The tone-deaf hacks at The New York Times treated an expected spike in inflation as a problem because … Republicans could potentially pounce on the development to criticize President Joe Biden. Yes, the leftist rag actually did that.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report Sept. 13 at 8:30 a.m. showing that inflation came in hotter than expected in August with a 3.7 percent spike year-over-year. A glaring statistic showed that gas prices spiked a whopping 10.6 percent in August, significantly contributing to the overall inflation rate.
Times White House Correspondent Jim Tankersley attempted to get in front of this news hours earlier at 5:11 a.m. when he published the ridiculous headline: “Rising Gas Prices Provide Fodder for Republican Criticism of Biden.”
Tankersley wrote as if readers should really be concerned about Republicans, not their bleeding wallets: “An expected jump in the latest inflation reading will almost certainly provoke broadsides from Republicans who hammered Mr. Biden over high gas prices throughout last summer.”
Tankersley tried to throw Biden a lifeline before the BLS report dropped by gaslighting readers. “Prices at the pump remain well below their peak in June 2022, when a gallon of gas cost more than $5 on average.”
Of course, nowhere in his propaganda did Tankersley mention that the average gas price was $2.49 cents per gallon when former President Donald Trump left office, according to economist Stephen Moore. “No matter [how] you slice or dice it, the cost of filling up is about $20 higher today than under Trump,” Moore summarized in an Aug. 16 New York Post piece.
The mainstream press literally cannot process any information outside of this frame, can they? That’s the problem with “higher gas prices” and “accelerating inflation”? That Republicans will now criticize Joe Biden? pic.twitter.com/iEpgItn15u
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 13, 2023
But Tankersley couldn’t help himself. He tried to spin the expected inflation spike in August and shield Biden by to casting him as the gas price hero of 2022:
Prices fell steadily last summer, a development that Mr. Biden celebrated. Administration officials continue to tout that progress, using last June as a benchmark. ‘If you look at what we’ve been able to do from last summer to this summer — lowering gas prices by a dollar twenty cents, that is because of the work that this administration has done,’ Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week.”
Tankersley also claimed that the 2022 gas price spike “was largely the result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Mr. Biden has since sought to reduce price pressures through a variety of measures, including releasing millions of barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR].”
The Times journalist, of course, bypassed explaining how gas prices began rising over a year before Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, as National Review editor Philip Klein pointed out at the time. In addition, Tankersley glossed over the fact that when Biden drained 180 million barrels from the SPR, he left the reserve at a 40-year low while energy prices surged again.
“Oil prices are surging again, but this time Biden has way less ammunition to bring them down,” read Markets Insider’s headline.
Despite wages being up 13%, prices have risen so much faster that real (inflation-adjusted) hourly earnings are way down; average worker now paying more in inflation tax than federal income tax on his or her hourly earnings: pic.twitter.com/ga8doVXA5e
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) September 13, 2023
But Tankersley mourned that the expected spike in gas price inflation is priming the GOP to go on the political offensive. “White House officials are bracing for that development, and the Republicans critiques that will accompany it.” What a joke.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The New York Times at 1-800-698-4637 and demand it distance itself from Tankersley’s absurd spin on spiking gas prices.
