A couple of months before Election Day, then-Sen. JD Vance held a photo op at a grocery store to a pitch a very specific message: The price of eggs, the Ohio Republican argued, should be blamed on then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
At the time, the argument was plainly absurd, since egg prices spiked in response to a bird flu outbreak that the California Democrat had nothing to do with. But nearly six months later, it’s worse: If Americans are supposed to hold vice presidents responsible for the cost of a carton, Vance has some explaining to do.
It’s against this backdrop that Donald Trump pitched a related message in his first national address of his second term. “Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control,” the Republican president declared. “The egg prices, out of control.”
The obvious problem with the argument is that it’s false. The New York Times’ fact-check report explained:
The price of eggs soared during the Biden administration. But that is because of a bird flu, called H5N1, which has been decimating poultry flocks in the United States. Since January 2022, when the virus was first detected in the country, infections in poultry flocks have led to the killing of more than 166 million birds, including egg-laying hens.
To hear Trump tell it, his Democratic predecessor simply “let” egg costs go up, as if Biden could snap his fingers and undo the effects of H5N1. No one who understands the basics of the issue at an even a superficial level believes this.
But the less obvious problem is that Trump’s rhetoric is self-defeating: To hear the Republican tell it, presidents play a direct role in the prices American consumers pay when they buy eggs. Of course, by that reasoning, as egg prices continue to climb — well past the heights seen during the Biden era — it somehow makes sense to ask the incumbent president why he’s “letting the price of eggs get out of control.” To be sure, Trump isn’t responsible for bird flu. Biden wasn’t either. But Trump and Vance were eager to blame the Democratic administration for developments they couldn’t control, which made it that much weirder to see the Republican president double down on the idea that the White House bears responsibility for the cost per carton.
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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