CNN fact-checker dismantles Trump’s fuel price 'lies'

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media as he arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump has concocted a “fantasy world” where prices were low in the months before he began his Iran war, says CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale. Prices are up and Americans are “unhappy.”

“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,” Dale reports.

He suggests that — unlike the president — consumers have a good memory of what prices were like in the days before the Iran war.

“But the president has concocted a fantasy — of sub-$2 gas, sub-2 percent 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,” Dale writes.

For instance, on Tuesday at the White House congressional picnic, Trump told attendees that “inflation was at 1.6 percent for the last three months just prior to the war.” Last week, he had said it was 1.7 percent.

“Neither number is accurate,” Dale notes.

“The year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index was 2.7 percent in November 2025, 2.7 percent in December 2025 and 2.4 percent in January 2026,” he writes. “The inflation rate was 2.4 percent again in February 2026, for which nearly all the data was collected before the war began on the last day of the month.”

In March, it jumped to 3.3 percent and last month, 3.8 percent.

“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,” Trump said at Tuesday’s picnic.

“You know, when they talk about high prices, I inherited the high prices,” he told Fox News last week. “I’m getting them down; I’ve got them down incredibly.”

Dale explains that while some prices may have gone down, “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.”

Trump continued the fantasy with gas prices.

“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.”

Dale hit Trump with a fact-check: “Nope.”

The day before the Iran war began, the national average price of gas was $2.98 a gallon, according to AAA.

“As for Iowa? Its average price for regular gas on both February 27 and February 28 was $2.64 per gallon, according to AAA,” Dale said.

Now?

According to AAA, the national average price of gas for Wednesday is $4.56.

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