Sunday Painting

Day 98: “Shut Up About Egg Prices”

Day 98 — February 8, 2025

If you ask Trump (and people did), nothing was more central to his victory than the high price of eggs. As he told NBC’s Kristen Welker after the election, when she asked why he won, here was his answer: “Very simple word, groceries. Like almost -- you know, who uses the word? I started using the word -- the groceries. 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."

Well, as many are documenting, including me, egg prices did not go down on Day One. Or on any day.

They went up.

In my grocery index, they’re up 24%.

It’s fair to say that these high egg prices have become a symbol of how Trump’s focused on just about everything BUT this “Day One” promise. And how that promise is badly broken—and with his erratic tariff and other policies, will likely get a lot worse before it gets better.

So faced with this broken promise, how does Trump respond?

Yesterday, he posted on article whose headline was: '“Shut Up About Egg Prices.”

So not only is he failing to accomplish his core campaign promise, apparently he is announcing to America that it should no longer even be a topic of conversation. My guess is, his followers and media channels will listen to this command.

The about-face about this clear-as-day promise reminds me so much of this quote from Hannah Arendt about lies and totalitarian leaders:

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”