Trump’s Rage Erupts as Inflation Rises and His Pollster Openly Panics

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On Tuesday, we learned that inflation rose last month. The New York Times said inflation “accelerated,” ABC News noted it “surged,” and other reports observed that President Trump’s tariffs are starting to produce long-predicted price hikes. Trump reacted angrily. He pretended the surge was nonexistent, and then deflected by unleashing a furious tweet at Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell that demanded: “Bring down the Fed rate NOW!!!” Trump then unleashed an angry rant to reporters further excoriating Powell. Trump might have also been ticked because his 2024 campaign polling firm just released a memo harshly warning that House Republicans are in trouble in the midterms, and Trump’s cuts to the safety net help explain why. We talked to economist Kathryn Edwards, a skillful decoder of Trumponomics. She explains the inflation news, why Trump’s perfect storm of policies are hurting working people, and how Democrats should respond by swinging big on the economy in ways they usually don’t. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:33.4	President Donald Trump had an interesting reaction to the news that inflation accelerated last month, which we learned on Tuesday.
0:39.9	In a convoluted chain of reasoning, he said that, in consumer prices are low, in effect denying that the inflation news mattered, and as a result, the Federal Reserve should cut interest
0:45.8	rates. He unleashed a long, angry, bitter rant to this effect to reporters. This comes as Trump's
0:52.8	own pollster put out a startling memo warning that House
0:56.0	Republicans are in real trouble in the midterm elections and that people's economic
1:00.6	precarity is a key reason why. All signs are that the economic news will get worse, yet Trump
1:06.7	and Republicans seem utterly unconcerned about the politics. We're trying to unravel all this
1:12.4	with economist Catherine Edwards, who's one of the better decoders of Trumponomics out there today.
1:18.2	Thanks for coming on, Catherine. Thanks for having me back. So let's start with the inflation news.
1:23.8	The consumer price index rose 2.7 percent compared to a year earlier. That's the fastest since
1:29.9	February. Core inflation, which doesn't include food and energy, is up 2.9%. The New York Times
1:37.4	described this as an acceleration of inflation. ABC News called it a surge. This is bad news for Trump because all indications are that it's the result of his tariffs
1:48.1	and also because the tariffs are only beginning to bite.
1:51.6	It also seems to mean that the Fed won't cut interest rates as Trump wants.
1:56.2	Catherine, can you give us a quick overview of what all this data means?
2:00.1	We went through something pretty incredible in our economy a few years ago, which was a very
2:04.5	severe spike in inflation, where the year-over-year growth and prices was above 6%.
2:10.2	Through the course of pretty steady interest rate policy, which was higher, we were able
2:17.3	to get those prices down to below 3%. So the
2:20.4	growth in prices in the economy is below 3. But the target is 2. So if last month we were at 2.4 and this
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Republic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New Republic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.