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Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner was seemingly caught flatfooted Thursday when a Democratic guest referenced her own network’s polling to show that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling inflation.
Instead, Faulkner heaped praise on the president over his handling of the economy while parroting Trump’s own false boasts about inflation plummeting, prompting her guest to point out that recent data shows that prices have been on the rise in recent months.
During Thursday’s broadcast of The Faulkner Focus, the veteran anchor welcomed former Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis to her program to discuss Harris’ decision to forego a California gubernatorial run next year, which has sparked speculation that the former vice president may try for another White House run in 2028.
Toward the end of the discussion, which also included National Review writer Caroline Downey, Faulkner pointed out that the Democratic presidential field in the next election would be “crowded” before asking Nellis who he thought would become the frontrunner.
“Who do you think this really does come down to having to impress the American people right now? Because your party, Mike, you guys aren’t all moving in concert with one another,” she declared.
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Acknowledging that the Democrats are “having tough conversations” after losing the 2024 election, Nellis went on to say “both political parties are out of touch with the day-to-day lives of most Americans” before bringing up poor approval numbers for the president on economic issues.
“There’s a lot of polling out in the last couple of weeks talking about how frustrated people are with inflation and pricing and housing and things like that,” Nellis continued, prompting Faulkner to cut him off to insist that the economy is booming.
“Inflation’s at 2 percent! The GDP just popped,” she exclaimed. Nellis, meanwhile, retorted that inflation is actually “at 2.9 percent,” referencing the “core” inflation index that was released earlier this month. The Consumer Price Index, meanwhile, rose 2.7 percent year-over-year, and prices were up 0.3 percent over the course of the month.
“The GDP just popped to three percent! I mean, we haven’t seen that in a very long time,” a flustered Faulkner proclaimed, apparently unaware that the United States had two straight quarters of at least three percent growth last year – and had exceeded that mark in four of five quarters heading into the 2024 election.
“If I could point you to Fox’s own polling, Trump is negative 30 percent on pricing and inflation and is as unpopular as Joe Biden ever was,” Nellis shot back. “So the American people are frustrated with where their lives are right now.”
With the Democratic strategist also highlighting other surveys that Americans feel they are worse off than they were six months ago, Faulkner interjected to let Downey get the final word and to bring the segment to an end.
“President Trump is rapidly delivering on his economic promises,” Downey said before Faulkner wrapped things up.
Nellis, meanwhile, did appear to slightly exaggerate how poorly Trump fared in the latest Fox News survey – a survey that recently led the president to once again rage about the network’s polling division.
Though he claimed that the president is negative 30 points on his handling of inflation, the network’s most recent poll finds that Trump is actually only down 26 points, as 36 percent of Americans approve of the way he’s dealing with the issue, compared to 62 percent who do not.
