MSNBC’s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough was visibly shocked when his wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski discovered how high the cost of butter has risen in the past four years.
“A few weeks ago … someone who was going to vote for Kamala Harris came up to me and said ‘Oh my God, Trump is going to win … I go to the grocery store butter is over $3,'” said the former congressman from Florida.
“I kind of laughed and said well that’s kind of reductive isn’t it, I said to myself,” Scarborough continued.
“It’s $7… I’m just saying it’s 7,” Brzezinski interrupted.
“Butter is $7… What, is it framed in gold?” Scarborough replied in disbelief, a shocked look on his face.
“It’s seven dollars…. it depends where you go,” Brzezinski said grimly.
Then a chart showing NBC polling data showed that 46% of Americans think their economic situation is worse than it was four years ago — as Scarborough continued to complain about the country’s struggle with inflation.
“If you look at the cost of groceries, if you look at the cost of gas, if you look at the cost of things compared to four years ago, it was a very simple answer for working-class Americans,” Scarborough admitted.
“Yes!” Brzezinski fired back.
Last week, however, the left-leaning anchor was singing a different tune.
“The next president inherits a tremendous economy,” he said, reading from the front page of an Oct. 31 Wall Street Journal article.
Scarborough also went viral in March for downplaying President Biden’s mingling with foreign dignitaries and other verbal obstacles — declaring instead that he was “intellectually, analytically … the best Biden ever.”
“I spent a couple of hours with Joe Biden, sitting down, talking,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” on March 6, adding that the two talked about the economy and inflation.
“I’ve been saying it for years: he’s convincing. But I undersold it when I said it was compelling,” he added.
“He is far beyond convincing. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been intellectually, analytically.”
As inflation hit a 40-year high in 2022, Scarborough was also seeking hundreds of billions of dollars more in federal spending.
“I’m pretty sure that working-class Americans are sick and tired of oil companies and tech companies and Amazon.com and Occidental Petroleum and Nike and all these massive corporations over the last four years paying zero in taxes, he said in August. 2022.
A minimum corporate tax rate of 15% for highly profitable companies was one of several provisions that went into the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed into law later that month.
Scarborough said before his approval that the provisions constituted “an anti-inflationary package that actually reduces the deficit”.
Kent Smetters, faculty director at the nonpartisan federal deficit monitor Penn Wharton Budget Model, predicted to Reuters months later in June 2023 that the Inflation Reduction Act “instead of reducing the debt, it will add to it” — in the amount of 750 billion dollars in 10 years.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget later disagreed with that estimate, noting in a June 2024 analysis that it would lead to a $252 billion reduction.
Overall, however, Biden’s spending will increase the nation’s debt by $4.3 trillion over the next decade, the organization said. Excluding the COVID-related US Rescue Plan, the deficit will still jump $2.2 trillion.
The high spending could result in higher inflation, according to economists — but the Biden-Harris administration continued to roll out new programs, including hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt relief.
“Pouring nearly half a trillion dollars of gasoline on an already smoldering inflationary fire is reckless,” Jason Furman, who chaired President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned in August 2022.
Real wages were also in decline for most of Biden’s tenure — and only recently have started to rise again.
“Under Biden, because of high inflation, real wages have fallen from where they were when he started,” billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson said on Fox News in September.
“That’s why so many between[-class] Americans have so much trouble with common expenses like rent and food.”
Prices rose roughly 20% for most consumer goods since January 2021, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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