Dems taking advantage of rise in prices? Are prices in fact rising?

Below (black font) from the WSJ today.

Some facts (served up Snitz style).

12-Month Inflation Rates (September 2025):

Overall CPI: 3.0%

Energy: 2.8%

Food: 3.1%

Housing/Shelter: 3.6%

Has Voldemort dropped prices? No. If you believed he or any president would you're delusional. The rate of increase is very reasonable by historical standards, especially when you consider prices escalated over 20% during Biden (28% for shelter and housing). Here are the specifics during his tenure.

2021:

Overall CPI: 7.0%

Energy: 29.3%

Food: 6.3%

Shelter/Housing: 4.1%

2022:

Overall CPI: 6.5%

Energy: 7.3%

Food: 10.4%

Shelter/Housing: 7.5%

2023:

Overall CPI: 3.4%

Energy: -2.0%

Food: 2.7%

Shelter/Housing: 6.2%

2024:

Overall CPI: 2.9%

Energy: -0.5%

Food: 2.5%

Shelter/Housing: 4.6%

Has Trump explained this to the American public? No, he's made the dubious claim that he'll slash prices for the American public. Good luck with that.

WASHINGTON—Republicans in Washington came away from the recent elections with a clear takeaway: focus on the high cost of living or risk big losses in next year’s midterms.

President Trump isn’t convinced.

The president said this past week that Republicans aren’t talking enough about his administration’s successes, and he dismissed questions on voters’ concerns regarding the economy. Most prices are on the downswing, he argued.

“Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down. And the press doesn’t report it,” Trump said. “So, I don’t want to hear about the affordability. Because right now, we’re much less.”

Trump’s optimistic perspective on the economy is at odds with government statistics and the views of many voters, according to pollsters and analysts. The Labor Department reported last month that consumer prices rose 3% in September from a year earlier, marking the fastest pace since January. In recent surveys, voters said the cost of housing, groceries and utility bills is unmanageable. Democratic candidates who focused their messages on affordability came out on top in Tuesday’s elections, handily beating their Republican challengers.

In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump lashed out at reporters who pressed him on the cost of living. “We are much better than Biden,” he said. “We are the victors on affordability.”

The president called Democrats’ contention that affordability played a role in Tuesday’s election a “con job,” and he asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to help him make his case to reporters in the room.

Following the recent election, some of Trump’s own advisers said privately that the president would shift focus to domestic affairs after spending a chunk of his first nine months on foreign policy. “We need to focus on the home front,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media following the election. “We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”

Behind the scenes, Trump has been irritated that Democrats are getting credit for their focus on affordability, according to an administration official. The president is attuned to voter concerns and regularly discusses the state of the economy with his team of economic advisers, including almost-daily conversations with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the official said.

White House officials said Trump is expected to step up his economic messaging in coming weeks. After Tuesday’s election, the conservative activist and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon interviewed Bessent, who made the case that the economy will improve as Trump’s policies are fully realized. “The house got burned down, and it takes a while to rebuild it,” Bessent said on Bannon’s podcast.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said that Trump inherited a bad economy and that the administration will “continue to emphasize” policies that are intended to cut costs, increase wages and spur investments in the U.S.

Privately, Republicans said they are worried that Trump seems reluctant to empathize with voters’ economic pain. And some in the GOP have been raising red flags for weeks about Republicans’ vulnerabilities over the economy.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) said in a recent interview with CNN, “Affordability is a problem.”

“I go to the grocery store myself. Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high,” she said. “My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they’re also higher at my house in Rome, Ga.—higher than they were a year ago.”

Trump points to a surging stock market and lucrative investments in the U.S. from foreign countries as evidence that the economy is on solid ground.

Trump was swept back into office vowing to tame inflation and bring down the cost of living. During the 2024 campaign, he regularly criticized President Joe Biden for not doing enough to lower prices, and he promised to reduce grocery prices on his first day in office.