four years in office. Still, many corporate media outlets attempted to defend Biden in recent years by suggesting that U.S. presidents wield little control over the rate of inflation.
After defending the former president’s economic policy, many Democrats and media pundits have become critical of the Trump administration in recent weeks over the cost of everyday items. Democratic Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, for example, said Tuesday in a post on X that the current cost of eggs is “absolutely outrageous,” and claimed that the Trump administration needs to “take action to bring down egg prices.” (RELATED: ‘Shouldn’t Be Alarming’: Brit Hume Explains Why Rising Prices Isn’t Major Concern At This Point)
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Similarly, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren also attempted to pin blame on the Trump administration for rising egg prices in a Wednesday post on X.
“While the bird flu gets worse and egg prices skyrocket, Trump’s team fired employees who were working on the bird flu response,” Warren said in the post. “Now, they’re frantically trying to reverse course. This is the opposite of efficiency.”
Few Democrats and legacy media outlets raised concerns when egg prices increased substantially during Biden’s sole term, instead attempting to offer reasonable explanations for the uptick in costs.
Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins also announced plans Wednesday to begin lowering the cost of eggs, noting, “Avian [bird] flu has been catastrophic … But at the end of the day, policy matters. So the egg prices we’re seeing now was a long roll of over-regulation, too many rules, too much government.”
Moreover, Warren repeatedly praised Biden’s economy during his time in office, claiming in an April 2024 post on X that inflation rates went down under his leadership.
“When @POTUS Biden took office, he promised to rescue the economy and get working people back on their feet,” Warren wrote in the social media post. “And guess what? Under Joe Biden’s leadership, we’ve created over 15 million jobs, wages are up, and inflation is down.”
The Biden administration often touted the addition of millions of jobs to the U.S economy, but failed to credit that gain to millions of Americans returning to positions lost during the pandemic, the sharp increase in foreign-born workers and the rise in government positions.
While the rate of inflation has gone down since its peak in 2022, as Warren suggested in her post, rates have remained significantly elevated above pre-pandemic levels.
In July 2024, Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer defended Biden’s economic record by saying that he alone could not lower inflation rates.
“One person can’t control global inflation,” Whitmer said. “But what we can do is have someone who cares about you, put — does things that put more money in your pockets and make sure we get good paying jobs. And that’s what Joe Biden has done.”
Despite this, Whitmer has been a vocal critic of Trump’s economic policies, previously claiming that his tariff plan alone would “drive up costs, forcing families to pay thousands more a year to get by.” Whitmer also pointed to the elevated cost of some staple items soon after Trump returned to office.
“Prices are rising, even on Valentine’s Day chocolate,” Whitmer wrote in a Feb. 14 post on X. “We need to be focused on lowering costs, creating jobs, and building a stronger economy, not making it harder for people to make ends meet and passing costs onto consumers.”
Some members of the media also defended Biden’s handling of inflation during his presidency, including “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who in July 2022 claimed that Biden was doing all that he could to tackle rising costs.
“What do you want him to do that he’s not doing?” Goldberg said at the time. “I don’t know very many folks who could juggle this many balls in the air at the same time. He’s gotten hit with COVID, then COVID-19, then COVID-21 and COVID’s cousin. And there’s the wars, then there’s the inflation going on, which is happening all over the world. It’s not just us. So I would like to know, does anybody have a solution to stuff that can be done?”
Biden presided over a spike in inflation which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 and resulted in many American businesses and consumers struggling to make ends meet. Despite this, the Biden-Harris administration reassured Americans that Biden’s economy was thriving.
Some economists warned that colossal government spending under the Biden-Harris administration contributed to rising inflation and the soaring national deficit. Many Republicans also accused the former administration of spending taxpayer funds on wasteful programs.
Though the Trump administration has made it a priority to cut wasteful federal spending, in part to reduce the inflationary burden on Americans, the efforts have largely been met with opposition from Democrats.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a presidential memorandum to defeat the “cost-of-living crisis,” and ordered all federal agencies and departments to “deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker.”
“Over the past 4 years, the Biden Administration’s destructive policies inflicted an historic inflation crisis on the American people,” Trump wrote in the memorandum. “The Biden Administration not only exploded Government spending, artificially and unsustainably stimulating demand, but it simultaneously made necessary goods and services scarce through a crushing regulatory burden and radical policies designed to weaken American production. Hardworking families today are overwhelmed by the cost of fuel, food, housing, automobiles, medical care, utilities, and insurance.”
Ahead of Trump’s election victory, the economy repeatedly ranked as one of the most crucial issues voters. Following the election, some exit polls showed that many Americans were deeply discontent with the state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration.
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