White House press secretary Jen Psaki must know the inflation numbers are going to be catastrophically bad.

If they weren’t going to be bad, then Psaki (who must be marking time with daily margaritas until she can leave for her own MSNBC show) wouldn’t have mentioned the upcoming report on consumer inflation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday will issue its March update to the consumer price index, or CPI. The CPI is the department’s tool for measuring inflation in a basket of goods and services that the average American would buy — ranging from eggs and milk to cell phones and unleaded gasoline.”

Economists consider two versions of the CPI data: The headline print that includes all prices consumers face, and a so-called core CPI that excludes often volatile food and energy price fluctuations.”

The White House says it anticipates a wider-than-normal disparity between the headline and core CPI readings because of an abnormal increase in gasoline prices that occurred in March. The price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline hit a record high of $4.33 on March 11, according to the American Automobile Association.”

That price has since slid to $4.11 a gallon, according to AAA.”

So, the report is going to be bad. Very, very bad. The kind of bad that’s going to test just where the floor is on Biden’s approval numbers. So Jen Psaki is trying to get ahead of just how bad these numbers will be by assigning the blame, pre-emptively.

Who is to blame? PUTIN, OF COURSE.

Please, please, PLEASE blame Putin, even though inflation was going up before Russia invaded Ukraine.

“We expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s price hike, and we expect a large difference between core and headline inflation reflecting the global disruptions in energy and food markets,” Psaki said at her regular press briefing.”

NPR reporter Asma Khalid pressed Psaki on the White House’s attempt to blame Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, saying she had just returned from a reporting trip to Michigan, where many people told her “they feel that inflation has predated this war.”

“We’ve talked about inflation long before there was an invasion,” Psaki said. “But we also know that factually, if you look at the data, the average gas prices are up 80 cents to $1. It’s about a 25% — we’ve seen — increase in gas prices since the start of this invasion. And we know energy prices is a big driver of the inflation data.”

Jen Psaki blames everything except for the Biden administration for inflation when pressed about how Americans realize that Biden's inflation predates Putin's invasion. pic.twitter.com/NoWe4VTpdU

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 11, 2022

“Please ignore the inflation that happened BEFORE the Russian invasion, and focus on the inflation that happened AFTER the invasion, and make sure you assign the blame accordingly” does not feel like a winning message for the Democrats. Which is exactly why Psaki is saying this now, before the report comes out. She is giving the sycophants in the press (which is a whole lot of them) their marching orders for how to frame the narrative tomorrow, when the report is out and the numbers are the crapfest that economists and the administration are expecting. And as we all know from recent news stories, the press is very, very good about taking their marching orders and running with it.
https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1511690360820404229
After all, the spin needs to get out now, because Americans are very, very, VERY aware of why there are less dollars in their pockets.

IT’S INFLATION:
When people say the economy is bad, it isn’t because of jobs. Just 17% give that as a reason. Negative judgments are overwhelmingly based on inflation, and gas prices. pic.twitter.com/DokBVzR2JY

— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) April 10, 2022

No wonder Psaki and the White House are getting the talking points out now, before the CPI report drops. After years of “Bad Orange Man,” they’re trying to shift to “Bad Russian Man” and not having much success. And they can see the “red wave” indicated in these poll numbers, in a midterm election year where there is no one named Donald Trump on the ballot, and are attempting to deflect the blame as much as possible.

If not for the sheer amounts of real financial pain being inflicted on the American public due to inflation, it would almost be hilariously entertaining to watch Psaki and the rest of the White House flunkies try to spin the impending report and blame Putin for all their woes.

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