BIDENOMICS?

CNN Trolls Trump With Side-by-Side With Biden

Trump appears to have channeled his inner Joe Biden when talking about the economy.

President Donald Trump’s defense of the economy and attacks on opinion polls appear to be echoes of Joe Biden, CNN showed in side-by-side video clips.

CNN NewsNight showed Trump’s latest economic spin was nearly identical to lines once used by his predecessor and political nemesis.

“Tonight, when it comes to the economy, is Donald Trump taking messaging advice from Joe Biden?” host Abby Phillip asked, introducing a segment that played back-to-back clips of the two presidents insisting that Americans were wrong about how bad things were.

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The montage followed Trump’s interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in which he dismissed concerns about inflation and voter anxiety. “It’s a con job by the Democrats,” Trump said, when asked whether people were misperceiving how they felt about the economy. “We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.”

Ingraham pressed him, “You said Biden did that, too. He was saying things are great, and things weren’t great.”

Trump deflected, taking a swipe at Vice President Kamala Harris—“Let’s say it’s synonymous. Biden and Kamala, you know, because you didn’t know who the hell was campaigning.”

Then came the CNN split-screen. On one side, Trump insisting polls were “fake.” On the other, a May 2024 clip of Biden telling CNN’s Erin Burnett, “Look at the Michigan survey. Over 65 percent of the American people think they’re in good shape economically… The polling data has been wrong all along.”

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Biden’s comment referred to University of Michigan consumer sentiment data showing Americans rated their own finances higher than the national economy—an argument that failed to stop his polling slide against Trump at the time.

Phillip noted the irony. “Trump is doing exactly the same thing that Biden did,” she said. “And frankly, I actually don’t think we really know what the state of the economy is right now, in part because the government’s been shut down for over a month.

“We don’t know what those numbers are going to say, but a lot of the signs are flashing red.”

CNN then cut to the data: 59 percent of Americans blame Trump for the current rate of inflation, according to the network’s latest poll. Sixty-one percent say his policies are worsening economic conditions—with a Fox News poll in September showing similar results.

Consumer sentiment, Phillip added, “is flirting with record lows right now,” echoing the mood from Biden’s own economic struggles.

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