Former President Barack Obama stuck to the Democratic script on inflation that hit a 41-year high of 8.5% on Tuesday, blaming it on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine even as a key member of his own party pressed President Biden to take bold action to curb rising costs.

Speaking about the issues that will dominate this fall’s midterm elections, Obama told NBC’s Al Roker that people “understandably” feel exhausted after dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic for two years and admitted that “inflation is a real issue.”

“A lot of it is having to do with these COVID supply chains and now Putin’s gas tax, essentially, by virtue of his invasion of Ukraine,” Obama said in a portion of the interview that aired Tuesday evening on “NBC Nightly News.”

But the 44th president insisted that the “underlying economy” is good and that Democrats “have to go out there and tell their story” before voters hit the polls in November.

Obama was echoing the sentiments of Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president during his two terms in office. 

Biden argued Tuesday that skyrocketing consumer costs and prices at the pump are the result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that began Feb. 24.

“We saw in today’s inflation data, 70% of the increase in prices in March came from Putin’s price hike in gasoline,” the president said at an event in Iowa, where he announced a plan to suspend a federal rule capping ethanol levels in gas for the summer months in a desperate bid to lower the price of fuel.

“We need to address this challenge with the urgency it demands,” he added. 

But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) accused Biden of doing a “disservice” to Americans by acting as if “inflation is a new phenomenon.”

“Hard earned wages and financial savings are disappearing faster every month as prices continue to climb, while the pain and frustration of spending more on everyday items lingers over us all, especially among those who can afford it the least,” Manchin said.

“Americans are seeing some of the largest increases in goods such as gas up 48%, beef up 16%, chicken and milk up 13%, and staples like coffee and eggs are up 11%,” he said.

The moderate from the Mountain State, who helped scuttle the president’s $2 trillion social spending bill in December, said the administration cannot spend itself out of the current predicament. 

“[W]e cannot spend our way to a balanced, healthy economy and continue adding to our $30 trillion national debt,” Manchin said.

Obama also sidestepped a question from Roker about whether he should have had a more forceful response to Russia after Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and said the Russian leader’s actions in Ukraine “is him being reckless in a way that you might not have anticipated 10 years ago. But that danger was always there.”

“You know, the situations in each of these circumstances are different,” he added. “But I think that what we’re seeing consistently is a reminder of why it’s so important for us to not take our own democracy for granted, why it’s so important for us to stand for and align ourselves with those who believe in freedom and independence.” 

Similar comments made last week by the former president about his response to the 2014 annexation of Crimea prompted criticism that he was stating “revisionist history” on his record with Russia. 

Obama, speaking at a “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference at the University of Chicago, said he had to “drag” allies to take action against Russia.

“I will say that, as someone who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction. Because, in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would’ve wanted to see, from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies,” Obama said.

Max Abrahms, a terrorism expert and professor of international security at Northeastern University, called Obama’s response “self-serving.”