[Rush Lindell] What nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] Five words.
[Rush Lindell] Five words that may be the most politically self-destructive sentence uttered in the Oval Office this decade:
[Reagan] Wow.
[Rush Lindell] I love the inflation.
[Rush Lindell] That's the President of the United States on the record as CPI just hit 4.2%, a three-year high.
[Speaker 3] Set it with a smile,
[Speaker 3] too.
[Rush Lindell] Like a man who just found a twenty in an old jacket.
[Rush Lindell] Meanwhile,
[Rush Lindell] grocery bills are climbing,
[Rush Lindell] wages aren't keeping up,
[Rush Lindell] and CNBC is running the quote on a Chiron.
[Speaker 3] Mm-hmm.
[Rush Lindell] This is the show today.
[Speaker 3] And look,
[Speaker 3] there's actually a case buried in there!
[Speaker 3] Energy is driving the bulk of that headline number,
[Speaker 3] the Iran war is a real variable,
[Speaker 3] and core inflation is sitting at two point nine.
[Speaker 3] The White House has a defense; whether it holds up is a separate question.
[Rush Lindell] That's the question.
[Rush Lindell] Does he have a defensible economic argument,
[Rush Lindell] or did he just hand every critic a quote that will outlive this news cycle?
[Rush Lindell] We're going to work through both sides of that.
[Speaker 3] We'll break down the May CPI print,
[Speaker 3] what's actually in it,
[Speaker 3] and what the Tariff-to-Price pipeline looks like now that retailers have stopped absorbing the hit.
[Rush Lindell] And then there's Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the line a punch in the gut on CNN and gifting Democrats a ready-made campaign ad heading into the midterms, which is a sentence I did not expect to write this week.
[Speaker 3] Wild week.
[Rush Lindell] Wild week.
[Rush Lindell] We'll also get into what this means for swing district Republicans six months from November.
[Rush Lindell] From November,
[Rush Lindell] trap or opening?
[Speaker 3] And we close on what a principled conservative accountability case actually looks like—not the talking points—the real argument.
[Rush Lindell] Four-point-two per cent.--I love the inflation.
[Rush Lindell] Let's find out if those two things can coexist.
[Rush Lindell] The show starts right now.
[Rush Lindell] Before we dig in,
[Rush Lindell] a quick reminder:
[Rush Lindell] we love hearing from you.
[Rush Lindell] If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover,
[Rush Lindell] head to the link in the description and submit your question.
[Rush Lindell] We read every single one.
[Rush Lindell] I love the inflation.
[Rush Lindell] That's the quote.
[Rush Lindell] Oval Office,
[Rush Lindell] reporters standing right there,
[Rush Lindell] BLS just dropped a CPI reading of 4.2 percent year over year,
[Rush Lindell] the first time it cracked 4 percent since 2023.
[Rush Lindell] And that is what the President of the United States said.
[Speaker 3] I mean, you almost have to respect the audacity.
[Rush Lindell] He didn't stumble into it, either.
[Rush Lindell] He went further.
[Rush Lindell] Time reported he said inflation is going to come down like a rock.
[Rush Lindell] Rock,
[Rush Lindell] once the Iran war ends; so that's the argument.
[Rush Lindell] This is war inflation,
[Rush Lindell] temporary,
[Rush Lindell] not his fault.
[Speaker 3] And look,
[Speaker 3] that argument has a real economic basis:
[Speaker 3] energy accounts for more than sixty percent of the CPI increase according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[Speaker 3] If you end the conflict,
[Speaker 3] energy prices ease,
[Speaker 3] the headline number drops.
[Speaker 3] That logic is not crazy.
[Rush Lindell] The logic isn't crazy,
[Rush Lindell] the sentence is crazy.
[Speaker 3] Yeah,
[Speaker 4] the sentence is a problem.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say; a President can have a defensible economic read and still hand every political opponent a loaded weapon and then act surprised when they pull the trigger.
[Speaker 3] The Hill reported that even Marjorie Taylor Greene said this quote is going to bite him.
[Speaker 3] That's not a Democrat talking; that's his own base flagging the optics.
