There is a weird genre of conservative trolling where someone posts a photo of a handful of groceries and captions it with stuff like “This cost me $190. THANKS, BIDEN.”
It’s all bullshit, of course. But aside from the lies, what do these people expect Donald Trump to do about it?
The genre may have gotten its start with none other than The New York Times’ David Brooks, a conservative columnist who complained on X last September about spending $78 at an airport for a burger and fries.
“This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport,” Brooks tweeted. “This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.”
The included photos showed what appeared to be a burger, crinkle-cut fries, lettuce, tomato, ketchup packets, and an amber beverage over ice. Turns out, he heavily exaggerated and had seemingly bought two double-shots of whiskey.
The genre has since been popular among right-wingers as a way to claim that the economy is crushing people’s lives, hence the need to vote for Trump.
An X user quickly debunked the claim, pricing out the same items at two different outlets:
Claim: $175
Actual: Walmart: $80
Whole Foods: $119
Even New York Times reporter Mike Isaac priced it out according to the Whole Foods near him in the high-cost San Francisco Bay Area. The price? $120.
That said, no one claims the price of groceries hasn’t gone up. It has. But what would Trump do about it?
Asked that specific question at a Michigan event, Trump said he would lower prices by restricting food imports. Economists rightfully pointed out that restricting competition would actually increase prices as well as lead to retaliatory tariffs that would hurt American farmers, forcing them to, yet again, raise prices to compensate for those losses.
We know price gouging was a meaningful driver of those higher grocery bills, but Trump has attacked a proposal by Vice President Kamala Harris to punish price-gougers as “Soviet-style” controls. Yet, as this Politico story points out, Republicans at the state level have gone after price gouging in the food industry. But Trump is not interested, because he will never do anything to stand in the way of anyone’s profit, especially if it’s at the cost of the plebes.
And then there’s the effect Trump’s policies would likely have on the overall economy.
Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists have argued that Trump’s policies would “reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.” Another letter, this time by 23 Nobel-winning economists, stated, “[Trump’s] policies, including high tariffs even on goods from our friends and allies and regressive tax cuts for corporations and individuals, will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality. Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.”
None of that would bode well for grocery prices.
Those conservatives posting pictures of their groceries aren’t going to buy arguments from academics, or look at charts of falling inflation that is the envy of the world. They have an agenda to sell: They need Trump to get elected.
