CNN’s Harry Enten Warns Trump Blowing It On Inflation — ‘Will Crush His Presidency’ If He’s Not Careful

CNN senior data correspondent Harry Enten warned President Donald Trump’s presidency could be “crushed” by inflation as he noted that a whopping 66 percent of Americans don’t think he’s “focused enough” on the issue.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its CPI (Consumer Price Index) report on Wednesday morning, which showed worse-than-expected numbers that immediately sent the stock market tumbling. Many analysts pointedly noted this report didn’t even include tariff effects, which are expected to be inflationary.

On Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, Enten told co-anchor Sara Sidner that high prices “ate up” President Joe Biden’s presidency, and indications are Americans aren’t happy with Trump on the issue either:

SIDNER: CNN’s Harry Enten is joining us now to run the numbers for us. I think that I can guess where you’re going with this.

HARRY ENTEN: You think? Sometimes it all comes away, give it away in the title slide. I don’t like to make things too difficult for the audience. You know, we’ll talk about the focus, where Americans think Trump should be focused on. And not much of a surprise in his first 100 days, they believe, look at that, the top answer, inflation at 34 percent. And then number three, it’s the economy in general at 21 percent.

Let me be perfectly clear. Inflation crushed the Joe Biden presidency. It ate it alive. If Donald Trump is not careful, inflation will crush his presidency and eat it alive because that is where Americans want him to be focused. They want him focused on fixing the inflation inflation problem and bringing prices down.

SIDNER: Breaking news, I’m going to do some math here. I just want to point out that inflation in the economy, 55 percent. I mean, that is basically everything when you look at it.

ENTEN: It is the whole kit and caboodle. And it doesn’t matter what poll you look at, it is the economy, stupid — although smart, in your case.

SIDNER: Rude. How do you — how are viewers and how are voters seeing Donald Trump and the work that he’s been doing when it comes to the economy?

ENTEN: Yes. You know, there’s a lot of things that folks have liked about Donald Trump’s first few weeks in office. Inflation is not one of them. They believe that Donald Trump is not keeping his eyes on the prize. Is Trump focused enough on inflation? Not enough. 66 percent, that is two thirds of the country. Just a third of the country say he’s focused the right amount. Get this, 48 percent of Republicans say he’s not focused enough on the problem of inflation. And he absolutely should be, because it is numero uno in the voters’ mindset.

SIDNER: Is there any sign that Americans feel a little bit better about the economy or not?

ENTEN: No. You know, there’s perhaps this idea that Donald Trump could come into office, and to borrow my first name, be like Harry Houdini and may wave a magic wand and make the economy all better again. Economy is excellent or good. You go back to November of 2020, right, when Donald Trump lost re election, it was 49 percent. By this past election, it was 32 percent. Look at where we were in a recent Marquette University Law School poll. It was 27 percent. So, no, Donald Trump is not a magician. No president is a magician when it comes to the economy. But be very clear here, if this number does not go up, Donald Trump’s approval ratings will go down.

SIDNER: And we should mention, this is when the prior president was in office.

ENTEN: Yes.

SIDNER: And you see the jump there and why he lost. It’s lower than that.

ENTEN: It’s exactly right. You know, I started this segment by saying that inflation ate the Joe Biden presidency alive. It crushed it. If these numbers remain the same, inflation will do the exact same thing to Donald Trump’s second term. It will eat it alive. It will crush it.

Watch above via CNN News Central.