Trump concocts a fantasy world on pre-war prices
By: Daniel Dale/CNN
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The price increases caused by President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran have made a lot of Americans unhappy with him . When he’s been asked about the inflation or the unhappiness, Trump has repeatedly responded with lies — fictional stories about how low prices supposedly were before the war.
It’s not like people can’t remember what they were paying for things less than three months ago. But the president has concocted a fantasy — of sub-$2 gas, sub-2% inflation, and generally reduced prices — that bears little resemblance to the actual state of the country prior to the first strikes against Iran on February 28.
Here’s a look at Trump’s comments and the truth.
Inflation wasn’t 1.6% or 1.7%
Trump told members of Congress at a White House picnic on Tuesday: “We had — inflation was at 1.6% for the last three months just prior to the war.” That “1.6%” figure was a little lower than the figure he cited in comments to reporters last week: “If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%.”
Neither number is accurate.
The year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index was 2.7% in November 2025 , 2.7% in December 2025 and 2.4% in January 2026 . The inflation rate was 2.4% again in February 2026, for which nearly all the data was collected before the war began on the last day of the month.
The rate jumped to 3.3% in March 2026 and 3.8% in April 2026 .
Overall prices weren’t down
Trump has not limited himself to claiming there was very little inflation before the war. Rather, he has also declared that prices had decreased before the wartime spike in oil and gas prices.
“We inherited high prices and we got the prices down, and we got them down to numbers that in some cases people have not seen before,” he said at the Tuesday picnic.
“Look, prices are down, but the energy caused it to go up,” he said in a Fox News interview last week. “You know, when they talk about high prices, I inherited the high prices. I’m getting them down; I’ve got them down incredibly,” he said in another Fox News interview last week. “Outside of the gasoline, prices are way down. Prices have come down,” he told reporters in early May.
Trump could fairly say that some products had declined in price since the beginning of this presidency in January 2025; eggs, one item he has repeatedly mentioned, are a good example . But the president keeps talking as if overall prices were down before the war — or even are down overall today — and that is clearly not true.
Even before the war, far more products had increased in price during this administration than had decreased in price. Through February 2026, average prices were up 2.9% overall since the beginning of Trump’s second term, Consumer Price Index figures show.
Through April 2026, the most recent month with available data, there had been a 4.8% overall increase in average prices since January 2025.
Gas prices weren’t below $2 ‘in many cases’
“You know, I had gasoline down to $1.85 in Iowa,” Trump told reporters Tuesday while talking about the pre-war economy. “I was in Iowa, and the stations had it at $1.85. But I was down to, in many cases, less than $2.00 a barrel — a gallon.”
“We had numbers that nobody’s seen in a long time. So you had $2 a gallon,” he told reporters on May 7. “We were down — I think you were $1.85, $1.90 in Iowa, and a lot of other places.”
Nope.
The national average for a gallon of regular gas on February 28, the day the war began, was not close to $2 a gallon; it was $2.98 per gallon, according to data provided by AAA. No state had an AAA average lower than Oklahoma’s $2.47 per gallon that day. And while there might have been some stations somewhere in the US selling gas for under $2, there were, at most, extremely few of them.
Four days before the war, on February 24, CNN asked the price-tracking firm GasBuddy how many stations nationwide were selling for under $2 per gallon that day (aside from special discounts). As of that night, the answer was… four stations out of roughly 150,000 the firm was monitoring. Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, told CNN on Wednesday there would have been “the same or fewer stations” under $2 on February 28, as overall prices were trending upward at the time.
As for Iowa? Its average price for regular gas on both February 27 and February 28 was $2.64 per gallon, according to AAA. On the day Trump visited the state in late January, the state average was $2.57 per gallon; GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling that day for under $2 per gallon — $1.97, to be specific, not “$1.85” — out of 2,036 stations the firm was tracking there. And a CNN reporter noticed that the station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was at $2.69 per gallon that day.
It’s possible Trump was referring to the price of E85 , an ethanol-gasoline blend that is sold in a minority of gas stations and can only be used in the small percentage of vehicles that are compatible with it; the blend was selling for around $1.85 per gallon in Iowa at the time of his visit. But that would be misleading, since Trump simply spoke of “gasoline” and offered no indication he was talking about a niche product.
The AAA national average for regular gas was up to $4.56 per gallon on Wednesday. Iowa’s average was $4.28 per gallon.
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What percentage of the population still falls for his lies?
too many
Even one is too many.
what's left of maga now is pretty close to being either the least intelligent or the most wealthy ...
