Trump: Learn to ‘Shut Up’ on Egg Prices and Love the Recession

Trump promises to bring down groceries prices at an August 15, 2024 press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey. Photo: Adam Gray/Getty Images

The high cost of living was one of the primary reasons that Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. Trump himself said in a December interview with NBC News, “I won on groceries,” explaining, “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. We’re going to bring those prices way down.”

Trump didn’t just promise to implement policies that would gradually ease economic concerns; throughout 2024, he said that if American voted for him, prices would fall rapidly.

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” Trump declared in August, underscoring his point by standing between tables filled with unrefrigerated milk, meat, and other groceries.

Seven weeks into the second Trump administration, grocery prices haven’t gone down. So Trump is trying a new strategy: urging Americans to quit complaining and trust that he’ll eventually make them “so rich.”

Saturday on Truth Social, Trump shared a Daily Caller article titled “Shut Up About Egg Prices — Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions.”

In the piece, Charlie Kirk claimed that Trump bears zero responsibility for the high price of eggs (that is, of course, all Joe Biden’s fault). Then Kirk argued that Trump will be “saving consumers million” — even if that isn’t happening yet — listing off various Trump economic proposals. Many of these policies have yet to be implemented, but Kirk said struggling Americans just need to be patient:

Reversing four years of economic malpractice will take time to reverse, but the building blocks of America’s next great low-inflation, high-wage growth boom have already been laid — and soon enough, so too will the eggs.

The Kirk article is actually three weeks old and egg prices are still high (while the average cost of a dozen eggs dropped about a dollar in the past month, the USDA still predicts egg prices will go up 40 percent this year). But Americans’ economic woes go far beyond eggs. There are concerns that Trump’s trade war will raise the cost of everything from food to cars to gasoline. In recent weeks, Trump rolled out his long-awaited tariffs against Canada and Mexico, partly suspended them, then said they were back on. Markets tumbled in response, raising fears that Trump’s chaotic economic movies could spark a recession.

In an interview that aired Sunday, Maria Bartiromo directly asked Trump if we should expect a recession this year. He declined to rule out that possibility.

“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said on Fox Sunday Morning Futures. “There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America.”

Trump dismissed recession concerns again on Sunday evening. On Air Force One, a reporter asked Trump, “Are you worried about a recession?” noting, “Maria Bartiromo asked you, and you kind of hesitated.”

“I’ll tell you what, of course you hesitate,” Trump answered. “All I know is this: We’re gonna take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs and we’re gonna become so rich you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money. I’m telling you — you just watch! We’re gonna have jobs, we’re gonna have factories, it’s gonna be great.”

On Truth Social, Trump shared a video of his response — which was edited to remove the bit where refused to rule out a recession again — with the caption, “We’re going to become so rich, you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money. I’m telling you—just watch!”

Stocks tumbled again on Monday after Trump’s talk about a “period of transition” that seemingly will involve more economic hardship. But you can’t really blame the president for that. None of this would be happening if Americans would just stop complaining about how they can’t afford groceries or weather a recession and focus on real problems — like how they’re going to spend all that extra money Trump will put in their pocket at some indefinite point in the future.