CNN’s Brianna Keilar Cites COVID in Response to Pro-Trump Economist Calling Out Inflation Under Biden

CNN’s Brianna Keilar cited the Covid pandemic in response to a pro-Trump economist calling out inflation during Joe Biden’s presidency.

Keilar made the comment while wrapping up an interview with Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore on Tuesday.

Moore pointed to some economic moves President Donald Trump has made — like the tax cuts in his One Big Beautiful Bill — that he likes. Moore also told Keilar that the price of certain items — pork chops, airline tickets, motel rooms — are dropping.

“On average, the [Consumer Price Index] says we’re still too high, but coming down,” Moore said.

A moment later, he said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s tariffs, but overall, Trump needs some time to be judged on the economy.

“Look, we went up to 9.2% inflation under Biden. It takes a long time to drain that out of the system,” Moore said — citing a mark hit in 2022.

Keilar jumped in to note the economy was thrown for “quite a loop” due to Covid.

“Yeah, look, no one is arguing about that. We also saw what unemployment was because of the pandemic,” Keilar said. “We were thrown for quite a loop after the pandemic, weren’t we?”

She ended the segment on that note and went to commercial.

Biden left the White House in early 2025 and the COVID-19 pandemic closed down the U.S. in March 2020. That was in the final year of Trump’s first term and almost a year before Biden replaced him. The year-over-year inflation rate was 3% when Biden’s term ended last year; the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report said the y-o-y inflation rate was 2.7% at the end of December.

President Trump — while speaking to reporters in Iowa on Tuesday — bragged about gas prices dropping nationwide.

Watch above via CNN.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post erroneously stated that Keilar was citing Covid to defend the economy at the end of Joe Biden’s presidency. She was responding to Moore’s point about economic conditions in 2022.  This piece has been updated to better reflect the nature of her commentary.

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