The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo’s Two Truths and a Lie About Inflation

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Chris Cuomo dives into the dynamics of inflation and grocery prices, dissecting the economic impacts of recent policies and spending. Using the game of Two Truths and a Lie, Chris unpacks the complexities behind political narratives, explores the consequences of pandemic spending, and emphasizes the need for critical thinking in a polarized landscape. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. How about two truths and a lie? I'm Chris Cuomo, welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Let's remember what this is about, such a fun game. Two truths and a lie. So, two things are true, one isn't. And usually do it about yourself. I am 220 pounds.

This, though it moves like a toupee, is actually my hair and I once destroyed a bear claw with my bear hands. Which are true, which is a lie. Uh, I once destroyed a bear claw with my bear hands. Which are true, which is a lie. Could I really kill a bear with my own hands? It's not what I said. I said a bear claw, which is also what? A donut!

That's what I tore up. So then what's the lie in those three? Oh, you'd have to judge it for yourself. That's the fun part of the game. ["The Game Over Theme"] Support for the Chris Polmo Project comes from ReadyWise. We've all seen that one event can really change your reality. Hurricanes, 100 year storms that happen like every three years, power outage,

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Now, here's one that's not so fun. When we play it with things that matter, like inflation, let's do two truths and a lie about inflation. Okay, here's what should be a gimme. Inflation is up. Okay, inflation's up. All right, is that the first one? How about this one? Grocery prices are crushing

and will determine the outcome of this election in terms of people's perceptions of the economy. Okay, what's the third one? Bidenomics, my beep, meaning Bidenomics sucks because he's crushed the economy. Okay. Inflation is up is true.

Okay. Grocery prices are getting crushed and it will inform people's feelings about the economy. True. Bidenomics bites the Bozet and that's why it's happening. Not true. What? You do it just defending Biden. Hey man, pick your poison. Am I this disgruntled former Democrat who's mad at the party for what happened to him and the media and his brother and the party. So he is now a Trumper. Or this guy's just a Biden shill and he just hates Trump. Don't you guys see that this bifurcation,

this polarity is proof of the poison? This is where the parties have put you. You have to process me as an enemy if I'm not saying what you want me to say. I did a clip for the podcast outlining Trump's position on the border about how they're all murderers and bad people coming through all the time. And you guys thought it was me and said I'd gone crazy full Trump and had all these crazy theories about me based on a clip that you didn't even get right. That's how toxic

these parties are. That's how fringe oriented we've become. That's how toxic these parties are. That's how fringe oriented we've become. That's how toxified we are. It's not about me. Deal with the arguments. Okay? Let's deal with it here. Inflation is up. The rate of inflation is dropping. Ah, what's the difference? What's the distinction? Is the value of the dollar still going down in terms of its buying power? Yes, but it is slowing down. Do you care? It's up to you.

You can argue it either way. No, man, I'm about directional feelings and inflation's going up, I'm feeling lousy about it. Okay. But why? Now, this is the argument for Biden to make that he has been sucky at, and so has his team been, and so have his surrogates been. Newsom was doing a decent job at arguing for this administration's actions and what is

really causing economic stress, but he's not out there enough. And he's not the guy you're going to vote for. So, look, what is true? We spent so much money during the pandemic, okay? And there was already a lot of juice in the system, the quantitative easement, okay? How inflation had been, you know, these are the ingredients, right, putting more money from the government into the markets to keep them up, keeping the interest rate low so people can borrow more money, you're juicing the

economy, you're juicing the economy. What's going to happen is you have more and more dollars in the economy, the value of the dollar is going to start to drop. That's the incipient sign of inflation, right? Okay. Then you have the pandemic and all of this tremendous spending that was being done. This was on the back of unpaid for tax cuts by Donald Trump, that also created deficit spending. He spent like crazy when he was in office. The Republicans just forgot about fiscal austerity. They forgot about it.

Rand Paul just decided to be as quiet as he could and sustain himself as a libertarian who's supposed to hate big government and deficit spending and the Fed and tax policy like what we did here. So, all this money in the system, inflation was inevitable. It was always coming. The economists will tell you when it came. And it's on Biden's watch and he's going to have to pay for it if he can't explain it away,

which he has not done well. Grocery prices are up and they're up on the things that people buy most often. And you're getting it two ways. One, you may not even be aware with unless you watch my show on News Nation at 8P and 11P every weekday night. Shrinkflation. What is that? You're paying more and you're getting less.

