'Trump has been lying': CNN fact-checker busts president’s 'fictions' about economy

During the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump hammered then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris relentlessly on the economy and blamed them for inflation. The messaging worked: Trump narrowly defeated Democratic nominee Harris and is now back in the White House, where he is claiming that prices are plummeting under his second presidency.

But CNN's Daniel Dale debunked Trump's claims in a comprehensive fact-check aired early Friday morning, April 25.

Trump claimed that the prices of eggs "has come down like 93, 94 percent" since Biden left office on January 20. But Dale countered that egg prices are increasing, not decreasing, on Trump's watch.

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"The price of eggs isn't down even close to 93 percent or 94 percent, nor even 87 percent since Trump returned to office in January," Dale explained. "Let's look at the prices consumers are actually paying. now, we only have this data through March, but the March data was bad. it showed the national average price for a dozen eggs hit a record high, about $6.23, and that was up 26 percent from January. It is very possible that these retail egg prices have come down in April. We'll see when those numbers come out next month, but anybody who has shopped for groceries this month can tell you they're certainly not down 93 percent from Trump's Inauguration Day, because if they were down that much, eggs were currently be selling for less than 38 cents a dozen. they clearly are not."

Dale added, "Now, the White House has been pointing to wholesale egg prices. Those prices are way down since trump's inauguration, about 52 percent. That's big. But again, those aren't the prices actually paid by consumers. And of course, 52 percent isn't 87 or 93 percent."

The CNN fact-checker also debunked Trump's claims about gas prices.

"Gas, eggs and groceries — President Trump has been lying about the price of all of them," Dale noted. "Trump has been trying to play down widespread concerns that his tariffs will fuel inflation. And listen to what he said this week and last week about the price of all of them."

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Trump claimed that gas prices "hit $1.98 a gallon." But according to Dale, "This $1.98 figure is fiction. On the days the president specified he was talking about, April 16 and 17, zero states had an average gas price even close to $1.98. The lowest state average each day, according to AAA, was $2.70. Now, it's true the president didn't say he was talking about average prices. So you might think, ' Well, maybe he meant there were a bunch of individual gas stations selling $1.98 gas.' That isn't true either. Gas Buddy, a company that tracks tens of thousands of stations nationwide, told me it found zero stations anywhere in the country, selling at even close to $1.98 on either day. In fact, the lowest price it found at any station was $2.19."

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Watch the full video below or at this link.