- Former President
Donald Trump appeared on Fox Business Friday morning for a call-in interview. - Trump repeated many of the same falsehoods about the 2020 election, while also downplaying
inflation .
Former President Donald Trump said in a Fox Business interview on Friday morning that
"The border is a bigger problem than inflation," Trump said during a lengthy call to guest host David Asman.
Trump's immigration policies cut off 2 million of the 3 million workers the US economy needs, Insider's Jason Lalljee and Andy Kiersz reported last week. Still, he floated this claim with no evidence or specificity on undocumented immigrants harming the job market.
Trump's downplaying of inflation also runs counter to the Republican Party's recent messaging, which has sought to hammer President Joe Biden on rising prices.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio tweeted: "Biden is eating lobster in Nantucket for Thanksgiving, while you struggle to afford groceries at home." And GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida recently called inflation "a gold mine for us" when it comes to attacking Biden.
—House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) November 26, 2021
—Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) November 26, 2021
Mounting economic discontent has become a serious problem for Biden's presidency and the Democratic Party as his approval ratings have hit historic lows.
As he often does in interviews and at his rallies, Trump mentioned that he studied at Pennsylvania University's Wharton School of Finance — after allegedly cheating on his SATs to transfer from Fordham University to Penn — to claim authority on a speculative opinion on inflation.
"So I graduated from Wharton, and I guarantee you they're right," Trump said, referring to the Congressional Budget Office's findings on Biden's Build Back Better Act. The agency said the bill won't bring in enough revenue to be "paid for" and avoid running a deficit.
"They're talking about it's actually $5 trillion," Trump said shortly afterwards about the CBO score, which clocked the total cost of the social spending bill at $1.7 trillion, not $5 trillion.
"That will make inflation, bring inflation to a level nobody's seen before," Trump continued even though the report does not make any assessments about inflation.
While firing off other economic takes, Trump also claimed that "within a year I would have been bigger than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined" in oil production.
At another point, Trump called on Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to resign over voting for Biden's infrastructure bill and allowing it to pass. He also repeated his lie about winning the 2020 election, with no pushback from Asman, and falsely claimed that Biden's vaccine mandates are causing supply chain issues, most of which originate overseas where the US president has no jurisdiction.
Although Trump wanted to continue speaking past the half-hour mark of the show, Asman had to cut him off before moving on to a segment about the markets being down over concerns surrounding another COVID-19 variant.