President Joe Biden has received criticism for laughing at a joke about inflation Saturday.
During the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, host Trevor Noah took a jab at Biden, making light of inflation rates that have climbed throughout Biden’s time in office. In March, the rate accelerated to a more than 40-year high 8.5 percent annual rate, heightening fears of a recession.
“Ever since you’ve come into office, things are looking up,” said Noah Saturday night. “Gas is up, rent is up, food is up, everything.”
Following the joke, the live video cut to Biden who laughed and clapped his hands.
The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) Twitter account later shared the clip labeled “Biden thinks inflation is funny.”
“Even though the inflation rate is the same as the national rate, the middle class or poor actually bear more burden because they live in a place [where the] cost of living is already very high—much higher than the national average,” William Yu, an economist for the UCLA Anderson Forecast, told The Epoch Times April 14.
The Biden administration has repeatedly pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as the source of inflation, calling it the “Putin price hike.”
While the war in Ukraine has had an impact on gas prices and COVID-19 continues to disrupt global supply chains, Republicans and some outside analysts have said that the increased inflation rate has most to do with increased government spending.
Democrats have spent recklessly well beyond what a measured pandemic response might have called for, exacerbating supply-side problems with expansionist monetary policy, according to Ivan Pongracic, a professor of economics at Hillsdale College.
“The supply-side problems we’re currently experiencing, whether the pandemic-related supply-chain issues or the Ukraine-war-related hikes in commodity prices, most notably oil, are exacerbating factors, but the ‘original sin’ is the massive run-up in the money supply by the Federal Reserve in the past two years,” Pongracic said.
