Analysis: Trump’s team tried to walk back these false claims. He won’t let them

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — The pattern has repeated itself for years.

• Step 1: President Donald Trump makes a false or inflammatory claim.
• Step 2: Trump’s officials try to walk back the claim. They’ll say Trump meant something else or offer a statement more factual than Trump’s own.
• Step 3: Trump ignores them and repeats the original claim.

It happened twice in the last 24 hours, once on grocery prices and once on the deployment of FBI agents during the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Grocery prices

Step 1: Trump makes a false claim: Trump has repeatedly claimed this fall that grocery prices are “down” or “way down” during his second presidency.

CNN and others have pointed out that this is not true. As of September, grocery prices were up about 1.4% since January, the month Trump returned to office, and up about 2.7% since September 2024.

Step 2: Trump’s team tries a walk-back: Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, initially echoed Trump’s false assertion, declaring on CBS on November 9 that “grocery prices are actually down significantly under Trump.” But Hassett pivoted to more factual spin the next day – correctly telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that “not everything” is up in grocery stores, that “egg prices are down,” and that the average overall monthly inflation rate under Trump has been lower than it was under President Joe Biden.

When Collins emphasized that Trump’s claim was about grocery prices rather than overall inflation, Hassett claimed: “Inflation is down, is what he means.”

The broader White House tried something similar in a press release on Friday. It repeated Hassett’s point about a decline in average monthly inflation. And instead of using Trump’s categorical claim that grocery prices are down since the end of the Biden administration, the press release said the prices of grocery staples “are starting to see declines” – then listed the smattering of particular products whose prices have fallen during this Trump presidency, including eggs, ham, butter and ice cream.

The press release didn’t acknowledge that far more products have gotten more expensive, but this was at least fact-based political spin rather than outright dishonesty.

Step 3: Trump repeats the original false claim: Trump spoke to reporters on Sunday. He reprised his outright dishonesty.

“From an economic standpoint, our prices are coming down very substantially on groceries and things. They’re already at a much lower level than they were with the last administration,” he said.

Again, that is not true. And contrary to what Hassett claimed about what Trump supposedly “means,” Trump made clear that he means what he says – that overall grocery prices are lower now than they were under Biden – even though that isn’t accurate.

The FBI and January 6

Step 1: Trump makes a false claim: Trump falsely claimed on social media in late September that former FBI director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee the president later turned against, had been caught lying about the activities of FBI agents on January 6, 2021.

Trump wrote: “It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax. This is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again! That’s right, as it now turns out, FBI Agents were at, and in, the January 6th Protest, probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’”

That isn’t true.

Two days prior to Trump’s social media post, a right-wing website had published a document that said 274 FBI agents had been deployed on January 6. But the document, whose authenticity CNN hasn’t verified, made clear that these agents were responding to the riot and other incidents that day (like the pipe bombs found near Republican and Democratic offices), not instigating or perpetrating the riot. And the inspector general for the Justice Department found last year that the FBI had no undercover agents at all at the Capitol on January 6, though 26 of its paid informants were in Washington that day.

Step 2: Trump’s team tries a walk-back: Kash Patel, the Trump-appointed director of the FBI, tried to correct the record about the activities of the 274 agents on January 6. He told Fox News on the day of Trump’s post: “Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards.” Patel reiterated on the social media platform X, “274 FBI agents were thrown into crowd control on Jan 6 against FBI standards.”

Even with the “against FBI standards” claim, Patel’s statements represented a clear repudiation of the president’s conspiracy theory.

Step 3: Trump repeats the original false claim: Nearly two months later, Trump revived the conspiracy theory about the 274 agents on Monday morning.

The president re-posted the September post in which he wrongly described the actions of the agents. And in a second Monday post, Trump promoted someone else’s call for Wray to be indicted and imprisoned – and he wrote, baselessly, “Wray lied!!!”

The-CNN-Wire
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