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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, has skewered Donald Trump on rising food prices as the president says he doesn't “wanna hear about the affordability.” Following sweeping electoral victories on Tuesday by Democrats who campaigned on affordability, Trump has tried to do damage control, claiming that gas and grocery prices are down, and Republicans just haven’t been vocal enough about it. At a White House dinner Trump hosted for several leaders of Central Asian countries Thursday night, the president told reporters, “I don’t wanna hear about the affordability. “If you look at energy, we’re getting close to $2 a gallon gasoline. With Biden, it was $4.50, $5…We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now, we have virtually no inflation at all,” Trump continued. But despite being a fervent supporter of Trump, Greene rebuked the president’s claims that prices have gone down. When asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday night whether she agrees with the president on the state of inflation and grocery prices in the country, Greene said, “No.” “I go to the grocery store myself. Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they're also higher at my house in Rome, Georgia — higher than they were a year ago. So, affordability is a problem,” the congresswoman said. The national average cost of gas is $3.08 per gallon, according to the American Automobile Association. The Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 percent in September, with the annual inflation rate climbing to 3 percent. Both of these figures were lower than experts expected, but the annual inflation rate is still higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. Trump was also fact-checked on X for being misleading when boasting about Walmart’s annual Thanksgiving meal kit being down 25 percent in price since last year. A Community Note under the post said this year’s holiday dinner includes just 15 items, compared to 21 items in the meal kit last year. “Additionally, most of the brand name items in the 2024 meal were replaced with Great Value items,” the note read. Greene, who has increasingly come out as a critic of her GOP colleagues during the government shutdown for what she sees as inaction to get the government back up and running, also stressed the need to lower healthcare costs. “With health insurance premiums skyrocketing, I think this is like a five-alarm fire,” she told Collins. Democrats have refused to open the government until Congress extends Affordable Care Act subsidies due to expire at the end of the year. The shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history, is entering it’s 38th day. “It is incredibly embarrassing, and I find absolutely pathetic, really, that all of us are not here in Washington, D.C., working every single day to make sure that we can get the government open, but also solve the problem of affordability for the American people and come up with a good solution once and for all, for health insurance,” Greene said. House Speaker Mike Johnson previously responded to Greene’s criticisms of him when it comes to tackling affordable healthcare. “Bless her heart,” Johnson said of Greene, using a Southern insult, during an interview with Collins last month. “We have been working on this for a long time. We worked on it today. We have been working on it every day,” Johnson said of an affordable healthcare policy plan.
