Bulwark Takes - Fox News Practically BEGS Trump To Admit Prices Are Up

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Donald Trump has a new message for Americans worried about the economy: you’re wrong. Andrew Egger and Will Saletan share their take on Trump's message, breaking down his bizarre insistence that prices are “way down,” that gas is $2, that groceries are cheaper, and that any reporting to the contrary is just a “manufactured” media conspiracy.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey guys, it's Andrew Eger with the bulwark. You might have noticed there is a lot of anxiety around the economy right now. A lot of warning, lights flashing on various economic dashboards, a lot of people telling a lot of pollsters that they're worried about prices, that they're worried about jobs, they're worried about a lot of different things. One person who at least says he is not worried about any of that stuff at all, President Donald Trump. In fact, Donald Trump has taken recently to telling people that he thinks all of that stuff, all of that economic anxiety, all of those warning signs and things like that. That's all kind of just some fake nonsense cooked up by a conspiracy against him, a conspiracy to make people think the economy is a lot worse than it is. It's such a rigged system. So are you ready? Costs a way down. I'm joined with Will Salatan, who has a whole laundry list of times and places that Donald Trump has been making this

case recently. How are you doing today, Will? What's going on? Well, I'm doing fine, Andrew, but like Donald Trump thinks I'm doing better than I think I'm doing, and he thinks everybody's doing a little better than they do. You know, we're all familiar with Trump being delusional about stuff like the 2020 election. And obviously not enough Americans cared about that delusion. It wasn't relevant to them. But it's a little different when the delusion is that you, Mr. and Mrs. America are feeling better than you actually are, which is kind of where we are right now. We had the elections last week, New Jersey, Virginia, et cetera, and the Republicans lost. And what's happened since then is friendly anchors, like Fox News anchors, have been trying to get Trump to acknowledge

like people are unhappy with the state of the economy and what he's going to do about it, what the Republicans are going to do about it. And he's not taking the bait, Andrew. So this started last week, the day after the elections, Brett Baer gets him in an interview and asks Trump, you know, what about losing these elections and people seem to be unhappy? Here's what Bear asked. You said that the shutdown and your name not being on the ballot were big factors. You're the head of the party.

So obviously the policies are run on in these states. Do you see that at all or how do you read it? Well, I do because, you know, we've done so much, you know, energy is way down. Look at energy. We're going to have $2 gasoline. I did that. That brings everything else down. Grocers are way down other than beef. Andrew, $2 gasoline. First of all, are you paying $2 for gas? Do you know anybody who's paying $2 for gas? My very basic understanding is that gasoline is actually a little cheaper than it was. This is like my, you know, I feel like I'm not spending as much to pay at the pump as I used to. But I feel like that is one very tiny indicator in sort of a sea of more troubling ones. I like it when he says that energy is way down. I mean, he does this a lot, right? I mean, he means gas. He means gas is down. Gas is cheaper. Energy, you know, more broadly speaking, is actually like sort of a big warning sign right now. It's one of those things I was talking about before with all of the electricity that, you know, AI is starting to suck up around the country. These grids are getting overburdened everywhere. People's, you know, home, electrical bills. are starting to spike. Nevertheless, Donald Trump continues to say the energy is way down.

What else do you got for us here? Well, you know, first of all, on the energy thing, I paid just the barest attention to the election in New Jersey. It was all about energy prices. People's electrical bills are out of control, right? And like for Trump to say, like, hey, everything's great on energy. First of all, the average price in the United States for a gallon gas is $3. It's like, it's not $2. It's not, it's not, and Trump's been saying for a while it's two bucks. But the killer to me is when he says groceries are way down. I mean, look, the economic data is groceries are up, depending on the account, two and a half to three percent since Trump became president. Well, since his election, right? So, like, he's just wrong about the

