USA Today did everything it could to make a Biden-era economic catastrophe out to be a Trumpian blooper. But as always with the lefty media, the devil’s in the details. USA Today Money and Personal Finance reporter Medora Lee came out with a pretty damning item February 1 headlined, “How pay raises turned into pay cuts, except for Americans in 9 states.” The immediate perception from the headline would have readers believing that this confirms the doom porn the media had been selling them on the Trump economy. Nope. Lee wrote, “Most Americans have felt the weight of inflation on their budgets over the last few years, but there are still a handful of places where Americans’ lives have improved financially, according to a study by MyPerfectResume.”  “The last few years” eh? Which years? “The online resume building site analyzed wage data in all 50 states against inflation to find where paychecks gained or lost value from 2020 to 2024.” Ah, so we’re mostly talking about the entire Biden presidency then! Not that Lee’s readers would know it, because she didn’t bother bringing his name up or conceding his outrageous spending policies that contributed to the inflation crisis that swallowed people’s wallets in the first place. Lee broke down the economic plight the average American was experiencing, despite many of Lee’s colleagues in fellow newspapers, news organizations and TV channels insisting Bidenomics was a stroke of genius: Bureau of Labor Statistics data show the average American worker’s pay rose 18% to $75,600 from about $64,000 during those years, but inflation soared about 21%. Despite every state in the country showing wage increases in dollars, the average Americans lost approximately 2.6% in income after adjusting pay increases for inflation. What’s even more telling is Lee’s reporting on the list of states where pay increases were protected against the inflation spikes: Idaho: +3.1% Florida: +2.6% Washington: +2.3% Montana: +2.3% Wyoming: +1.8% South Carolina: +1.5% North Carolina: +0.9% Tennessee: +0.9% Maine: +0.5% What do the majority of the aforementioned states have in common, except Washington? Six of them were run by Republican gubernatorial leadership during the 2020-2024 period. “Workers in every other state,” wrote Lee, “saw a drop in their purchasing power, but Americans in these five states faced the sharpest gap between rising wages and increasing costs.” All five of the states Lee mentioned are extreme leftist strongholds that were run by Democrat governors during the 2020-2024 period, with the exception of Maryland which saw Democrat governor Wes Moore (D) take leadership from Republican Larry Hogan (R) in January 2023: New Jersey: –7.0% Rhode Island: –6.9% Maryland: –5.4% Massachusetts: –5.3% New York: –5.3% Lee never mentioned the political makeup of any of the states she mentioned, perhaps it would make Biden and company — in addition to the cacophony of media hack voices selling the snake oil of their policies — look really bad. For example, CNN Fareed Zakaria GPS host Fareed Zakaria had the audacity to refer to Bidenomics as a “resounding success” in January 2025 and told Democrats to forget about the working-class Americans who were still kvetching over inflation spiking the cost of living. That same month, NBC Senior Business Correspondent and Bidenomics hawker Christine Romans went as far as to snoot that President Donald Trump was inheriting an economy in “solid shape.” But with the new data, Lee inadvertently let the cat out of the bag: Bidenomics was hot garbage, and the voters who panned it as such were right on target. However, during the first full year of the Trump administration, USA Facts reported that wages have outpaced inflation growth by 1.1 percent.  A welcome development for sure, but not that the media will give him any credit for it.