White House Official Tries Really, Really Hard To Spin Low Consumer Sentiment Stats

Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett attempted to minimize recent reports of low consumer confidence with a breathtaking display of spin.

Data suggests high gas prices and inflation have caused Americans to sour on Donald Trump’s economic policies, according to The Associated Press. But Hassett said Tuesday on Fox Business that the fact that consumers are now spending more of their money on, well, everything, is proof they are confident in the economy.

Seriously.

“The thing that I’ve seen when I look at credit card data and other things that I can get from the private sector is that while people have been spending more money at gas stations, they’ve been spending more money on everything else,” Hassett said, with his ever-present grin.

Although most people might reasonably consider increased spending as a result of increased gas prices and higher inflation as a sign that things aren’t that great, Hassett had an alternative view.

“[This] means that they’re still very, very optimistic about the state of the economy. And they should be,” he said. “If you look at GDP now, right now, it’s north of 4%. And so, despite this disruption, all the momentum that we built with the big, beautiful bill and AI and everything else is really what the main economic story of the U.S. is.”

Hassett is right in that the economy continues to grow and the unemployment rate remains low, but some economists say the country is in a “K-shaped” economy where Americans with higher incomes reap the benefits of rising stock market prices and those with lower incomes struggle.

After host Maria Bartiromo noted that the consumer sentiment index fell for the third straight month and that the latest stat marked a new all-time low, Hassett tried to claim the whole notion of “consumer sentiment” is just a political construct.

“What is the most important messaging that you can put out there for consumers to help sentiment here?” she asked.

“They call it ‘consumer sentiment’ but I don’t think those words mean what they think they mean anymore,” Hasset said, before noting that his office looked at “the political affiliation” of the respondents.

“The correlation between what independents say and Democrats say … it’s almost exactly perfectly correlated,” he said. “So what they’ve done is they’ve somehow devised a political survey that tells us how Democrats are feeling about things.”

Hassett’s bizarre spin on consumer sentiment didn’t go unnoticed on social media.

Hassett has a reputation for boldly dubious statements.

Earlier this month, he attempted to spin the concept that increased credit card spending is a sign of robust consumer confidence.