CNN host Abby Phillip on Friday refuted President Donald Trump for telling reporters that his administration has done “a great job” in reducing food costs — and that the press and former President Joe Biden are to blame for some of the burgeoning cries to the contrary.
“If you look at affordability, which they campaigned on, they lied,” he said Friday. “Because they talked about, ‘Oh, prices are up.’ No, no, prices are down under the Trump administration and they’re down substantially.”
“We did a great job on groceries and affordability,” Trump added, claiming that “the only problem” is that the “fake news” doesn’t want to cover this purported accomplishment.
“They said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about affordability,’” he claimed about the press. “The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden.”
Phillip had argued earlier in the show that this week’s Democratic election wins were “a referendum” precisely on issues such as affordability. She went on to counter Trump’s claims with a litany of facts, figures and a rather damning poll.
“But the numbers don’t lie,” she said, throwing official data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on screen. “Grocery prices are not lower. They are up since August and up since Trump’s inauguration, and compared to last September, cost of food has increased 2.7%.”
The cited government statistics indeed confirmed prices have risen: Coffee costs 18.9% more than it did last September, while the price for beef has soared by 14.7% — and meat, poultry, fish and eggs now cost 5.2% more than they did in September of last year.
“Beef is the only item that Trump has admitted to getting more expensive,” Phillip added Friday. “And today, he announced that he is asking the Justice Department to investigate meatpacking companies for quote, ‘Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing and Price Manipulation.’”
Trump announced as much on social media, capitalizing select words, which is part of his style.
“Maybe Trump’s thinking in downplaying these grocery prices is that Americans aren’t feeling it,” said Phillip. “Well, that is not true either. A recent poll found 62% of Americans say that the cost of food is going up, while only 7% say that it is going down.”
The cited CBS News/YouGov survey polled 2,124 U.S. adults between Oct. 29 and 31, showing 62% have experienced prices going up for goods and services they’re buying. Trump on Friday blamed inflation for much of the growing concern about the U.S. economy.
Phillip noted Friday that layoffs have surged to a two-decade high in the U.S., citing a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas showing more than 150,000 job cuts in October — after key industries have begun adopting artificial intelligence into their businesses.
Trump has been a major proponent of AI, calling it a “hot” and “big” industry in August.
“A million layoffs so far this year, which is a 65% increase year-over-year,” Phillip noted Friday. “So, it feels like there are things happening in the economy that are not positive, and people are starting to whisper about belt-tightening.”
