Who Are You Gonna Believe, Trump or Your Lying Eyes?

The emperor’s new clothes, gas prices edition

I’m still on semi-vacation. So mostly brief posts for now.

Republicans have an affordability problem. During the 2024 campaign Donald Trump promised to reduce prices beginning on “Day One,” and promised specifically that he would cut energy prices in half. He has instead presided over rising inflation — the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure is running almost a percentage point higher than it was when he took office — and his Iran debacle has caused a spike in gasoline and diesel prices:

A normal political party would respond to this problem by trying to solve it. OK, some blame-shifting — attributing rising prices to forces beyond the president’s control or insisting that current problems were caused by the previous administration’s policies — would also be par for the course.

But MAGA is trying to deal with its affordability crisis simply by denying reality. Over the past few days multiple prominent Republicans have gone on TV to insist that gas prices are falling. On Thursday Sen. Tim Scott said that “gas prices continue to come down,” while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise declared that gas is much cheaper than it was “two years ago,” when, he claimed, it was $6 a gallon. The average price then was actually $3.66.

And Pete Hegseth, the Defense secretary, told Congress that gas prices in California were $8 a gallon on the eve of the Iran war; the average was actually $4.64.

What’s striking about these efforts to create an alternate reality isn’t merely the fact that politicians are lying. It’s the fact that they’re lying about a subject in which the truth is more or less literally in everyone’s face every day. Lies about, say, immigrant crime are difficult for ordinary Americans to check. But gas prices are displayed on giant signs all around America — and drivers face a reality check on fuel costs every time they fill their tanks.

Why, then, do Republicans believe that these lies will work for them politically?

Part of the explanation is their belief that they can flush the majority of Joe Biden’s presidency down the memory hole, that they can pretend that Trump took office just after the inflation surge of 2021-2022, not after the “immaculate disinflation” — falling inflation without high unemployment — that followed. That is, their story about gas prices looks like this:

And their story about overall inflation looks like this:

Will these games with the timeline persuade voters that Trump is actually doing a good job on prices? No. That ship has already sailed (and sunk). As the chart at the top of this post shows, independents disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living by a remarkable 5-to-1 margin, and false claims on Fox News won’t change that.

So what’s the purpose of these MAGA lies? The answer, of course, is that they’re aimed at an audience of one. Voters know that gas prices are way up and that inflation is elevated, but Donald Trump, swaddled in his Mar-a-Lago bubble, doesn’t. Trump says that we have no inflation. He recently insisted that inflation was 5 percent at the end of Biden’s term and took credit for falling inflation before he took office. So Republicans determined to say whatever he wants to hear — which means everyone still in the party — feel obliged to praise his inflation record, the facts be damned.

And for those worried that this kind of behavior, where keeping the Leader happy is far more important than respecting the truth, will lead to policy mistakes, I have three words for you: Strait of Hormuz.

MUSICAL CODA

I’ve used this before, but too perfect not to recycle