During the Biden administration, the Media Research Center fought hard to talk down the economy even though it was actually doing a fairly good job of recovering from the COVID pandemic. With a Republican president in Donald Trump, however, the MRC desperately wants you to believe the economy is doing just great — and will attack anyone claiming otherwise. JOseph Vazquez grumbled in a May 30 post:
Arguably one of the most smug reporters at the flailing CNN network tried once again to locate the bad news where there’s good economic news for President Donald Trump.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released a report May 30 finding that personal income spiked at a much hotter-than-expected clip of 0.8 percent against expectations of 0.3 percent in April. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, which acts as the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, slowed more than expected to 2.1 percent. That’s just shy of the Fed’s 2 percent target before it begins cutting interest rates.
While CNN reporter Matt Egan was forced to admit that the development on inflation was “good news,” the Bidenomics simp couldn’t help himself and tried to still inject ridiculous scare-porn into his coverage on the May 30 edition of CNN News Central. “A lot of economists do believe that this is still the calm before the storm — that we will eventually see tariff price hikes.”
Eventually, inflation will roar back. Fingers crossed?
Intern Ashley Taylor complained in a June 3 post:
Apparently, American innovation and capitalism is destroying us. On Tuesday morning’s episode of CBS Mornings Plus, hosts Tony Dokoupil and Adriana Diaz had a painfully out of touch conversation with Evan Osnos of The New Yorker– a magazine known for their in-depth commentary on real, pressing issues, like the lack of gay children’s books in American preschools– about his latest book, The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches On The Ultrarich.
Osnos detailed how America was wealthier than ever before, but only a small percentage of Americans actually held this wealth, which was somehow a problem that should be causing uproar everywhere. According to him, today’s America was somehow worse than the Gilded Age[.] […]
What Osnos didn’t understand was that the American economy had obviously grown exponentially since a hundred years ago, and was currently sitting at about $28 trillion GDP, about 825 times more than the GDP in the Gilded Age.
Those facts, coupled with the fact that the number of American billionaires has blossomed from around 60 to over 800 in the past 35 years alone, should be a good thing. It’s good that the billionaire club has expanded, and that they are making more money than ever before. The American economy was also flying past its rivals at a never before seen rate, that’s not to mention that technological advancements meant that modern average Americans had wonders the wealthy of the Gilded Age didn’t.
Joseph Vazquez tried to gloat in a June 12 post:
It’s one of the most amusing aspects of MRC Business’s day-to-day routine when staff watch liberal media talking heads forced to eat crow over their blind adamancy that President Donald Trump is going to wreck the economy. CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman is the latest to be found wearing the clown nose.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest report on consumer prices finding that inflation had risen noticeably less than expected on a month-to-month basis in May by 0.1 percent against economists’ expectations of a 0.2 percent increase. Core inflation — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — was even more telling, having risen 0.1 percent on a month-to-month basis and 2.8 percent on the year-to-year, also upending expectations by experts of a 0.3 percent and 2.9 percent increase respectively.
Liesman summarized during the June 11 edition of CNBC’s Squawk Box that “Not only did we get a decline in inflation expectations earlier this week from the important New York Fed report,” he did “not see broader impacts on inflation from the tariffs.”
Of course, he was still clinging to the idea that the Trump price spikes are just around the corner, but previous jabs he made at Trump’s economic policies on MSNBC now make him look utterly foolish.
Vazquez kept it up in a June 16 post:
The New York Times is still force-feeding its readers agitprop that the long-awaited inflation Armageddon it’s been hawking for months is still nigh. That’s despite a bevy of welcome economic news in recent weeks that has defied the retrospectively stupid predictions of President Donald Trump’s most pompous critics still high on their bloated egos.
“Where’s the Inflation From Tariffs? Just Wait, Economists Say,” doom-mongered Times reporter Colby Smith in a June 13 crystal ball item passed off as news. They always locate “Economists” to say what they want to impose as conventional “wisdom.”
“Tariffs raise consumer prices. It’s a view held by most economists since long before President Trump entered the White House,” Smith wrote. She expressed her shock that Trump’s tariffs on China “did not translate to” the “noticeably higher inflation overall” that forecasters were screeching about for months.
Vazquez groused the next day:
The Associated Press chose to be one of the first to wave the white flag and admit what anybody with a pair of eyes and two functioning brain cells could deduce: The media hurly-burly about how President Trump was supposedly going to destroy the U.S. economy has so far looked like Fake News. Reporters have consulted “experts” predicting doom over Trump’s trade and tariff tactics. They sound disappointed when the numbers are good.
You mean like how the MRC sounded disappointed about the Biden economy? Still, Vazquez continued to complain:
But regardless of his reporting antics, [AP reporter Christopher] Rugaber’s admission is a significant one in the face of media buffoons still clinging to the notion that the Trump inflation crisis is supposedly just around the corner as if they’re hoping for that outcome. The New York Times, for example, put out a story June 13 on the economy that managed to be both comical and pathetic at the same time: “Where’s the Inflation From Tariffs? Just Wait, Economists Say.” In essence, Trump is killing the economy, er, someday!
Vazquez huffed in a June 25 post:
CNN is the latest to suffer from the utter humiliation of prophesying Armageddon-level economic catastrophe as a result of President Donald Trump’s military strikes on Iran, only to have their predictions collapse faster than Biden on the steps of Air Force One.
CNN writer Auzinea Bacon was adamant June 22 that “America’s economy” would face “a new war shock: Surging oil prices,” after Trump’s historic B-2 bomber attack to devastate Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “The American economy faces the unwelcome prospect of reignited inflation after the United States launched strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran,” Bacon screeched. “High oil and gas prices are a near certainty, experts say. The big question now: How long will the fossil fuels price spike last?” “Near certainty,” eh Bacon? Yikes! talk about opening yourself up for a devastating reality check.
Vazquez’s complaining continued in a June 27 post:
The stock market continues to go gangbusters, so MRC Business thought it would be worth revisiting one of CNN’s dumbest End-of-the-World predictions about the Trump presidency to date.
The Wall Street Journal reported June 27 that the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite indexes both hit record highs after the open on June 27. The newspaper summarized that “investors increasingly discounted the economic threat posed by the trade war and Middle East instability.
Vazquez kept up the whining in a July 25 post over a poll:
The leftist media couldn’t convince people that Bidenomics was the American economy’s saving grace. And now they’re failing to convince people that President Donald Trump’s policies are somehow going to drive the economy into Armageddon.
Talk about fumbling over yourself on both sides of the ball.
A new CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey found that “nearly half of small business owners (46%) now say that the economy is ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, up from 30% in Q2.” Apparently Trump made gains “even amongst Democrats,” CNBC said in its July 22 write-up.
Of course, a single poll means nothing about future behavior, as we have seen in the months following that poll. Vazquez probably shoiuldn’t be so quick to mock those with whom he disagrees.