Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany scoffed Monday at Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ claim that Republicans are “on the run” over high prices that began to soar during the previous Democratic administration.
Jeffries said on a virtual call Sunday that Republicans “are crashing the economy in real time” by allowing inflation and high prices to increase, though prices climbed to record highs during former President Joe Biden’s administration. McEnany argued on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that Democrats are dealing with “internal turmoil” as they continue to struggle with messaging since losing the 2024 election.
“When [Jeffries] says the GOP is on the run, I mean, we control both Houses of Congress. The GOP controls the presidency, 6-3 constitutionalists on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, he is holding meetings last Friday, very unhappy meetings, where he has to berate members about their behavior, [that] doesn’t seem like the red side’s on the run. The blue side seems to be having a little more internal turmoil,” McEnany said.
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McEnany said the Democrats’ criticisms of high prices appeared to be “mildly effective” messaging until President Donald Trump’s congressional address, where Democrat Texas Rep. Al Green was kicked out of the House chamber for disrupting the speech and where Democrat lawmakers refused to applaud a 13-year-old cancer patient or angel mothers who lost their daughters at the hands of illegal immigrants.
“[Democrats] put out this, you could say mildly effective messaging of 20 Democrats all talking about high prices, trying to move the messaging from Biden had high prices to Trump had high prices,” McEnany continued. “They were, if nothing else, on message. But then Al Green stomped on that and the other members in not standing for Daniels, the 13-year-old cancer survivor, they stomped on the one message they had where it was all in unison.”
Democrats, throughout Biden’s administration, remained largely silent when the Consumer Price Index (CPI) reached a peak of 9% in June 2022 and inflation continued to burden American households for the remainder of his term. The party, along with the corporate media, frequently rushed to Biden’s defense by claiming that inflation is out of the president’s control.
While repeatedly expressing concerns about prices under Trump, Democrat lawmakers have simultaneously resisted Republicans’ efforts to rescind Biden-era regulations that notably caused energy and electricity prices to soar. Republicans voted along party lines to repeal taxes on the methane emissions of natural gas operators and the natural gas tax without receiving much help from Democrats.
Many economists cited the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, two spending packages signed by Biden, as being significant contributors to inflation. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan included stimulus checks for Americans, debt bailouts for local and state governments and funding for vaccine rollouts, while the Inflation Reduction Act allocated $370 billion to green initiatives aimed at combating climate change.
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