Jack Crosbie
View all posts by Jack Crosbie October 14, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
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Donald Trump dances as he leaves the stage after speaking during a campaign rally at the Freeman Coliseum on Oct. 7, 2026 in San Antonio, Texas. Win McNamee/Getty Images The general theory of economics is a simple one: some numbers you want to go up, other numbers you want to go down. A businessman like Donald Trump knows this — but unfortunately, during his second term, many of the wrong kinds of numbers have been going up, up, up.
Case in point: a new Consumer Price Index report issued today by the Department of Labor showed that prices and inflation are up in September, and are significantly higher than they were last year. In September alone, prices rose 0.6 percent, the highest monthly increase in several months, showing that the damage caused by Trump’s economic policies is only increasing. Those prices are, overall, 3.7 percent higher than they were last year.
Even single-digit percentage changes have big impacts on Americans’ lives, especially when some of the most vital stuff we buy has been hit the hardest. Gas prices alone rose 9.1 percent in September, accounting for almost half of the overall price increase. Fuel oil, what most people use to heat their houses, also shot up 15.3 percent. That’s the biggest increase since March, shortly after the beginning of the Iran war, which is still very much unresolved.
“Oil right now is much cheaper than it was under sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump said recently. This is technically true for at least one point in time — the price of a barrel of crude briefly spiked to almost $140 in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine — but fails to note that even after that world-historic event, prices for consumers largely stabilized. Gas, for instance, leveled out around $3.20 per gallon by the end of 2022, and stayed there till Trump took office. The national average today is $4.33.
It doesn’t seem like the Trump administration has any plan to deal with this, either. “TRUST IN TRUMP,” the White House posted back in June. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — It always does!” Since then, Trump has escalated in Iran and rambled incoherently on the stump while hosting rallies for midterms candidates. He’s asked for strike packages to hit Iran again before the election, if needed. Got a problem with that? “Trust the process,” the White House posted yesterday.