[Rush Lindell] When Marjorie Taylor Greene is the voice of restraint,
[Rush Lindell] hold on,
[Rush Lindell] let that land,
[Rush Lindell] you stepped in something.
[Speaker 4] The White House is now running two stories simultaneously.
[Speaker 4] Prices are up sharply,
[Speaker 4] but trust us,
[Speaker 4] they'd be worse without us.
[Speaker 4] That's a very hard sell at a grocery store.
[Rush Lindell] CNBC put it straight:
[Rush Lindell] Elevated prices have cost the average household more than three thousand one hundred dollars.
[Rush Lindell] That's not a data point,
[Rush Lindell] that's a
[Speaker 5] kick.
[Rush Lindell] That's a kitchen table number; people feel that.
[Speaker 3] And the question that actually matters-the one the White House framing does not answer-is how much of that pain is war,
[Speaker 3] and how much was already baked in before a single missile flew.
[Rush Lindell] Yeah,
[Rush Lindell] and that's exactly where the CPI report gets interesting.
[Rush Lindell] So let's actually look at what four point two percent means when you break it down.
[Rush Lindell] The BLS data shows energy accounted for over 60 percent of the entire monthly increase.
[Rush Lindell] Strip that out, core inflation,
[Rush Lindell] food and energy excluded,
[Rush Lindell] sits at two point nine percent annually,
[Rush Lindell] which is the number the White House is going to quote every single time.
[Rush Lindell] Exactly.
[Rush Lindell] And on a spreadsheet,
[Rush Lindell] that argument has some merit.
[Rush Lindell] All right,
[Rush Lindell] but here's my problem with it: the person filling up a tank and buying ground beef doesn't live on a spreadsheet.
[Speaker 6] Right. Right.
[Rush Lindell] Nobody sits at the dinner table going,
[Rush Lindell] well,
[Rush Lindell] Core is 2.9,
[Rush Lindell] so I'm fine.
[Rush Lindell] No,
[Rush Lindell] and the grocery aisle is where this gets specific.
[Rush Lindell] AEI's analysis shows ground beef prices were up roughly seventeen point nine percent and coffee up roughly thirty one point nine percent between January and late
[Rush Lindell] In late twenty twenty five.
[Rush Lindell] Those aren't one time shocks; tariffs are a contributing factor AEI names directly.
[Rush Lindell] Wake coffee up thirty one percent?
[Rush Lindell] Nearly thirty two percent.
[Rush Lindell] Brazil faces a fifty percent tariff on its exports to the US. And we get roughly a third of our coffee beans from Brazil.
[Rush Lindell] There's nowhere else to source it at that scale.
[Rush Lindell] So you've got energy driving the headline number and groceries quietly doing their own damage underneath it.
[Speaker 7] And the White House gets to point at the headline and say,
[Speaker 7] "See?
[Speaker 7] Energy,
[Speaker 7] Iran,
[Speaker 7] War." Right.
[Speaker 7] And that argument is not wrong,
[Speaker 7] but it conveniently ignores what was already baked in before the first missile flew.
[Speaker 7] The Tax Foundation estimates current tariff policy,
[Speaker 7] what's left after the Supreme Court struck down IEEPA levies in February,
[Speaker 7] still amounts to roughly seven hundred dollars per household this year.
[Speaker 7] a year,
[Speaker 7] seven hundred dollars on top of energy,
[Speaker 7] on top of energy.
[Speaker 7] So the question isn't whether the Iran war pushed prices up,
[Speaker 7] it did.
[Speaker 7] The question is what floor prices were already sitting on before it did.
[Speaker 7] And that floor was built in Washington,
[Speaker 7] which is exactly where the next conversation goes because the pipeline from tariff policy to your shopping cart is more direct than most people realize.
[Rush Lindell] So while Washington points at Tehran for every price spike,
[Rush Lindell] retailers have been running their own quiet
[Rush Lindell] little experiment.
[Rush Lindell] Let me call it what it is,
[Rush Lindell] the delayed pain tour.
[Reagan] That is unfortunately accurate.
[Rush Lindell] The whole 2025 story was absorption.
[Rush Lindell] Retailers swallowed the tariff costs,
[Rush Lindell] kept prices steady,
[Rush Lindell] protected their margins just long enough.
