About a month after Election Day 2024, Donald Trump offered a candid assessment of why he won a second term — and it had nothing to do with immigration, crime, transgender Americans or even the economy in general.
“I won on groceries,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding, “I won an election based on that.” Looking ahead, the Republican went on to vow that he and his incoming team would bring food prices “way down.”
Almost a year later, the president keeps pretending he’s successfully delivered on that promise. The New York Times reported from a Wednesday afternoon event in the Oval Office:
Trump, for the second day in a row, falsely said that grocery prices are ‘way down’ and that inflation was not affecting prices, except for beef. The last publicly available data showed inflation rising to nearly 3 percent in August. In addition to meat, prices also rose for fruits and vegetables, chicken, fish and eggs, new and used cars, and clothing.
It’s not exactly a secret that the president routinely tries to deceive the public, but he’s been especially eager lately to lean into his lies about groceries, repeating the line several times in the past week.
The obvious problem with the claim is that it’s plainly and demonstrably wrong. There are a variety of reasons grocery costs have climbed over the last year, outpacing inflation, but the bottom line remains the same: Trump’s repetition of the lie hasn’t made it true.
The less obvious problem, however, is that this is one of Trump’s most self-defeating lies.
American consumers go to grocery stores all the time, and they know that prices haven’t gone “way down.” Trump can’t simply wave his hand and Jedi mind-trick the public into being happy about rising costs.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week, “Inflation in the grocery aisle is picking up, and stinging consumers. Consumers said they are cutting back on purchases, stockpiling certain foods or exploring more-affordable stores.”
The same article quoted a clerk manager at a store in Chicago who said of his customers, “They’ll come in and say, ‘What the f—?’ It happens all the time.” Common sense might suggest that any political leader would have the good sense either to avoid the subject or to express some degree of sympathy for angry consumers. But Trump, reluctant to acknowledge his long list of failures, has instead decided to tell grocery-buying Americans not to believe their lying eyes (or wallets). If that weren’t quite enough, let’s not forget that Trump’s Department of Labor quietly warned that grocery prices are likely to get noticeably worse as the White House’s anti-immigration crackdown continues. It seems likely the president would respond to those price hikes by insisting that actually prices were falling, but there’s no reason to believe those lies would work.
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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