WELL, YES: Obama econ adviser: No, this is not “Putin’s inflation” — it’s Biden’s.

You know you’re in trouble when your pitch comes up as a no-sale even among your friends. The efforts by Joe Biden and Jen Psaki today to blame Vladimir Putin for inflation and rapidly rising fuel prices failed to convince Barack Obama’s auto-bailout czar. Steve Rattner offered a single tweet that punctured this White House buck-passing narrative, but it was enough. . . .

Rattner makes a point that I raised earlier in my analysis of the CPI index report this morning. The invasion of Ukraine began on February 24th, which at most left five days in the month where the war might have impacted consumer prices. I say might because consumer prices don’t react immediately to world events, and even commodities-market reactions can lag. For instance, the oil futures prices that serve as a marker for consumer pricing didn’t really move up for a couple of days after the invasion. . . .

So yes, the new talking points are staggeringly dishonest, and it’s not the first time Rattner has called Biden out for it. Almost a month ago, Rattner attacked Biden’s dishonest attempt to blame the supply chain for inflation, back when Putin didn’t make himself into a bete noire.

“Staggeringly dishonest” is standard procedure for this administration.