Trump Shrugs Off Surging Inflation, and Why a Groundbreaking Social Media Ban Is Floundering
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Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games at nytimes.com slash joingames. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, June 11th. Here's what we're covering.
Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning? Could that be a headwind? You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why?
In the Oval Office yesterday, President Trump shrugged off new economic data that shows inflation in the U.S. is surging. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall cost of goods in the U.S. is now 4.2 percent higher than a year ago. It is the third straight month that inflation numbers have gone up. The increase has been driven almost entirely by energy prices, which skyrocketed after Trump took the U.S. to war with Iran. But the president has repeatedly brushed aside the issue of rising prices for Americans, calling concerns about affordability a, quote, con job. He has said that the economic pain now is a small price to pay for national security and has insisted that any damage to the economy will only be temporary.
When the war is over, it's coming down. It's going to come down like a rock.
Hours later, the president escalated the conflict with Iran. I just spoke with President Trump, who is currently in the Situation Room. The president tells Fox News that 49 Tomahawk missiles were used to hit targets inside of Iran. The U.S.
launched a new wave of attacks after Trump said Iran was taking, quote, too long to negotiate and would have to pay the price. Both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made clear the strikes are meant to try and pressure Iran to agree to a deal on Trump's terms.
If we need to negotiate with bombs, we'll negotiate with bombs. And we're very good at it. Nobody better in the world.
In response, Iran said it carried out its own series of strikes on U.S. bases across the Middle East. Taken together, the flurry of strikes this week appears to contradict Trump's repeated claims that the two countries are on the verge of a peace deal.
In Northern Ireland, the city of Belfast is on edge after a graphic video of a brutal stabbing this week set off unrest there. The video captured one man attacking another in the middle of a Belfast street on Monday, and authorities later charged a 30-year-old Sudanese refugee with attempted murder. The footage spread quickly online and led to calls for protests by anti-immigrant activists, with one prominent far-right agitator calling it a, quote, On social media, Elon Musk, who has repeatedly boosted far-right messaging in the UK and elsewhere, weighed in too, sharing a list of locations around Northern Ireland for people to gather. By Tuesday night, crowds took to the streets. Police said while some people protested peacefully, others, including young men in masks, targeted immigrants.
Firefighters had to escort immigrant families from homes that had been set on fire. One local official said, quote, people were being terrorized simply because of the color of their skin or where they came from.
How is Trump responding to surging inflation amid the Iran conflict?
Last night, violence flared again, and police used water cannons to try and disperse crowds who had set small fires and hurled bricks and bottles. The unrest in Northern Ireland comes after another high-profile stabbing in the UK that has also galvanized far-right activists. In that case, police in England recently released body cam footage of the aftermath of a fatal attack. The responding officers initially handcuffed the victim, an 18-year-old white college student, before realizing he was the one who'd been stabbed. They'd been misled by the actual attacker, a British-born Sikh man who told police he'd been the target of a racist attack.
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