Fact-checker issues blistering audit of Trump's 'everything is cheaper' lie

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures at the McDonald's Impact Summit at the Westin Hotel in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 17, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump spoke this week about how he's saved the economy, falsely claiming that everything is cheaper thanks to him. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale issued his own audit of Trump's rank exaggeration.

"These eggs, I remember eggs, eggs were like 4 or 5 times higher than they were a few years ago," said Trump speaking on Monday. "There was — you couldn't get eggs. They wanted me to use plastic eggs for the Easter egg hunt because they were unable to get eggs. And I said, we'll take care of it. We got it taken care of quickly. Now, eggs are much lower than they were when we first started, and that's true with everything else."

In fact, Dale said, that is not "true with everything else."

Eggs became emblematic of high grocery prices during the 2024 election as residual inflation was moving from high COVID-levels back to something that resembled normal. Egg prices were not going down, as an outbreak of H1N1, or bird flu, led to the deaths of tens of millions of chickens, CNN reported in January 2025.

Since then, egg prices have stabilized, but other costs have skyrocketed as fuel costs and inflation continue to rise. New economic data shows the impact the higher prices are having on Americans as Trump's Iran war and tariffs continue to be blamed.

"The president's claim that everything else is down is absolutely, unequivocally false," Dale said. "Far more products have increased in price than have decreased in price since President Trump returned to office in January of 2025."

Dale said that he and colleague Matt Stiles sifted through "332 products and product categories for which there's Consumer Price Index data online." What they found is that about "five times as many products and categories had gone up as had gone down."

He added that it's a fact-check that Americans can do themselves at the grocery store. Dale explained that overall prices are up 4.3 percent since Trump took office. Those categories include food, up 4.2 percent, housing, up 4.6 percent, energy up 13.1 percent, medical services, up 4.9 percent and clothing up 4.5 percent.

Childcare has also increased 3.8 percent.

Dale and Stiles crafted a clickable bar graph that splits items out by category, and you can drill down from there with drop-down menus.

In fact, what the men found is that eggs are the only item that appears to have dropped as much as it did.

"Not a single other item on this Consumer Price Index list had a decline even half as big as eggs did," their report said. "Only about one-sixth of the items on the list declined at all (including items and categories that overlapped, such as the 'butter' item that is also included in the 'butter and margarine' category). And eggs were unique even when looking only at grocery products.

Some of the highest-priced items include beef, coffee and lettuce.

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