[Rush Lindell] Now that inventory's gone.
[Reagan] And the Federal Reserve actually documented this.
[Reagan] Fed researchers published a note in April.
[Reagan] They found tariffs implemented through November 2025
[Reagan] I've raised core goods PCE prices by three point one percent through February twenty twenty six,
[Reagan] and they're direct about
[Rush Lindell] Wow.
[Reagan] it. That figure,
[Reagan] quote,
[Reagan] explains the entirety of excess inflation in the core goods category relative to pre pandemic rates.
[Rush Lindell] Wait,
[Rush Lindell] entirety?
[Rush Lindell] Not contributed to,
[Rush Lindell] Not was a factor in.
[Reagan] Entirety. Dollar for dollar.
[Rush Lindell] So the receipt was always coming; it just took a year to arrive.
[Rush Lindell] arrive.
[Reagan] Morningstar's got a similar read.
[Reagan] Durable goods,
[Reagan] electronics,
[Reagan] appliances,
[Reagan] tools—they're projecting a cumulative 4.5% increase over the 2025 to 2027 window.
[Reagan] We're in the middle of that window right now.
[Rush Lindell] And this is the distinction the White House does not want voters drawing:
[Rush Lindell] Iran is real-energy costs from that conflict are real-but energy and goods inflation are two different animals running in the same direction.
[Reagan] Right; and when you blend them together into one headline number you can blame one and ignore the other.
[Reagan] That's the whole strategy.
[Rush Lindell] You know what that press release would look like:
[Rush Lindell] "This appliance price increase was brought to you by the Iran war." Some restrictions apply.
[Rush Lindell] Tariff contribution not included.
[Rush Lindell] See shells for details.
[Reagan] Rush.
[Rush Lindell] I'm serious.
[Rush Lindell] That's the gift receipt version of inflation policy.
[Reagan] The problem is some people inside the coalition are starting to notice the receipt,
[Reagan] and one of them just went on CNN to say so.
[Rush Lindell] Someone inside the coalition just noticed the receipt and went on CNN to say so.
[Reagan] And not just anyone,
[Reagan] Marjorie Taylor Greene.
[Rush Lindell] Marjorie Taylor Greene on CNN with Kaitlan Collins agreeing with the Democratic attack line.
[Rush Lindell] I want everyone to sit with that for a second.
[Reagan] The Hill covered it.
[Reagan] Her exact words.
[Rush Lindell] Wow.
[Reagan] He basically just handed the Democrats a great
[Reagan] Big Big Campaign Ad for the twenty twenty six Midterms.
[Rush Lindell] Campaign ad-handed to them-free of charge-no production budget required.
[Reagan] She also called it,
[Reagan] and I'm reading this directly,
[Reagan] a punch in the gut to every single American struggling to pay their bills.
[Rush Lindell] She called it a punch in the gut,
[Rush Lindell] which means the most loyal corners of the MAGA coalition are now using the exact same language as the DNC.
[Rush Lindell] THE TALKING POINTS MEMO.
[Reagan] And that's the real story,
[Reagan] not the optics of which channel she chose.
[Reagan] Republican operatives have been saying this privately for months.
[Reagan] Greene just said it out loud, on camera, to a national audience.
[Rush Lindell] Wait, wait. She also reminded everyone that MAGA spent four years screaming about Biden inflation,
[Rush Lindell] their words, at the top of their lungs.
[Reagan] Right.
[Reagan] So the argument that this president gets a pass because
[Reagan] Because it's his inflation,
[Reagan] that doesn't survive contact with the base's own history.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] When MTG is your early warning system,
[Rush Lindell] you don't have a messaging problem.
[Rush Lindell] You have a substance problem.
[Reagan] That's the signal worth watching.
[Reagan] This isn't Greene going rogue for attention.
[Reagan] It's a data point about where base tolerance for economic pain actually sits.
[Reagan] And that tolerance appears to have a ceiling.
[Rush Lindell] Which brings us to November,
[Rush Lindell] because every swing district Republican now has to answer one question.
[Reagan] Do you love it too?
[Rush Lindell] Good luck with that one.
[Rush Lindell] So the question every swing district Republican is waking up with right now:
[Rush Lindell] What do you run on in November?
