When President Donald Trump uttered the phrases “I love the inflation” last week, he gave a four-word reward to Democrats. But Vice President JD Vance argued in a Tuesday tv interview that these 4 phrases have been being taken out of context.
“What he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That’s what he said,” Vance said in an look on ABC present “The View.”
One of the present’s co-hosts, Whoopi Goldberg, rapidly responded, “That’s not what he said.”
We went again and reviewed Trump’s full remarks from the occasion wherein he said “I love the inflation.” The video reveals that Goldberg was appropriate: Trump didn’t say what Vance claimed he did.
However, the video additionally reveals that Vance wasn’t making up his protection out of skinny air. Vance was explaining what the president would possibly presumably have been intending to say in one in every of his many unfinished sentences that day – somewhat than, as Vance claimed on “The View,” really recounting what Trump had said.
Another co-host, Joy Behar, requested Vance sarcastically, “Are you his interpreter or are you his vice president?” In this case, the vice chairman was certainly providing a beneficiant interpretation – the identical one Trump offered to a pleasant newspaper final week in an try to scrub up his mess.
Trump incessantly delivers rambling, hard-to-parse remarks full of sudden asides. (He describes this leaping round as a deliberate tactic he calls “the weave.”) His “I love the inflation” comment got here at the starting of one other such monologue.
A reporter requested Trump if he was involved about the inflation quantity that was launched that morning, and whether or not it might be a “headwind.” The Consumer Price Index report revealed that day, for May, showed costs had gone up 4.2% since May 2025, the highest inflation fee in three years.
Trump said, “No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why?”
The reporter said, “Tell me.”
Trump said: “Because as soon as this war is over – you know, I can say it now, something you didn’t know. Do you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil. Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it: Iran, until right now. We took out, the other night, 22 ships. Late at night, with no lights, because they don’t have any radar, because we blasted the crap out of it. We took out – that’s why oil is $85 a barrel.”
Trump continued: “I mean, you take a look. Remember when I did this? I said, ‘Look, the one bad thing will be’ – we hit the best economy we’ve ever had. And I said to my people…I said, ‘The one thing we have to do now’ – we had just hit the highest stock market in history, highest 401(k)s in history. Everything was going well. And I said, ‘I hate to do this to you guys, but Iran’s going to have a nuclear weapon very soon. We have to go and attack.’ So we hit them with the B-2 bombers, which took a lot of courage. It was totally successful. We buried it, very hard to get. But now we had to make the second move.”
Let’s recap.
Working in Vance’s favor: The very starting of Trump’s rationalization of his “I love the inflation” remark was the sentence fragment “because as soon as this war is over.” It’s definitely doable that Trump meant to complete that sentence with the thought Vance attributed to him Tuesday – and say one thing like, “Because as soon as this war is over, the inflation is going to come down.”
But working in Goldberg’s favor: Contrary to Vance’s declare Tuesday, that’s not what Trump really did say.
Instead, Trump explicitly praised the present inflation numbers – saying “the numbers were great” – and didn’t end the key war-related sentence in the manner Vance described.
Instead, Trump pivoted to his story about the US getting oil through the Strait of Hormuz, touted the worth of oil at the time, boasted about the pre-war economic system, then defended his resolution to assault Iranian nuclear services in 2025 and launch the conflict in opposition to Iran in 2026.
That wasn’t all. You can learn the transcript of the remainder of Trump’s extended reply here; it included commentary about US inventory market efficiency earlier than the conflict, the standing of Venezuela after the US navy attacked that country in January, and the destruction of a few of Iran’s navy capabilities and political management.
But nowhere in it did Trump “weave” his manner again to a declare that the cause he loves “the inflation” is as a result of inflation will fall after the conflict.
Rather, he solely said postwar inflation would fall when a reporter explicitly requested him if he thought it could come down between now and November; Trump said then, “It’s going to come down like a rock.” Even in that reply, he didn’t hyperlink his prediction of a future inflation decline to his earlier occupation of “love” for “the inflation,” which got here in response to a query about the excessive inflation fee in May.
Trump spoke to the conservative New York Post shortly after his “I love the inflation” remark final week. He, too, argued he had been taken out of context.
“I was talking about inflation numbers that will be so good as soon as the war ends. The numbers will come way down, that’s what I’m talking about,” he informed the Post.
But Trump additionally said this, in keeping with the Post: “My inflation numbers will be very low as soon as the war – they’re already very low, but they’ll be very low, because you know the energy brings them up a little bit, because we have to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
Even right here, whereas making an attempt to quell criticism of his reward for present inflation numbers, he couldn’t assist however communicate positively of present inflation numbers yet another time.