Look at your boxes, look at your bottles, look at your packages and notice that the food makers are putting less in the packages and charging the same or more. That's shrinkflation. Is that real? Yes. Are the grocery prices a huge barometer for people? Yeah, right there were gas prices. Of what it means to people's pocketbook and bottom line. Food matters, especially in America because we eat a lot. We are big consumers. That's why we're so fat. We eat a lot and we eat a lot of bad shit because we're looking for value,

and we're also looking for quick comfort, and we also don't really have a culture of discipline and of willpower and of how you balance needs and wants and a lot of other things that plays into it. But let's just stick to the grocery store. It is going to be a big factor in people's perception of the economy. Now we get the big one. Why? Biden-omic sucks. I think it's too simple an analysis. Now, look, you can do that. Trump would say, would have never happened under me. Yeah, it would have. Yeah, it would have. Because he was going to spend just as much money as Biden did. He told us that.

He wanted to spend more money during the pandemic to help people. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm saying it is. Okay? Now, a lot of people will say the people needed the money. You judge for yourself. The PPE loans and all the other stuff that was going on. Did it help you?

Did it help you get through? I mean, a lot of people were asking for it. But Trump said he wanted to do the same thing that Biden was doing, or going to do, and then did. So what was it? You have two choices. All right. And both of them can be true. One are the Republicans blaming grocery prices on Biden for all of his spending during the pandemic and being fiscally irresponsible. Now, my response to them is, where were you during the Trump administration when he spent even more non-pandemic, okay?

Because more of the pandemic happened on Biden's watch, so that's not fair. Now, you may not give a shit, but if you want to be fair, if you want to just push past left and right and get to reasonable, the pandemic required a lot of spending. Now you can argue, well, we wouldn't have had to if Trump had taken it seriously sooner, maybe. Hindsight's 20-20. You don't really know that.

You don't know. So it's one of two reasons. One, Biden spent too much and that's what caused the inflation and now all the prices are going up as a result. Convenient, incomplete, and probably only partially true. Corporate profits. Gouging. Now, gouging, Senator Warren, I believe, said that, Now, gouging, Senator Warren, I believe, said that, Democrat Massachusetts, gouging is probably the wrong word. Why? Because that's a legal term, basically, of people charging a crazy amount for something

when you need it most. It's like when people juice generator prices and all the things you need for storm prep right before a hurricane comes, like 234X that does not in any way resemble supply and demand and, you know, true market exigencies. It's just straight up greed. Now is this a relative assessment? Yeah. Is it subjective?

Yeah. Because that's capitalism, right? And it's rude. It's I'm going to charge as much as I can that you're willing's capitalism, right? And it's rude. I'm gonna charge as much as I can that you're willing to pay, right? That's pure capitalism. Keynesian economics would just be supply and demand, man. If you're willing to pay this for it,

then that's what I'm gonna sell it for. However, you do have corporations, and we saw this with gas prices also, coming out of the pandemic, they got crushed, and they have stockholders, shareholders that they have to take care of. And they're trying to make up for the money that they lost and juice it as much as they can, even though they got all that free money during the pandemic. And they're paying us back by charging us more. That's happening. That is the reason that grocery prices are higher because of corporate decision-making.

So, two truths and a lie. Is inflation up? Yes. Is the rate going down of increase? Yes. Is that a little confusing? A little bit, but it's going in the right direction. If you want to argue that. You can say, no, no, no, it's still going up. I need inflation to go down. Well, the rate of inflation is going down. Yeah, I need to do better than that.

I needed to actually like no more inflation. All right, well, that's going to be hard to achieve given the monetary policy. Now, the other truth is that grocery prices are going to matter in this election as a function or coefficient of people's perspective on the economy. Why they are high, look, that's about campaigning. I could argue it either way. There's a reality in both. But people want single factor explanations, single factor explanations for complex situations.

I don't. I can hold two ideas in my head at the same time. I can balance equities of arguments. You know, we've lost that ability. You see it with everything. Nothing is subtle. Nothing is nuanced. Nothing is maybe. Nothing is kind of. Nothing is somewhat. Everything is everything. Vaccine, good, poison, right? Everything that happened during COVID, makes sense. No, totally wrong. Everything's like that.

Why? Because people are playing to advantage and they're dividing you for advantage. And it works. And it's happening more and more and everything. Even Taylor Swift became this object of division. Really? With that desperate to divide on everything?

Yeah. And that crazy theory. You know, people think that that Super Bowl theory about her coming out to back Biden at the halftime and the NFL was in on it. Everybody dismissed that as totally crazy after it didn't happen. But is it any more crazy than Pizzagate? And that you really thought that Democrats are running some pedophile ring that's fronted by a pizzeria?

