Americans are facing the worst inflation in four decades, with Fox News reporting last month that some are struggling to put food on the table.

Yet critics say that rather than take responsibility for what's happened, the Biden administration is trying to trick voters into blaming themselves. 

Janet Yellen: Consumer spending caused supply chain "bottlenecks"

As evidence, some are pointing to statements made this week by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

"It turned out the pandemic had very special impacts on the economy. Remember, everybody stopped spending on services," Fox News quoted Yellen as telling host Stephen Colbert.

"Instead, people spent more money on grills, technology, and office equipment as they were working from home," she continued.

"They were in their homes for a year or more, they wanted to buy grills and office furniture, they were working from home, they suddenly started splurging on goods, buying technology," she added, explaining that this resulted in supply chain "bottlenecks."

Tucker Carlson says Yellen is the reason "our economy is about to blow up"

That rationale didn't go over well with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, however. During his Thursday night broadcast, Carlson accused Yellen of shifting responsibility onto the American people.

"Oh, they splurged on grills," Carlson said mockingly after he played a clip of the Treasury secretary's statement.

"It had nothing to do with the fact that I ran the Fed, which controls our money supply and therefore controls our economy at the deepest level and I printed so much money that it's not worth anything anymore and that's why our economy is about to blow up, but that's not what did it," he continued.

"You bought a grill. Next time. Don't do that. Dance, peasant. Dance," Carlson told his viewers sarcastically.

"Janet Yellen has personally done more than maybe any living American to bring our country steep inflation and yet another housing bubble which is apparently about to burst, taking a lot of our economy with it," he asserted.

"Janet Yellen did that by printing tons of cheap money and then getting kickbacks in the form of speaking fees from the Wall Street banks. That happened, and you can look it up and find for yourself that it happened," Carlson concluded.