On a nearly daily basis, Donald Trump boasts that gas prices have fallen below $2 per gallon in several states. As the president’s lies go, this one is pretty lazy — it takes very little effort to disprove — but it’s also self-defeating.
It’s one thing for the Republican to try to convince people he’s succeeding, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding; but to tell people that gas prices have fallen to $2 per gallon when no one is actually paying amounts that low doesn’t do him any favors.
Similarly, Trump recently sat down with New York Post columnist Miranda Devine and made a rather specific claim. “You know, if you think, inflation, I’ve already taken care of,” the president claimed. “Prices are way down for everything — groceries, everything.”
Wrong. As the Trump administration’s own data shows, grocery costs have gone up since the president returned to the Oval Office, not down. As a CNN report noted, “Overall prices, grocery prices and food prices in general are up during this presidency.”
Evidently, this has not escaped the public’s attention. The Associated Press reported:
The vast majority of U.S. adults are at least somewhat stressed about the cost of groceries, a new poll finds, as prices continue to rise and concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs remain widespread. About half of all Americans say the cost of groceries is a ‘major’ source of stress in their life right now, while 33% say it’s a ‘minor’ source of stress, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In order for lies to work, they have to be believable. That’s why it’s so ridiculous for Trump to keep telling people he’s significantly reduced the cost of groceries and gasoline: Only so many people can be gaslit about their own wallets. Indeed, whether the president appreciates this or not, the more he peddles this nonsense, the more he invites a political backlash: Much of the public expects elected leaders to have some understanding of what regular people are experiencing. Those who claim to have brought grocery prices “way down,” as consumers worry about rising grocery prices, inevitably start to look out of touch. And given that just about everyone eats food, this isn’t exactly an obscure issue for Trump to play foolish games with.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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