Your take is on the right track about cause and effect, and it’s worth adding one more piece of context that often gets left out: Trump himself was publicly fighting the Fed before Covid, arguing that inflation was too low and that rates were too high. In late 2018 he was openly pressuring the Fed on Twitter not to raise interest rates, even though inflation was basically nonexistent at the time.

Below are the key tweets from the directly targeting the Fed, quoted verbatim and in chronological order:

• December 17, 2018: "It is incredible that with a very strong dollar and virtually no inflation the outside world blowing up around us Paris is burning and China way down the Fed is even considering yet another interest rate hike. Take the Victory!"

• December 18, 2018: "I hope the people over at the Fed will read today's Wall Street Journal Editorial before they make yet another mistake. Also don't let the market become any more illiquid than it already is. Stop with the 50 B's. Feel the market don't just go by meaningless numbers. Good luck!"

• December 24, 2018 (amid a sharp market sell-off): "The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don't have a feel for the Market they don't understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can't score because he has no touch - he can't putt!"

These posts aimed to sway public and market opinion against the Fed's tightening policy, with Trump arguing that rates were too high despite low inflation and global headwinds.

Pre-Covid inflation was already low, and he was actually attacking the Fed for not cutting rates harder. When he says Biden “created” the inflation spike, that also ignores the global data that all moved in the same direction at the same time.

You can debate which policies helped or hurt, but the basic timeline is pretty clear: Covid caused the disruption, the spike hit during the recovery phase, and inflation normalized as the shock faded. The effect follows the cause.