EDITORIAL: Irony alert: Biden warns Trump will trigger inflation

The Biden campaign is in utter disarray after Thursday’s televised debacle. But the spin machine hurls forward at warp speed.

Joe Biden’s feeble debate performance last week pulled back the curtain on the administration’s efforts to gaslight voters about the president’s advanced age and declining mental acuity. Don’t believe your own eyes, nothing to see here, move along.

So desperate are the Democrats to now change the subject that they would rather talk about inflation than the ramifications of keeping the doddering Mr. Biden on the ticket.

In a breathless Monday news release, the Biden Nevada campaign chose to highlight a report last week on a Reno TV station noting that “Economists Warn Second Trump Term Could Cause Inflation.” According to the report, 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a letter backing the president’s economic policies and arguing that Donald Trump’s agenda would “reignite” inflation if he is elected.

The chutzpah here is mind-boggling.

One might think that the Biden White House would hesitate to bring up inflation at all, seeing how the president’s massive spending sprees following the pandemic “ignited” rising prices in the first place. But trying to spin the issue into a Trump liability is the height of cynicism.

Mr. Trump has a four-year record in the Oval Office. Rampant inflation isn’t in his minus column. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, spent the first year of his presidency blithely asserting that rising prices were “transitory,” that no reputable economist believed unchecked inflation was on the horizon. That was just months before the consumer price index soared to 9 percent annually, the highest level in 40 years, on his watch.

While inflation has tapered, prices remain elevated. That means American consumers remain frustrated at the supermarket checkout counter or the gas pump. This is reflected in polls that show the vast majority of Americans prefer Republicans and Mr. Trump when it comes to the economy. Mr. Biden’s approval rating hovers in the mid-30s largely because of concerns with the economy and consternation over the exorbitant prices Americans must now pay for basic goods and services.

These 16 renowned economists are certainly entitled to their opinions. But did any of them warn the country that Bidenomics would trigger memories of the Jimmy Carter years dominated by massive price hikes, rising interest rates and stagflation? Or were they cheerleading for the very Biden policies that brought us $5-a-gallon gasoline and $20 fast-food meals? You know the answer.