White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a press briefing at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 11, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump's administration is cherry-picking inflation data to paint a more flattering picture of the economic climate, according to new reporting from CNN.

During the Thursday episode of her show "The Source," CNN host Kaitlan Collins took Trump's White House to task for falsely reporting the rate of inflation more than 10 months into Trump's second term. She began the segment by playing an exchange she had with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in which Leavitt insisted that the inflation rate was down to 2.5 percent from the three percent Trump inherited from former President Joe Biden.

"So we're trending in the right direction with more to come. And I would remind you, when President Trump left office in his first term, inflation was 1.7 percent, and the previous administration jacked it up to a record high nine percent," Leavitt said. "So again, in ten months, the president has clawed us out of this hole. He's kept it low at 2.5 percent. And we believe that number is going to continue to decline, especially as energy and oil prices continue to decline as well."

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale disputed Leavitt's claims that Trump had lowered inflation, pointing to the September consumer price index (CPI) report — which is the most recent month of data available — showing that inflation remained at three percent. Dale said Leavitt's use of the 2.5 percent figure was "very much apples to oranges," saying that she was purposefully using the average rate from all 10 months of Trump's second term — rather than the most recent figures — as a means of downplaying the impact of Trump's tariffs.

"So when the press secretary told us today that we're very much headed in the right direction, we're not," Dale said. "... They're grabbing this early-year data. Why are they doing that? Well, because inflation was lower before President Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day,' when he announced sweeping global tariffs that then made their way through the economy."

"So by using this ... annualized rate, they're making inflation sound rosier than it would if they use the one month, most recent data that everyone else is talking about," he continued. "So, no, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison."

"They're entitled to use whatever kind of math they want," he added. "The annualized rate is a real thing, but they're not clearly explaining that they're doing so. And I think that's where they're misleading the public."

Watch the segment below:

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