After Tuesday's election results, which saw Zohran Mamdani soar to election as New York City's next mayor on a campaign message laser-focused on affordability, Trump spoke with reporters and tried to make the case that Republicans are way better on the issue of affordability than Demcorats are.
Case in point, according to Trump: Walmart's 2025 "Thanksgiving Dinner" pack, which Trump boasted is 25% cheaper than in 2024.
Trump told reporters:
"Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down. And the press doesn't report it."
"The press reports whatever the con-people... You know, I call the Democrats conmen and women. They make up numbers but when you look at a 25% reduction in costs between [former President Joe Biden] and me, meaning this administration, that's a tremendous number."
"It's the biggest reduction in costs in the history of that chart or whatever that thing is they do. They do a synopsis of everything. They cover every element of Thanksgiving meals. 25 percent down. I don't want to hear a thing about the affordability because right now we're much less."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
A message he repeated on Truth Social.
You can see his post below.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
Except there's one major problem with Trump's comparison here. As an X Community note brutally made clear on a post from Trump's Rapid Response X account, the 2025 meal pack contains just 15 items while the 2024 pack contained 21. And the items in this year's dinner are cheaper options.
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale—no stranger to debunking Trump's many false claims—made the same point in his own fact check of Trump's boast.
He points out in his write-up that "the price of Walmart’s Thanksgiving basket is an especially poor proxy" by which to measure U.S. inflation "because the composition of the basket changes every Thanksgiving":
"Last year’s basket had a pre-made pecan pie as well as ingredients to make a pumpkin pie, the Walmart website shows; this year’s basket does not include the pecan pie. Last year’s basket had both russet potatoes and sweet potatoes; this year’s basket does not include the sweet potatoes. Last year’s basket had two cans of cream of mushroom soup; this year’s basket has one can."
"This year’s basket also omits some other items included in last year’s basket, including miniature marshmallows, corn muffin mix, fresh onions and fresh celery stalks, and it includes fresh cranberries instead of slightly more expensive cranberry sauce."
"It’s not all subtraction. This year’s basket adds an extra can of green beans and some items that last year’s basket didn’t have, such as a pre-made stuffing mix, fresh carrots, and three boxes of macaroni and cheese. It also includes a (13.5-pound) Butterball turkey; no brand was specified for the (10-to-16-pound) turkey in the promotion last year."
Moreover, grocery prices are up:
"As of the most recent Consumer Price Index figures, for September, average grocery prices were about 2.7% higher than they were a year prior and about 1.4% higher than they were in January, the month Trump returned to office. Average grocery prices rose 0.3% from August to September after a 0.6% increase from July to August, which was the biggest month-to-month jump in three years."
"Trump has falsely claimed that beef is the only grocery product whose price has increased. In fact, the Consumer Price Index shows dozens of other grocery products have also become more expensive over the last year and since January."
Many have rejected Trump's claims—designed as they are to mislead people struggling with affordability and hunger right before one of the biggest American holidays.
Trump spent months during last year's presidential campaign saying that he would lower grocery prices.
In fact, he said in remarks to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker shortly after winning that "when you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that," adding "we're going to bring those prices way down."
But it's also worth noting that shortly after he said that, he admitted to Time magazine that it's "very hard" to actually lower grocery prices.
Trump stated that one of the key issues Democrats and particularly his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, failed to grasp about the American people is that "they want to be able to buy groceries at a reasonable price and not have to turn off their heat in order to buy two apples."
However, when pressed on whether he could lower grocery costs once in office, Trump acknowledged that he couldn't simply wave a wand to make it happen, even though many of his supporters backed him based on his promises to reduce the cost of living.
@skylergisondo/Instagram
@Pretefunkera/X
@bonnieblue2025/X
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