US President Donald Trump told reporters during a scrum on Airforce One last week, he’s single-handedly lowered the price of food by as much as 25 percent. Trump also renamed the traditional Thanksgiving ‘fixings’ to ‘surroundings’…
Walmart’s 2025 Thanksgiving Dinner Bundle: Fewer items, more generic products…
No. Really. He couldn’t come up with one of the most archetypically-American expressions ever coined!
Trump was replying to a reporter’s question about food prices. And as usual, he was not just spouting lies about the issue in question, but taking credit for price decreases that never happened…
“Prices are coming down very substantially on groceries and things,” just in time for Thanksgiving, Trump claimed. He went on to make the claim that, “affordability is much, much [better],” this year than it was last year under the former administration.
“I go to Walmart and other companies,” Trump said. “And in every case, it’s about 25 percent […] a meal ― a Thanksgiving meal and surroundings ― are 25 percent lower than it was under the Biden administration. That’s a big fact.”
What he might have meant…
Observers say Trump may have been referring to the Walmart Thanksgiving Dinner for 10 package. The deal claims to feed 10 for less than $4 apiece. Maybe. But it’s certainly NOT an indication of where food prices actually are right now, for sure.
One X user pointed out that the popular seasonal package contains fewer items this year than last – and more generic-label products.
Another poster sneered, “Love to have a Thanksgiving turkey with all the surroundings!”
And one less-delicate contributor simply asked: “Surroundings? Does shit-for-brains mean sides?”
One wry poster channeled Homer Simpson: “Mmmmm… Surroundings…”
My take
HuffPost Life took a deep dive into how much Thanksgiving dinner will cost this year. And found that turkey, and all its ‘surroundings’, will cost about 2.7 percent more this year than last.
“I can’t think of anybody I’ve talked to who has recently not lamented about the cost of food at the grocery store, and the impact of your dollar not going as far,” Jada Thompson, an associate professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Arkansas, told HuffPost.
I think anybody with any common sense – or any connection to the real world at all – would agree. Not, apparently, the Leader of the Free World, though…
~ Maggie J.