After President Joe Biden’s surprising on-stage tumble last week, the former CEO of one of America’s top restaurant groups claimed the fall represents the state of the U.S. economy.
"I really saw President Biden's fall as a metaphor for what's going on with the economy," former CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder said on "Varney & Co." Tuesday. "What's going on with America in the international arena is we keep stumbling, we keep falling."
During the graduation commencement ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the president tripped over a sandbag and was reportedly not injured from the fall, according to the White House.
Biden delivered the Air Force Academy's commencement address earlier in the day.
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"He's fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands," White House communications director Ben LaBolt tweeted.
When it comes to fiscal policy issues like debt ceiling negotiations and the Federal Reserve’s rate hiking, Puzder claimed it projects America’s economic weakness.
"This debt ceiling deal should have been a lot easier to negotiate. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't have been bipartisan support for reducing our deficit and reducing our debt," Puzder said.
"Now that we've come out of the pandemic, we've got inflation accelerating," he continued. "It's down from 9%, we're at 4 or 5%, but 4 or 5% isn't 2%, and 2% is the Fed's target."
To bring down stubborn inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 10 times since March 2022. And despite a recent inflation slowdown and less turmoil in the banking sector, one Fed official said rate hikes may persist after the central bank’s next meeting set for mid-June.
Most recently in May, the Fed increased the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. In April, inflation rose 4.9% year-over-year, a decrease from its 5% increase in March, according to the latest consumer price index (CPI) report.
Puzder argued that, thus far, the U.S. economy has not reacted to rate hikes "as you would expect it to react."
"And I think that's because of government spending," the former CEO explained. "There's a lot of money out there. So if we want to address this problem, we want to support the Fed, we should be pulling back, not spending more and more, arguing about how big the deficit is going to be. We should be talking about how to eliminate it."
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Biden's fall last Thursday came about two years after he fell on the steps while boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews.
Following the March 2021 fall in which Biden was filmed tripping on multiple steps, the White House said he was "doing 100% fine" and blamed the stumble on the windy conditions.
Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci and FOX Business’ Javier Simon contributed to this report.
