Trump claims quashed as he's accused of 'cherry-picking' affordability reports

The New York Times' fact checker Linda Qiu says that President Trump has made misleading statements about the cost of a Thanksgiving meal, turkey and gasoline in his recent embrace of the word and concept of "affordability."

Trump's recent claims about affordability, "insisting that prices have come down," Qiu says, are wrong.

In his recent meeting with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Trump said, "Gasoline is way down. I think you'll be seeing $2 gasoline, but we're now at $2.50, $2.45, some are lower than that."

Qui calls Trump's statement out, saying, "This is exaggerated. The average price of gasoline hit a record high in June 2022 at about five dollars a gallon. That number has since declined, but Trump is vastly overstating the level of decline."

"The average price of gasoline in the U.S. hasn't hit $2.50 since under President Biden," she adds. "The lowest price of gasoline under Trump's second term was in the week of October 20th. The price then was $3.02—about 50 more cents than what Trump claimed."

Another of Trump's claims was made last week at an investment forum in Washington D.C., where he said, "According to the USDA, turkey is down, think of that, 33 percent."

"This is false," Qiu says, saying that while "it's not exactly clear what report President Trump is referring to, but USDA numbers show that the wholesale price of turkey has gone up this year, in part because of avian flu."

"In mid-November, the wholesale price of a frozen turkey was about $1.68 a pound," she explains. "Around the same point last year, that number was 98 cents per pound."

In that same speech, Trump said, "Walmart just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is reduced by 25 percent this year from last year."

"This is misleading," Qiu says. "For the past several years, Walmart has offered what it calls its Thanksgiving basket, a collection of 20 or so items for a Thanksgiving spread. It's true that Walmart did announce a 25 percent decrease in the cost of their Thanksgiving basket, but the basket is not the same from this year to last year."

While last year's basket offered about 29 items, Qiu explains, this year's offers only 22 items.

"The two baskets included different items, different brands and different sizes," she notes. "So it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison."

A better source for the prices of a standard Thanksgiving meal, she notes, is the American Farm Bureau, which has been tracking prices of Thanksgiving mainstays since the 1980s.

"In its annual basket, which has remained consistent, prices have gone down about five percent from last year," she notes.

However, Trump doesn't really rely on actual data or facts, Qiu notes.

"Trump is essentially cherry-picking the report that makes affordability look the best," she says.