Laura Di Marco tried again to install that Javier Milei had lied about the economic situation, but the operation was quickly exposed by the very data from INDEC that the president properly cited. In her attempt, she questioned the presidential claim that consumption is at its historical peak and, to refute it, resorted to surveys of social mood and political image that, besides being biased, do not measure consumption or other mentioned variables.
“Where does she get that data?”, Di Marco asked in an extensive post, in which she claimed that only a few activities are growing and that “the rest is dead.” She also cited the Citizen Optimism Index from Poliarquía and a measurement of the President's approval.
The response from the Minister of Economy, Luis "Toto" Caputo, to the media operator.
The argument deliberately mixed completely different variables. Milei spoke about total private consumption measured by national accounts, while the journalist responded with "social perceptions" and opinion polls.
The Official Response Office intervened in the discussion and exposed the inconsistency. As detailed, total private consumption in real terms reached its highest level in 2025 since the beginning of the official series in 2004. In 22 years of measurements, there was no year above it, while the growth compared to 2024 was 8.6%.
The trend continued during the first quarter of 2026. Seasonally adjusted private consumption marked the highest level of the entire series again and accumulated five consecutive quarters of growth: 2.2%, 1%, 0.6%, 1.1%, and 0.8%.
The Gross Domestic Product also recorded five consecutive quarters of expansion and grew by 2.3% year-on-year. Meanwhile, public consumption fell by 0.9% compared to the same period of the previous year and by 2.4% in seasonally adjusted terms. “The State spends less and families consume more. For twenty years, they explained to us that this was impossible,” emphasized the Office.
The data released by INDEC and cited by the National Government.
The response also disproved the claim that only a few activities were growing. Of the 16 sectors surveyed by INDEC, 12 showed advances and only four declined. Among the largest increases were fishing, with 27.5%; agriculture and livestock, with 18.1%; mining and quarrying, with 12.3%; and financial intermediation, with 7.5%.
The episode adds to the precedent from April, when Di Marco expressed indignation on television over another response from Milei. On that occasion, the president accused her of lying, slandering, and defaming people to favor dark interests.
The new controversy again exhibits the same mechanism: ignoring a public statistic, replacing it with opinions, and accusing the President of lying. This time, however, the maneuver was dismantled by a simple response: the data was published in INDEC and properly cited.
