Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
While there is a tremendous amount of misdirection, there are things that cannot be avoided: Like grocery prices.
Despite the fact that Donald Trump has, on numerous occasions, gone on and on at how he causes prices to be reduced for those who need things like, oh, eggs and beef, the facts are quite the contrary.
According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), it is expected that the 2025 full-year retail price of eggs will increase 24.4%.
Have you ever gotten a 24.4% raise at your job? Me neither.
The USDA anticipates a less-severe situation for beef prices, going up 9.9%.
What happened to the price reductions?
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins may want to update her resume.
Then there have been the multitudinous claims Trump has made about gasoline prices being below $2 per gallon in some states. A state of mind, perhaps, because when he’s made those claims, gasoline was solidly well above the $2 per gallon price point.
(Perhaps a few station owners decided to have a temporary sale on the price of gas, taking a hit on earnings to get SUVs and pickups lined up around the block, hoping they’d become customers after the numbers on the sign were reset to what the actual price is.)
According to GasBuddy.com, the last time US gas prices were less than $2 per gallon was in January 2021 — because of COVID, a whole lot of people weren’t doing a whole lot of driving, so prices were cut.
(Perhaps the Trump administration’s efforts to minimize the availability of COVID vaccines takes that into account. According to the Centers for Disease Control, COVID-19 was indicated as the underlying or contributing cause of death of 384,536 people in the US in 2020 and another 460,513 people in 2021. Presumably none pumped gas. (Although this may seem cruel, it isn’t going to be nearly as cruel as things will be when the next pandemic hits and the country is woefully unprepared to address it with things like what are generally described as “medicine.”))
The federal Energy Information Agency shows that the least-expensive average cost of a gallon of gas so far this year in the US was in January, when the average was $3.196. Given that the first three weeks of that month were under Joe Biden, the bragging rights for that can’t be claimed.
And if you’re curious about the subsequent months: February, $3.247; March, $3.223; April, $3.299; May, $3.278; June, $3.276; July, $3.250; August, $3.258.
You may note that while the price of gas in August was less than the price of a gallon in April, that August gallon cost more than a February gallon: Where’s the price reduction?
It is worth knowing that the difference between a fictitious $2 gallon and a real $3.25 gallon is 63% -- which makes the 24.4% hike in the price of eggs seem like chump change.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is clearly doing a great job for the American people.
Most people probably don’t care a whole lot about the whole Jeffery Epstein-Trump association. When they learn what Epstein was convicted of doing they are undoubtedly angered, annoyed or upset. But then they get on with their lives.
And while it is a horrible thing that Charlie Kirk was murdered, if someone just came home from the orthodontist with an estimate for putting braces on their kids’ teeth — up an average 10% to 20% this year — they’ve got more personally immediate things to think about.
Unless they live in one of the cities where the troops have been called out (or where they are threatened to be called out), they are probably looking at their utility bills and wondering about how to divert some money in that direction: According to the latest Consumer Price Index, in the last 12 months through August, the price of electricity is up 6.2% and natural gas up 13.8%.
The president can bloviate. He can weave. He can say all manner of things fantastical.
But when people stand at the supermarket register or when they watch the digits on the gas pump repeatedly rise in the blink of an eye, none of that hot air and spin matter.
The question is a simple one: When the price of eggs and hamburger, gas and electricity are rising, are you better off today than on January 19?
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.