I mean, how fucking crazy have we become? Pretty crazy. When you allow your craziest people to motivate your dialogue? Yeah, same shit's happening on our pandemic kind of notions of what happened during the pandemic. I think it's really dangerous for all of us, no matter what you believe. We got to get real answers to what worked and what didn't work and why and what it means for going forward. Same thing in this analysis with Two Truths and a Lie on inflation. You got to start to understand things in the most reasonable light. Otherwise,

you're never going to understand anything because that's what's happening here with inflation. This is what the Democrats do, man. Spend, spend, spend. Hey, man, this was about the pandemic. Trump spent like no Republican president we've ever seen since Reagan, spend. And hey man, this was about the pandemic. Trump spent like no Republican president we've ever seen since Reagan, who tripled the deficit, by the way. And yeah, I gave him a break for some of it. The tax cut he did before, it was unpaid for, and then he spent on money he wasn't going to make through the tax cut revenues. So that was like a double no-no for fiscal austerity. But then came the pandemic, and that was different. You knew that was going to cost money. So now Republicans are trying to have it both ways, right? They were all for spending all that

money during the pandemic, but now they want to punish Biden for it. But that's on Biden to make the case. And whether you like it or not, he's not great at making the case for himself. So I don't even think he came up with the term Bidenomics. I think it was something that the right cleverly came up with just to put another albatross around his neck, you know, of, oh, here's another thing that's bad that he owns. Inflation is still going up, but the rate is reducing.

You should see changes in gas and in grocery prices all across the country. It has been happening, but not fast enough to satisfy enough people in enough places. Okay? This is going to matter. Who is to blame? Now, I am a fan of whatever happens on your watch you own and you have to explain. That's how I see it. Because there are a lot of things, you know, again, gas prices, I know it sounds like something that we have a knob and we control here in America. It's just not true. It's a world market. It's influenced by so many things. We don't even have, you know, the ability to control the world market, let alone our own market. We just don't have it.

It doesn't work that way. Well, if we just drilled more, we've never drilled more than we are right now. So obviously, it's not that simple a fix, okay? Yeah, but we could be drilling even more. But the point stands, if drilling the most you've ever drilled is still leading to prices that are going the wrong way, what does that tell you about your ability to exclusively control it unilaterally, meaning yourself?

Right? Not so much. So why would you let them sell you that? Don't be a lemming. Be a critical thinker. Be an independent. You want to drill more? Fine, but that's not because our gas prices are going to go down to 90 cents a gallon. It's a world market. There are a lot of different exigencies and pressure points that come into play and positions of leverage that other stakeholders have. Similar with food prices,

but there is more happening here at home that has to do with the price of our food. And what were the two truths and lie about me? I don't even remember what I said. I am 220 pounds. I'd like to blame it on my long COVID protocol, but I actually think it's sugar binging. This is my hair, although people think it's a toupee

because I can move it, but who would pay money for this kind of toupee, right? It's like, this is God given. Otherwise I really got cheated. And I forget what the third one was. Oh, that's true too. So which one was a lie? Oh, that this is fake. This is actually real. This is real. There you go. And two truths and a lie are going to apply

to a lot of things that we see throughout the election. So I'll keep doing these for you because you are getting sold a bill of goods. Look, I'll give you a little one for free on the way out here as I thank you for subscribing and following, being an independent, wear your independence with your free agent merch, be a critical thinker. But I'll give you another one. Two truths and a lie on the vaccine. The vaccine helped us get through the pandemic.

The vaccine reduced hospitalizations. The vaccine was mandated in a way that it shouldn't have been. Which one of those is a lie? I'll tell you right now. The vaccine was mandated in a way it should have been, it should not have been, is the truth. That vaccine was forced on people that didn't have to have it.

Not that it couldn't be some kind of net benefit. They didn't know enough about what would happen down the road to mandate it the way they did at the time. I believe that now, subject to them disproving my feeling about it based on what I know about what's happened since and what we saw in terms of its efficacy. Now, I got to tell you, a lot of people in government, a lot of people on the expert side tell me I shouldn't say that, that that's not true. Okay. It definitely reduced hospitalizations. We were not an ivermectin away

from not needing the vaccine, okay? And it is a big old lie that the vaccine was the root of all our problems during COVID. The root of all of our problems was us, and it remains that way. I'll see you at NewsNation 8 p.m. 11 p.m. Thank you for joining me here as always. Listen, the problems are real. The approach to getting past them must be as

well. Let's stay together. Let's get after it.