numbers. It's just a degree of denial that's like, your president, okay, so you don't buy things for yourself anymore, but you need to be able to relate to people. But let me go a little bit further because after that interview, a few days later, this week, Laura Ingram, another Fox News host, decides she's going to get to Trump, sit down with Trump, talk to him about the economic troubles. People are plainly concerned. And so she invites Trump to admit this time that certain prices are up. And she tries to get him to say, you've already been saying that some prices are up. And so let's talk about what you're doing about it. Here she goes. But other things have you noted have gone up, beef, coffee, auto repairs. Is this a voter perception issue of the

economy? Or is there more that needs to be done by Republicans on Capitol Hill or done in terms of policy? More than anything else is a con job by the Democrats. They're saying, they just have a thing. You know, they put out something. Say today, costs are up. They feed it to the anchors of ABC, CBS and NBC and a lot of other and, you know, CNN and et cetera. And it's like a standard. I'll never forget they had used a word like manufactured. Do you remember the word manufacturing? It's a manufactured economy. Nobody uses that word. Every anchor broke through, manufactured. They do exactly what they say. It's such a rig system. So are you ready? Costs a way down. Okay. So again, with the costs are down stuff, but he's adding now the media conspiracy. This is all something that people on TV, that CNN is telling you, not something you're really feeling. Correct me if I'm wrong. Like, is the cost of everyday good something that a politician can successfully lie to the public about or tell them that they're being fed by the liberal media? Didn't we all just live through this? Didn't we just live through what happens when prices go up? Like, there might be good. reasons that prices are going up. Politicians might be able to, you know, explain those, those reasons. They might be able to say, hey, we're coming out of a once-in-a-generation pandemic and, you know, supply lines are really snarled and we're all going to get through this. And by the way, wages are up too. But at a certain level, it doesn't matter. Like,

when prices are spiking, like they did under Joe Biden and like they're continuing to do right now under Donald Trump, voters feel that pain. And I think that that is the real disconnect. I mean, you mentioned it earlier. It's really kind of funny to see these anchors understand this, right? And they're trying to throw Trump a bone. They're trying to, like, set him up to speak to voters where they are, you know, not in a way where, where they are trying to like point at his policies, which they could very much do, by the way. One major reason prices are up for so many different goods is all these tariffs he's put on a bunch of different imports, right? But they're not doing that. They're just trying to give Trump the easiest possible opportunity to tell voters, you know,

we feel your pain. We know it's hard out there. We're working on it. And, you know, maybe here's some things we're going to do about it. But he rejects the premise of the question. And this is actually what I wanted to ask you. And I'll just ask you now is going to do it after a couple more clips. But I'll just do it right now. I mean, what do you think is happening behind his eyes when he is saying these things? Do you think that he is lying? Do you think that this is like spin? Do you think this is a dodge? Do you think he thinks this is the best way to actually like politically triangulate for the fact that the economy is not doing well? Or do you think that this is truly his belief that he is sort of incapable of grasping the broader picture of like seeing how things are out there

on the street. And he's just sort of going around in this bizarre sort of like fantasy land where everything is great. And the economy is humming along. And you know, America is, you know, wealthier than ever before. And America is winning. What do you think is happening there? So I'm a firm believer in the delusionality theory. It's unsatisfying to a lot of Trump's critics because they like to believe he's a liar. He's a liar. He's totally a liar. But like in our daily lives, when we experience lying. It's a normal person lying. It's somebody who, like, knows the difference between the lie and the truth. And that's, that's why they lie. They know what the truth is, but they don't want to tell you, so they tell you. And Trump's just not like that. And

these interviews are consistent with that. And all of his stuff about the 2020 election. Similarly, this happens again and again where somebody who's sympathetic to Trump, someone he should trust, sits down with him and says to him, in this case on camera, both of these cases on camera, you know, this actually is happening, you know, or like you lost the election or prices are actually up. And it just bounces right off him. So I can't answer your question about what goes on behind his mind, except that he's deflecting it. He's not even letting the reality enter. I mean, in this interview, Laura Ingraham says to him exactly what you said, Andrew. She's like, you know, by the way, Joe Biden said this, right? Because you said Biden did that too, because he was saying things were great.