The late antisemitic Prime Mininster of Canada McKenzie King coined a phrase that would be a lot more applicable here than it was when he applied it to the number of refugee Jews he would allow to come to Canada following WW2 - "None is too many".
I think more and more of them are realizing that his lies are never going to come true and they just got scammed, but they're just too fucking proud, stupid and stubborn to admit it.
Hopefully we can help those scammed to come forward so that they can help prevent others from being scammed in the future.
a common problem among the maga type personalities that erroneously think they're type A's ...
the lights are on with nobody at home.
I think it is probably about 20%. The problem though, is that politicians can be elected based on plurality. That is how Trump got in. People who can think critically need to get out and vote.
That sounds like an accurate assessment. He also has supporters who know he's a serial liar. They just don't care.
they consider it a maga virtue ...
Everyone who lives in Trump fact free zones.
Every body wishes oil was at $2/barrel. Grampap needs a binky and a nap
can you taste fentanyl in a diet coke?
I have no idea since I don't drink pop and don;t know what fentanyl tastes like. If it tastes any thing like trazedone one will puke that shit up before it gets half way down
he's so paranoid now, he probably insists on opening the can himself and then drinks from it ...
I needed to break a twenty dollar bill the other day so I did what I’ve done in the past and stopped at the gas station to buy a roll of mentos. It was $3.17. I remember doing this last year at the same gas station and complaining that $1.75 was stupidly expensive for a small roll of mentos that contained 14 pieces. Welcome to Trump’s America.
that price increase is how much more it costs in diesel to get each of those mentos rolls from the distributor to the store now ... /s
I’m sure it was a “supply chain issue”, and the cost of fuel, and the panic over hantavirus, and whatever other manufactured crisis they could harvest to boost their profits and appease their shareholders at the expense of all of us.
average gas price in Chicago today - $5.40
Trump will smile at that news.
No criticism from Trump supporters.
Even when they are directly hit where it hurts, they stick with this abysmal asshole.
It is one thing for people to recognize abstract wrong and dismiss it because it does not affect them personally.
However this is a real test of cultism; sticking with this buffoon even to the point where he has driven prices up through tariffs, driven fuel up by his brain-dead war, and soon will cause widespread inflation based on fuel costs.
And the irony is just sick. Trump campaigned on "drill, baby, drill" with the notion that lower energy prices drives down the price of most everything. And once elected he produces the exact opposite results.
Will they continue to blindly follow in a cultish fashion or will they engage in some critical thinking and recognize that Trump is almost certainly the worst PotUS in our history?
You can thank your left wing leadership for that.
Most red states average around 4.50 more or less. The extra dollar you are seeing is most likely per gallon taxes.
LMAO!!!!!
$4.50 more or less!!! Putting a positive spin on a horrible reality, like stink on shit.
... yeah, we should find the one that started the iran war and then really fuck him up. /s
trump is so far removed from reality that he relies in his collection of west wing ass-lickers to keep him misinformed ...
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How is it that you believe blatant lies from Trump?
Obviously he started this war and it has resulted in dramatic energy price increases which will further exacerbate high prices across the board.
Do you not recognize this obvious reality??
you're not serious about actually receiving a straight answer from him, are you?
"What obvious reality?"
And you think that's good? What was it before the war in Iran? I guarantee it was a lot less.
there's a maga avatar if I've ever seen one before ...
And of course they offer no reply.
Because he is their abysmal asshole. At least they are consistent... consistently wrong in application and results.
Trump supporters do not recognize abstract wrong. Trump is "good" because he fights with the people who have been defined as their enemies.
those who trump has defined as their enemies ...
less than $3
I once paid less than $2 per gallon for premium gas during the covid pandemic, helping me come to the conclusion that gas prices are at their lowest when magas are dying off ...
yup, 93 octane. it was in texas, with a refinery looming on the horizon.
Those might be the dumbest lyrics I’ve ever heard. By her logic every poor community should have a wall around it.
The Song is supposed to be a call and response style from a Broadway play called Hadestown. She is not using "her logic" as you say, but inhabiting the Character of Hades, mayor of Hadestown. It, the song, is intended to highlight circular logic that may be used to control some of us. Think of it along the lines of "The Temples of Syrinx" by Rush.
This version may be more clear.
This is content from the White House's actual Facebook page:
This is the face this administration is showing to the world. What a fucking embarrassment.
I saw last week that one of the cabinet websites, probably HHS, was redirecting abortion inquiries to bible thumper abortion "counseling" sites. AFAIC, if the shit ever hits the fan, maga thumpers/madrasas are the priority to bear the brunt of an assault in defense of the constitution.
All hat, no cattle, but definitely a lot of bullshit.