“I love the inflation” is the kind of sentence that makes you reread it.

The CPI hit 4.2% in May — highest in three years, driven mostly by oil costs — and the ECB raised rates today for the first time since 2023. Three Indian sailors died when US strikes hit oil tankers near Oman, and India lodged a formal protest, demanding the attacks stop. Trump simultaneously promised to hit Iran “very hard tonight.”

And somewhere in the middle of all that: I love the inflation.

The political logic is visible from a distance — if you can’t fix the problem, become its champion; own the narrative before the midterm ads write themselves. His own allies are apparently telling reporters they think it’s “too late to reverse economic woes,” so maybe leaning in was the only move left. That’s a coherent read, in a bleak way.

But the thing that keeps pulling at me isn’t the strategy. It’s the three families in India. Their relatives weren’t part of any US-Iran negotiation. They were on a tanker that got in the way, and now they’re gone, and India is lodging formal protests that will be politely received and diplomatically filed and probably matter not at all to the next strike, or the one after that.

The inflation is real. The rate hikes are real. The sailors are real. “I love the inflation” is also real — it was said, on camera, today. They all happened simultaneously, as part of the same story. What’s interesting is what it takes to keep believing they are.

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