Prepare for the incoming hit.

That was what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was telegraphing on Monday, as she tried to soften the blow of what she knows is coming.

Karine Jean-Pierre expects upcoming inflation numbers from June to be "highly elevated." pic.twitter.com/vXL0t3F1v4

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022

“On Wednesday we will have new CPI inflation data and we expect the headline number — which includes gas and food — to be highly elevated,” Jean-Pierre said during the daily briefing. If they’re already trying to prepare us, you know it’s going to be bad. In May, it jumped a point to 8.6 percent. They didn’t feel the need to prep us in advance then, so one has to think that whatever they’re seeing now makes them think it’s higher than that.

But Jean-Pierre tried to spin the coming June CPI number, claiming it was “already out of date” because the prices had already fallen.

Jean-Pierre claimed that they understood how Americans were feeling.

REPORTER: "63% of Democrats believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. How do you explain that?"

KJP: "We understand what the American people are feeling." pic.twitter.com/wvwL6vDU8H

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022

Sounds a lot like “I feel your pain.” Which generally means they don’t.

But if they did they wouldn’t be saying things like “We have a strong economy.”

KJP: "We have a strong economy." pic.twitter.com/DjAzRIRgKO

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022

Every time they do, it’s like kicking the Americans who are being crushed right in the face. It’s like when they try to blame everyone else but Biden — from Vladimir Putin to the Republicans, who aren’t in power. Jean-Pierre did that again too on Monday, arguing that the inflation number was “heavily impacted by the war in Ukraine.” So what was the cause for the inflation for all the months before that, since last year?

But even as the press secretary tried to say they understood Americans’ pain, she also was blowing it off, saying that they didn’t pay attention to the polls.

KJP: "We're not gonna pay attention to polls. That's not what we're gonna do here." pic.twitter.com/QLN96K185h

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 11, 2022

Of course, they pay attention to the polls. But what they are engaged in now is all-out spin, because they can’t argue with the facts.

Inflation, again, is at 40-year highs. More than 353,000 Americans left the labor force in June. The U.S. economy is still down 200,000 jobs from where it was before COVID hit. There’s 700,000 more Americans who aren’t in the labor force but want to work compared to February 2020. We’ve already logged one quarter of GDP shrinkage, and projections for Q2 are already down as much as 2 percent — which would mean a definitional recession for the United States.

It’s the failure to acknowledge this reality and take responsibility that now has Joe Biden polling at 29 percent approval.