I think Joe Biden tried to pretend that the economy was better, told people, it's just vibes, you know, whatever, like, actually the numbers are good. And, like, he got his clock cleaned because it turns out, like, you can't deceive people about that. He just won't take the hint. And so he's spinning this conspiracy theory about the media, right? This is just fed to you by the media. And she then tries to circumvent that, like, okay, okay, how about I talk to you about directly what polls are saying, where they talk to real people, not they're not talking to, Caitlin Collins or Wolf Blitzer or whoever, Jake Tapper, right, they're like actually asking people. So she asks them about the polls.

Here she goes. And why are people saying they're anxious about the economy? Why are they saying that? I don't know that they are saying. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we've ever had. We will have over $20 trillion come into our economy. And it's largely because of my election, but it's also largely because of tariffs.

So the polls are fake. Like the media fed this to you, but now we're going beyond the media fed this to you, we're going to, you're not even, you the American public are not even saying this. You don't even believe it. I didn't trust the election results. Those weren't real. And I don't believe these polls that are telling me that you're unhappy. I mean, this seems to me, Andrew, like a whole other level of delusionality. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you, by the way. I teed you up that question before, but I'm 100% on the same page with you here. We talk a lot about and we think a lot about like the sort of, fantasy world that Trump and MAGA create and their whole sort of infotainment media ecosystem creates for his audience, for his base, and that sort of like, you know, just, just total alternate universe that these people live in, you know, in various ways and to varying degrees. I don't think we talk enough about like the way that Trump creates this own reality for himself, you know, and the people around him create this reality for himself. Because I totally agree with you. I think he is actually convinced that, you know,

talk about the flashing signs, the flashing lights on the economic dashboards and things, that those are just totally cooked up. Those don't correspond to anything out there in reality. And therefore, he has nothing to worry about. He has nothing to triangulate for. He has nothing to, like, note there's no, like, mass of sort of popular resentment building that he needs to accommodate and deal with in any way. I really think that he thinks that's all baloney. So part of what kills me about his response there is it's not just that he's denying the actual reality of the polling data or the consumer. price index. It's that he's coming back at her with this stuff about, hey, you know, everything's

great because $20 trillion is coming into our economy. Andrew, that's fake. I don't know say it's fake, but it's speculative. He goes overseas and a bunch of shakes tell him, yeah, you know, we're going to put a lot of money in, you know, and like companies tell them like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to invest this much in AI, right? And we've all seen the clip of Mark Zuckerberg, like saying, I just threw a number out there. I just made up a number. I didn't know what you wanted to hear. I wasn't sure what that's not where you want to go in. This is all speculative BS, and Trump is trying to say that's the real thing. And the economic indicators, the real thing, are somehow fake.

Right, right. And then obviously the other part of that that he likes to talk about is the tariffs, which is, again, completely, like, incoherent because the thing that people are complaining and worried about is prices, prices going up. And what is one of the primary drivers for what's, you know, pushing up prices this year, are Donald Trump's tariffs, which are additional import taxes on U.S. businesses, which are then pushed along in greater or smaller ways and increasingly in greater ways, as these companies sort of resigned themselves to the fact that these are semi-permanent tariffs, they pass them along to the consumer in the form of higher consumer prices. So yeah, it's just, I mean, like, you almost couldn't draw it up. You couldn't imagine like a scenario where like an interviewer asks the president of the United States, look, people are really worried about these higher prices. And the president comes back with, no, they're not. They're not worried. And the prices aren't higher. And the economy's doing great because of all the new taxes. that I've installed, right?

I mean, it's just, it would strain credulity if it weren't happening right out there, right on our TV screens right now. All right, well, what else? What else we got, Will? Let me throw you one other, which is, what does MAGA think? All right, so Marjorie Taylor Green,

as a lot of folks know, has been out in public saying, you know what, especially after these elections in Virginia, New Jersey, in New York, she's like, look, this is a real thing. People are hurting. People, the prices have gone up, not down.