[Rush Lindell] Because that Oval Office moment follows you onto every debate stage.
[Reagan] And the numbers make it worse.
[Reagan] Brookings had Trump's approval on handling inflation at just 30 percent as of late April,
[Reagan] first time since 2010 that Democrats poll higher on the economy than Republicans.
[Rush Lindell] Thirty percent!
[Rush Lindell] You know what I call that?
[Rush Lindell] The survival crouch.
[Rush Lindell] That's the posture every Republican
[Speaker 3] Republican in a swing district is doing right now—head down,
[Speaker 3] arms up—hoping the quota doesn't land on them.
[Reagan] I get the visual,
[Reagan] but I actually think there's an opening there for a candidate who gets out in front of it,
[Reagan] proactively.
[Reagan] You don't have to love the inflation; you can say you don't.
[Speaker 3] You think a Republican in a Biden-to-Trump district can criticize the White House on kitchen table economics and survive the primary?
[Reagan] I think a Republican who doesn't is handing over the general.
[Reagan] Girl.--Look at what Brian Fitzpatrick said; CNBC quoted him directly.
[Speaker 3] Mm-hmm.
[Reagan] When half of America is living paycheck to paycheck,
[Reagan] the word "ballroom"
[Reagan] should not be in anyone's vocabulary.
[Speaker 3] He said that out loud.
[Reagan] He did,
[Reagan] and Fitzpatrick represents a swing district in Pennsylvania; he's not committing political suicide; he's trying to survive.
[Speaker 3] Okay,
[Speaker 3] fair
[Reagan] Yeah.
[Speaker 3] ; but here's my problem:
[Speaker 3] Fitzpatrick can pull that off because he has a brand.
[Speaker 3] The freshman in a marginal district?
[Speaker 3] No brand,
[Speaker 3] no runway-I love the inflation is now the default Republican position in every Democrat ad from now until November.
[Reagan] Which is exactly why the ones who establish distance early have a shot-not separation from the party-separation from the moment.
[Speaker 3] That's a real distinction,
[Speaker 3] I'll give you that.
[Reagan] The voters who need convincing aren't asking for a party switch; they're asking for one Republican to look them in the eye on grocery prices.
[Reagan] grocery prices.
[Speaker 3] And the White House's answer to all of this? Still pointing at Biden,
[Speaker 3] which we need to get into that because that clock has an expiration date on it, and I think the May CPI data just punched it.
[Rush Lindell] The White House's current answer to everything-and I mean everything-is some version of "prices would be worse under a Democrat." That's the whole defense.
[Rush Lindell] That's the clock they're running.
[Reagan] Right,
[Reagan] and the numbers in some categories actually support that framing:
[Reagan] Biden averaged 5% inflation annually; the comparison isn't invented.
[Rush Lindell] Right,
[Rush Lindell] but you can't win a grocery run with a history lesson.
[Rush Lindell] Nobody at the checkout counter cares what Joe-
[Speaker 3] Joe Biden would have done.
[Reagan] Which is exactly what happened to Biden and Harris.
[Reagan] They ran the transitory argument until it stopped working; now the same logic is running in reverse.
[Speaker 3] CNBC's Q1 2026 All-America Economic Survey had Trump's net approval
[Rush Lindell] on the economy at negative 21,
[Reagan] Wow.
[Rush Lindell] his lowest ever across both terms. That clock I mentioned?
[Reagan] It's not ticking anymore.
[Rush Lindell] It expired right there in the poll.
[Reagan] The comparison to Biden isn't wrong on the merits,
[Reagan] but leading with a dead man's economic record when CPI just crossed Four-point-two percent is a losing argument.
[Rush Lindell] You know what nobody wants to say?
[Rush Lindell] The White House isn't even making an affirmative case.
[Rush Lindell] They're just pointing backwards and hoping voters don't look forward.
[Reagan] And voters are looking forward.
[Reagan] They're doing it at the grocery store,
[Reagan] at the
[Reagan] At the Pump,
[Reagan] CNBC reported elevated prices have cost the average household more than three thousand one hundred dollars by one estimate.
[Reagan] That's not Biden-era money,
[Reagan] that's now.
