It’s always great TV when the business journos over at CNBC take a wrecking ball to the media’s never-ending croaking against the Trump administration for an affordability issue they pretended wasn’t such a big deal under its predecessor.
CNBC co-anchor Joe Kernen didn’t mince any words during the January 10 edition of Squawk Box. “[T]he affordability issue is from the 22% increase in prices and inflation under Biden. There's just — full stop. right there. That's the affordability issue. And you ought to be able to explain that,” Kernen rebuked. Gas prices alone had also spiked at least 31 percent during that period.
CNBC's guest, former Securities and Exchange Commission chair and Trump-nominated attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton concurred, arguing that the Trump administration was “thrown, you know what I would say, the worst economy for the average American in my adult lifetime in terms of — like you said — the incredible increase in prices at the household.”
CNBC co-anchor Becky Quick immediately attempted to interject with a point of order to keep the media narrative against Trump alive, “Except it's part of the reason that they won. And now Americans say, ‘Fix it. Make it better.’” This is the proverbial equivalent of a madman detonating a nuclear bomb followed by the media griping that the guy sent in to clean up the wreckage isn’t cleaning up the radiation spillage from the aftermath fast enough.
Not for nothing, but the economic apocalypse outlets like CNN and others energetically predicted was coming in Trump's first year back in office never materialized. As a matter of fact, economic productivity was shown to have spiked a whopping 4.9 percent in Q3 2025, greatly eclipsing the 3.6 percent increase projected by economists and notching the fastest pace in two years.
If that wasn’t indicative enough, the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model currently estimates U.S. economic growth to explode 5.1 percent in the first quarter of 2026 under current conditions. Independent macroeconomic data provider Truflation currently has consumer prices clocked at a 1.87 percent inflation rate, which is beneath the 2 percent target for the Federal Reserve to begin cutting interest rates.
Bloomberg News also reported January 5 that “Trump’s Tax Stimulus Set to Keep US Economy on Track in 2026.” Specifically, reported Bloomberg, “American taxpayers will get bigger refunds in the first half of this year as a result of Trump’s signature bill, economists say, with estimates for the aggregate boost ranging from $30 billion to $100 billion.” In addition, “Incentives for companies to invest in plants and equipment are also likely to bolster growth, while lower borrowing costs and steadier trade policy should help too.”
In summary, blaming the guy cleaning up an affordability crisis that was largely the result of the outrageous multitrillion-dollar spending policies Biden and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell instituted during their respective regimes has always been logically lazy. But props to Kernen for saying on air what’s on the minds of any person with a functioning brain and a modicum of common sense.
