During Thursday's White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about inflation under the Biden Administration.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thanks, Karine.
00:01I'm going to ask you about inflation.
00:02So, yesterday in the Rose Garden,
00:03the President said that when he came into office,
00:06inflation was skyrocketing,
00:07but it was 1.4 percent in January of 2021,
00:11and that was the 11th consecutive month at that time,
00:14under 2 percent.
00:15So, was the President misleading Americans?
00:17So, when the President took office,
00:19and you know this, there was a pandemic.
00:20It was closing down businesses, closing down schools.
00:23And so, it was drastically disrupting the supply chain.
00:27Let's not forget about that.
00:29And so, that's what was going on.
00:32And that caused inflation around the world to increase.
00:35We know that.
00:36And then, further increasing inflation was the Russia's war,
00:41Russia's war in Ukraine.
00:42And in fact, many other countries are even worse off
00:46because of that,
00:47because of what we've seen with Russia's war.
00:49So, the President took historic action
00:51to deal with the disruption of the supply chain.
00:54Let's not forget what he did
00:55with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
00:57And so, we have made progress in lowering costs.
00:59We've made progress in dealing with inflation.
01:02But that's what was happening when we walked in,
01:04the pandemic, the disruption of the supply chain.
01:06All of these things were happening
01:08when the President took office.
01:09But the President didn't say the supply chain
01:11was being disrupted. He said inflation was skyrocketing.
01:14But that's what he was referring to, right?
01:16That's what was going on.
01:17Those were the things that were happening right before us.
01:20The pandemic, it was taking thousands of lives a day
01:23when he took office.
01:24Schools were closed.
01:26Majority of schools were closed.
01:27Businesses were closing.
01:29And we had a supply chain that was disrupted.
01:32And so, that's what the President was speaking to
01:35and laying out.
01:36And then, inflation down the road became even more,
01:42increased even more because of the war
01:44that Russia had taken on into Ukraine.
01:48But the Fed supply chain measure
01:50actually went down in November at that time.
01:53So, is the President being honest about inflation?
01:56The President has said what he saw when he took office.
02:02The pandemic was happening, right?
02:04It disrupted the supply chain.
02:05We know, you know what happens
02:07when the supply chain is disrupted.
02:09You know what that leads to.
02:11And so, that's what he was speaking to.
02:13And not only that, we also saw a war in Ukraine
02:20that Mr. Putin, an aggression that Mr.
02:23Putin was putting into Ukraine, set forth.
02:26And so, the President had to take historic action,
02:29take aggressive action
02:30in dealing with our disruption in the supply chain.
02:32He had to release a strategic petroleum reserve
02:35so that we can deal with the supply chain.
02:38And he continued to take action to lower costs.
02:42And that's what we've seen, whether it's healthcare costs,
02:44whether it's dealing with junk fees,
02:46whether it's prescription drugs, lowering those costs.
02:48That's what the President took action in.
02:50But we saw what was happening when the President took office.
02:52We did.