President Donald Trump has a triumphant message on inflation. Some of his party's television ads sound very different.

Even as consumer prices continue rising, Trump continues to falsely claim that they are falling – and even that they are down since he returned to office, though they are actually up 4.3% over that period. In the past two weeks alone, Trump has claimed that "I've largely taken care of inflation," that "the prices are all coming down," that "the prices are coming down very rapidly," and that prices have already fallen "very, very, very substantially."

Fact-checkers have challenged such claims for months, but you don't have to take it from us. Some Republican midterm candidates have been running commercials that acknowledge reality – implicitly rejecting the narrative of their party's chief spokesman on one of the year's most important issues.

"On our farm here in Belle Plaine, we see it every day: gas, groceries, everything's expensive. Iowa families are hurting," Zach Lahn, the Republican candidate for governor of Iowa, says in one recent ad, going on to claim his Democratic opponent is out of touch.

"Housing costs keep rising, and it's getting harder to afford a place to live," another Iowa Republican in a competitive race, Rep. Zach Nunn, says in an ad in which he proceeds to pitch a proposal to train more skilled workers and builders.

An ad from Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy features a testimonial from a woman who touts him as strong on healthcare affordability. The ad begins with the same woman delivering a broad complaint about rising costs: "When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, the last thing I needed to worry about was money. But bills are overwhelming, and groceries, rent, and gas are more expensive too."

Such messages would have fit right in four years ago. Republicans flooded the airwaves with inflation-related ads during the 2022 midterms under then-President Joe Biden, attacking him and other Democrats over price hikes that year caused in significant part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As Republican candidates either vocally support Trump or tread carefully around him, this year's GOP ads on inflation don't target the president even though his own war in Iran has been the main driver of a jump in gas prices. The ads viewed by CNN, many of which were identified by the firm AdImpact upon request, tend to mention costs to establish empathy and attack Democratic opponents. They show that some Republicans are trying to go on offense on an issue in which polling suggests Democrats have erased or perhaps even reversed Republicans' prior advantage.

"Cost of living, the energy prices, the gas prices, it's really affecting those of us that live in this valley," says a man in one ad supporting Republican Rep. David Valadao of California. "In our communities, we're neighbors, not enemies, paying the same skyrocketing electric bills, taxes, and housing costs," says a narrator in an ad from Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue.

An attack ad from a group aligned with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas uses a narrator to deliver a series of attacks on Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is running for Texas' other US Senate seat in a competitive race against Republican Ken Paxton. Given that Trump insists prices have already fallen and are continuing to fall, it's notable that the narrator passingly asserts that prices are spiking – claiming Talarico hurt taxpayers "while your costs are skyrocketing."

And a Republican National Committee fundraising text sent out last week under the name of Vice President JD Vance made this curious pitch: "If you can't give right now, don't, (name of recipient). Groceries cost what they cost." The text didn't say anything about grocery costs having increased under the Trump-Vance administration, but it certainly didn't match the president's rosy tone on the subject.

A shopping cart stands in an aisle of a grocery store in New York, on August 26. - Jeenah Moon/Reuters

There's a chance that Republican television ads succeed in helping to turn the cost of living into at least a neutral issue in some tight races. With memories of the Biden era still fresh, polling also suggests Democrats aren't particularly trusted on inflation.

But with midterms generally shaped by voters' views on the incumbent president, it's an uphill climb for Trump's party. Polls suggest most Americans believe Trump is to blame for high gas prices and that Trump's policies have increased the cost of living. Trump's eagerness to impose tariffs, most recently against Canada, has kept product costs in the headlines.

Some Democrats being targeted by inflation-related attacks scoff at Republicans delivering this message at the same time as Republicans control Congress and a Republican president pursues high-profile policies that have contributed to price increases.

"While Ohioans are getting crushed by rising costs, Washington Republicans are acting like they didn't send them the bill," Kylie Blitzer, campaign spokesperson for Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, said in a Monday email.

Blitzer was responding to a Republican ad that features a narrator saying, "Marcy Kaptur knows families are being crushed by rising costs," then attacks Kaptur for supposedly rejecting "real relief" by voting against Trump's tax cuts last year. Blitzer, who said Kaptur voted against the bill because it was a gift to billionaires, blasted Republicans for spending billions on the Iran war and a bailout of Argentina while "working people are paying more for nearly everything and Ohio farmers face a double whammy of skyrocketing diesel and fertilizer costs as vanity tariffs and trade wars wipe them out."

Democrats, of course, have been running lots of their own ads about the cost of living. Republicans who have sounded like Trump on the issue are particularly easy targets. On Tuesday, Roy Cooper, a Democrat running for the US Senate in North Carolina, released an ad featuring clips of his Republican opponent Michael Whatley wrongly declaring last year that "there is no inflation" and also saying "grocery prices are down, gasoline prices are down, housing prices are down, inflation is down."

Cooper, appearing incredulous, replies "unbelievable" and "seriously?"

The Cooper ad doesn't acknowledge that the Whatley comments were from 2025, when the rate of inflation was indeed lower than when Biden left office (though prices were still rising). But crying foul wouldn't help Whatley, since he would have to acknowledge that the inflation rate is now higher than when Trump was sworn back in.

CNN's David Wright contributed to this article.

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