[Rush Lindell] The "blame Biden"
[Rush Lindell] clock had a stamp on it the day I took office; the May CPI print just punched it.
[Rush Lindell] So,
[Rush Lindell] if that argument is done-and I think it is-the question becomes what does a credible conservative case actually look like from here?
[Reagan] That's exactly where we're going.
[Rush Lindell] So where does that leave us? The better-than-Biden clock has expired.
[Rush Lindell] The question now is what conservatives actually do with that.
[Reagan] The policy picture is not fixed.
[Reagan] The Section 301 tariffs expire July 24th. The USTR has two Section 301 investigations running,
[Reagan] and those could replace them with something permanent.
[Reagan] No time cap,
[Reagan] no rate ceiling.
[Reagan] That's a real fork in the road.
[Rush Lindell] And that fork is exactly where the right needs to show up with a real argument,
[Rush Lindell] not a press release.
[Reagan] The credible conservative case isn't complicated:
[Reagan] separate the tariff-driven goods inflation from the war-driven energy spike,
[Reagan] they're different problems with different levers,
[Reagan] then demand a real timeline from the White House,
[Reagan] not when the war ends,
[Reagan] an actual timeline,
[Reagan] because when the war ends is not a fiscal policy.
[Rush Lindell] When the war ends
[Rush Lindell] is what you say when you don't have
[Speaker 5] a clue.
[Rush Lindell] Don't have a policy!
[Reagan] And stop treating CPI like a political football.
[Reagan] This administration spent years calling out Democrats for doing exactly that.
[Reagan] The argument that the number matters when it's going down,
[Reagan] and doesn't matter when it's going up,
[Reagan] that's not a governing philosophy; that's a scoring system.
[Rush Lindell] Right; and voters who put this Administration in office on a lower prices mandate deserve better than a shrug and a smile from the Oval Office.
[Reagan] The opening is there for any Conservative willing to take it:
[Reagan] name the two inflations,
[Reagan] demand the time line,
[Reagan] hold the line on what the number actually
[Speaker 3] Mm
[Reagan] means
[Speaker 3] -hmm.
[Reagan] -that's accountability.
[Rush Lindell] That's also why this show exists,
[Rush Lindell] Reagan.
[Reagan] It is.
[Rush Lindell] And a President walks into the Oval Office,
[Rush Lindell] CPI hits a three year high at Four-point-two percent,
[Rush Lindell] and he says,
[Rush Lindell] I love the inflation.
[Rush Lindell] Somebody has to say that's not a win.
[Rush Lindell] That's a confession.
[Reagan] Yeah, it is.
[Rush Lindell] We'll be right back.
[Rush Lindell] All right, that's a wrap on today's show.
[Rush Lindell] And what a show!
[Rush Lindell] Four words define this whole thing.
[Rush Lindell] I love the inflation.
[Reagan] Four words,
[Reagan] Oval Office,
[Reagan] CPI at 4.2%, the gift that keeps giving.
[Rush Lindell] To Democrats,
[Rush Lindell] apparently.
[Rush Lindell] That was Marjorie Taylor Greene's point, and she's not wrong.
[Reagan] Look,
[Reagan] we separated the two inflations today.
[Reagan] Energy-driven war inflation is real and potentially...
[Reagan] Potentially temporary.
[Reagan] Tariff driven grocery pain that was baked in before the first missile flew.
[Rush Lindell] And the White House's better than Biden defense?
[Speaker 4] Hmm.
[Rush Lindell] We walked through exactly why that clock ran out.
[Reagan] The principled case isn't complicated:
[Reagan] demand a real policy timeline.
[Reagan] Stop treating CPI as a political prop.
[Rush Lindell] Accountability isn't disloyalty.
[Rush Lindell] Say it loud enough and maybe someone in a swing district hears it.
[Reagan] That's the show.
[Rush Lindell] Subscribe,
[Rush Lindell] leave us five stars,
[Rush Lindell] tell a friend who needs to hear this.
[Rush Lindell] New episodes every weekday.
[Rush Lindell] We'll be back tomorrow.
[Reagan] Yeah, thanks for writing this one out with us.
[Reagan] See you then.