Trump’s problem right now is inflation.

Trump, as president, sometimes talks in a way that is hard to understand. But at this point, even a casual ear can see that he feels the need to dodge bad news.

The president quickly pointed the finger at hiring rules that don’t favor certain groups when asked about a terrible plane crash 10 days into his second term.

Just before he took office, a driver killed 10 people in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve. He blamed illegal immigration, which was a campaign theme. It doesn’t matter that the driver was born in the United States.

As if on cue, the president wrote “BIDEN INFLATION UP!” In January, the Consumer Price Index rose 3%, marking the fastest rate since June, causing investors to sell stocks. The rise in inflation was seen as a potential delay in the Federal Reserve’s interest rate drops.

In fact, price changes every month for a huge range of goods and services that Americans buy can’t be blamed on a single leader or policy. But Trump has said many times that he can not only slow the rate at which prices rise, but also make prices fall completely. And even if he were able to do that, it would almost certainly lead to a recession and a downward slope that is even harder to get out of than inflation.

Trump pledged to end inflation and make America affordable from the first day of his campaign, but inflation rates have been increasing since Day 24.To fix the problem, Trump uses the same blunt method he uses whenever the economy is in trouble: taxes. Send people away. Do it again, baby. It’s funny that a lot of these policies are going to make things worse.

Of course, if “the person in office owns the economy” is the game, then Joe Biden is to blame for 19 and a half of the 31 days in January. It’s not just what happened that’s bad, though, as my coworker David Goldman points out. It’s also what’s going to happen. For two years, inflation has been slowly going down. Things are going backwards now; prices are going up faster under Trump than they were at the end of Biden’s time.

Either Trump or Biden are not to blame for that. It’s the truth of having the biggest economy in the world and many foreign forces affecting it.

Many experts don’t agree with Trump’s economic plan, and the New York Times reported Tuesday that the administration has been slowly backing away from some of the “Day One” promises over the past three weeks. Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt have not provided timelines for their economic growth, while Trump has emphasized that they are not yet wealthy.

Okay, take as much time as you need. But for now, people will keep being angry about how much eggs cost (15%) more last month, how much gas costs, and how much housing costs recently. Two-thirds of Americans polled by CBS this week said they think Trump hasn’t done enough to lower inflation with his plans. And a consumer poll from the University of Michigan that came out Friday showed that Americans are expecting inflation to rise a lot this month.

The last one is especially scary because it talks about how inflation affects people’s minds. We change how we act in ways that cause things to go up when we think they are going up.

Prices are affected by forces in the world economy that governments can’t control. But the way they talk about them can help keep people from expecting too much.

Trump might be able to buy time while he deals with a lot of problems by blaming Democrats, immigration, or DEI. But soon, if Republicans are able to stop Trump from blaming his favorite people, he will have to find new people to blame besides himself.