White House and Fox News Blame Biden's 2021 Stimulus for Today's Prices, But Inflation Also Rose Again Under Trump

Inflation is back as the dominant political argument ahead of the midterms, and the Trump administration wants voters to know whose fault it is. Not theirs.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC's Squawk Box on Tuesday, September 29, that the country is still digesting Joe Biden's first-year Covid spending. "When President Trump left office last time, talk about affordability, inflation was one and a half percent," Hassett said, according to CNBC. He then pinned the later spike on Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, signed in March 2021. "What Biden did is he took all that spending and he decided to spend it on other things, even though we didn't need it," Hassett said, per CNBC's reporting carried by Traders Union.

The underlying numbers check out. Inflation was roughly 1.5% at the end of Trump's first term, then climbed to a peak near 9% by summer 2022 under Biden, according to Traders Union's reporting. Traders Union also noted that "many economists say the package exacerbated U.S. inflation," while adding there is still debate over how much of the blame the stimulus alone deserves.

Fox and Friends picks up the argument

On its Friday, October 2 broadcast, Fox and Friends leaned into a Washington Post opinion piece making a similar case. Host Brian Kilmeade quoted the op-ed directly: "About 80% of the higher prices Americans are paying right now are due to Biden-era inflation, which is locked in." He went further, citing the op-ed's claim that the Consumer Price Index rose 21% over Biden's four years compared with 4.8% so far under Trump, and that interest rates sat at 2.7% when Trump left office the first time versus 6% when he returned.

Kilmeade's closing argument to voters: "Electing Democrats to tackle affordability is like hiring a gang of arsonists to put out the forest fire they started." Co-host Ainsley Earhardt added she trusts Trump's claim that prices will fall once the conflict with Iran ends, pointing to his first-term record.

The Post piece Kilmeade quoted is an opinion column, not a news report, and it argues Trump's economy is fundamentally strong even as voters remain sour on it. That is a specific editorial argument, not a government statistic, even though the underlying CPI history it cites is real and verifiable.

The reacceleration complicates the narrative

Traders Union's own reporting complicates the clean Biden-did-it narrative. Inflation "slowed to 3% by January 2025 before edging higher due to new external shocks," the outlet reported, meaning price growth has reaccelerated on Trump's watch, not just coasted on Biden-era momentum. Traders Union also reported that recent polling shows "declining confidence in both Biden's and Trump's economic management," undercutting the idea that voters are buying the blame-shifting wholesale.

That reacceleration is showing up in the backlash to Trump's own messaging. After the president told rallies in Oklahoma and Texas that prices would drop once the Iran conflict ends, social media users pushed back hard. "Yeah. It's because Iran started the war, right? They bombed themselves. Jesus," one user wrote on X. Another response cited tariffs directly: "tariffs... war with oil." Neither claim is independently verified here, but they represent the competing explanation Trump's own base of critics is offering: that his trade policy and foreign entanglements, not just Biden's old spending, are keeping prices elevated right now.

The midterm stakes

Democrats are leaning into affordability as their core message. A Senate Majority PAC memo, based on August polling of 1,800 voters across nine Senate battlegrounds, states that "the strongest reason to vote against a Republican continues to be that they have raised our costs," according to Briefs. Republicans, including Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, are countering that voters who want lower gas prices should not elect Democrats, according to Breitbart.

The administration has also tried to show action on costs directly. The White House began sending $500 refund checks on Wednesday to nearly a million Americans it says were overcharged for Obamacare insurance under Biden, Breitbart reported, part of a broader affordability push ahead of November.

Both the stimulus-blame argument and the external-shocks counterpoint rest on real, cited data. Neither side disputes the 2021-2022 inflation spike happened or that it was severe. What's unresolved is how much of today's prices trace to that spike nearly four years later versus more recent policy choices, including tariffs and the fallout from the Iran conflict. The next Consumer Price Index release and the midterm results in November will be the two clearest tests of which argument voters are actually buying.