President Biden said Wednesday that the voters had erred in blaming him for high inflation, because “it was 9% when i came into office”, when it was actually just 1.4%.

In a rare CNN interview, Biden said: “No president had had the run that we’ve enjoyed in terms of creating employment and bringing inflation down. It was 9% at the time I took office — 9%,” Biden said.

The 81-year old president defended his policies on economics after Burnett pressed on the fact “voters trust [former president Donald] Trump by a large margin on the economy.”

Biden claimed that, ahead of his rematch with Trump in November, he had already “turned the economy around”, despite persistently rising inflation and interest rates.

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Inflation began to creep up soon after Biden assumed office, before exploding at rates not seen since the 1980s. It peaked in June 2022 with an annual rate 9.1% — 17 months after Biden’s election.

As of March, inflation was still stubbornly high with an annual rate 3.5%.

Biden critics include prominent Democratic economists who say that massive spending during Biden’s first year as president fueled a rapid loss in the buying power of a dollar by printing more money.

Bureau of Labor Statistics statistics show that since Biden became president, average prices of goods have increased by 19%.

Comparatively, during Trump’s four-year tenure, prices rose by 8% or about 2% per annum.

Burnett said to Biden that “voters trust Trump on the economy by a large margin — they say this in polls.” Burnett was speaking during a trip to Wisconsin, a swing state.

“And you are aware of many of them, of course. The cost of purchasing a home is twice what it was before the pandemic — when you consider your monthly costs. Real income, when you take into account inflation, is actually lower since you became president. Economic growth last week missed expectations. Consumer confidence is at a near two-year low.

Burnett asked, “With less that six months until election day, do you worry that you are running out of time?” “

Biden said, “We have already made a turnaround.”

“Take a look at the [University of] Michigan study — 65% of Americans think that they are in good economic shape. They believe that the country is in bad shape. They are in good health. “The polling data was wrong from the beginning.”

Biden blamed the high level of inflation on “corporate greed” as well as “shrinkflation” after previously blaming issues with COVID-19’s supply chain and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The president stated that there is corporate greed out there.

Burnett retorted, “But there is real pain.”

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the price of groceries has increased by 30% — and even more. People are spending more money on groceries and food than ever before in the last 30 years. “I mean, it’s a daily pain people feel.”

Biden responded, “It is real.” He added, “But, if you look at the people, they are able to spend money; and it angers both them and me to have to spend even more.” This idea that Senator [Bob] Casey (of Pennsylvania) talked about is to shrink inflation. Snickers, for example, did something and now it costs 20% less. It’s greedy corporate behavior. “We’ve got it.

MAGA Inc, a super PAC that supports Trump, responded to the CNN interview by issuing a press statement stating “Joe Biden faced the poor state Bidenomics in a CNN interview on Wednesday and was then asked if he was running out of time for improving the economy. Biden lied, saying that ‘we have already turned it around’.

The group cited data that showed credit card debt was up 38.7% in the time since Biden became president, with 65% Americans living paycheck to paycheck and an unprecedented number of people not being able to afford rent.

Biden has also been blamed by prominent Democrats for the inflation crisis that prompted the Federal Reserve Bank to dramatically raise interest rates.

The average credit card rate is now 27.64%, nearly twice the 14.6% when Biden was in office. Average 30-year home loan rates have also risen from 2.65% to over 7%.

The Democratic economist Steven Rattner who led the Obama Treasury Department’s auto bailout branded Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, passed in March 2020 without any Republican votes as the “original crime” of the inflation crises.

The bill, which was almost entirely unfunded, sought to counteract the effects of Covid by focusing more on the demand-side than investment. This has contributed to the current inflation levels,” Ratter wrote, in an op-ed for the New York Times published in November 2021.

Larry Summers who served as Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and President Barack Obama’s White House top economist also blamed Biden’s spending.

Summers wrote, in an op-ed in the Washington Post of February 2021, that Biden’s stimulus bill “could set off inflationary forces we haven’t seen in over a decade.”

Summers said in July 2022 that “there’s a component in this, the secret sauce to economics is math.”

“And many people in the discussion didn’t know how to do math… they thought that more stimulus would be better and didn’t believe too much stimulus could ever happen.”