People are having trouble making ends meet, affordability, insurance. She's talking about that, right? And so the reporters are trying to ask Trump, so what about this? Your MAGA base is suffering just along with everybody else. And so this happened earlier this week. Caitlin Collins is in the Oval Office in one of these sessions, and she asks Trump about what Marjorie Taylor Green has been saying. Here she is. Marjorie Taylor Green, who is a big ally of yours, said that she would rather see you focused on nonstop domestic policy meetings here at the White House instead of nonstop foreign policy meetings.

What's your response to her saying that and also saying that grocery prices are up and not down, as you've said? Yeah, so I don't know what happened to Montreis. A nice woman, but I don't know what happened. She's lost away, I think. Okay, so that happened in the Oval Office. And then on the same day, Trump is doing the interview with Laura Ingram. And one of the questions she asks is about the MAGA base. And I should preface this by saying, Ingram's thinking here, she leads into this talking about MAGA doesn't want foreign students here.

But it's a similar question about what is MAGA. mega think. And Trump, in response, says this about what MAGA thinks. And don't forget, MAGA was my idea. Maga was nobody else's idea. I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else. And MAGA wants to see our country thrive. So it sounds to me like this is what the French would call maga say, you know, they're like, whatever I say, since I invented MAGA, I speak for MAGA. And like, there seems to be this division between Trump and Green over whether to listen to Maga or whether to just deny what Maga is saying and impose the president's version of reality on them. Yeah, I mean, this has worked for Donald Trump for a long time. You kind of understand why it is his go-to move.

But I also sort of feel like, you know, he's like an 85-year-old rock star who's like out here playing the hits because that's like all he knows how to do, right? I mean, like, this has been his go-to move forever, is just sort of, like, impose my will, dominate, impose my vision of reality, just sort of speak it into existence and, like, let all the little people scramble around and figure out how to accommodate themselves to that, themselves to my view, themselves to my vision. And it's, like I said, it's worked out for him very well. Like, you can understand why this is, like, his go-to move. He got him back to being president again the second time. Got him to be president the first time. He's reshaped the entire Republican Party in his image. but there are some cracks in his base and in the broader public as far as a few of these things

are concerned. This is one of them. I mean, like, it's remarkable that you have other kind of like Maga luminaries like Marjorie Taylor Green who are, you know, just not willing to step on the actual fact about the economy, the actual facts about sort of people on the ground's feelings like he plainly is. I mean, you could swerve over to a different topic and talk about the way that he is sort of commanded MAGA to stop caring about the Epstein files, you know? I mean, that has, has, you know, backfired spectacularly in a lot of different ways. And I just wonder, I, I don't know myself whether this is an instance of him, his grip weakening on his base. I don't necessarily think that's true. But certainly his ability to just sort of like snap his fingers and impose a

reality is not functioning the way we have often seen it functioned before. And even though that is frequently a great way of dealing with, you know, people in Congress who you could squish like a bug in their primaries if you chose to do so, or even the U.S. courts, where who you're sort of like constantly daring the Supreme Court to take too much of a stand against you and, and, you know, like, well, don't go too crazy or I might spark a constitutional crisis, that kind of thing. Those have worked okay for him up until now. But like, we just had an election last week. And that plainly didn't go so hot, you know, like it actually turns out that in these affordability focused elections, people were.

really kind of unhappy with what they've gotten from Trump this year. We've got a lot more of those elections coming a year from now. And I just keep coming back to the fact that like, what Ingram and Bayer and all these people and even Marjor Taylor Green are like kind of trying to do is in the gentlest, kindest possible way to get through to the president and say, hey, look, this is something you actually have to address. We're not telling you how to address it. We're not even trying to like hurt you politically with these questions. We are just trying to get it through to you that you need to put some thought and some elbow grease into how you're going to change this before we get absolutely shellacked next year. And that's kind of the subtext. And yet again and again, he just refuses

to acknowledge any of these problems exist. He thinks that because he says Maga should be happy because he's president again, Maga should be happy because he's president again. And I just don't know. I just don't know as these things continue to metastasize, as the economy continues to sort of teeter on various precipices over the edge of various precipices. Like if things continue to get worse in these ways. It's already not working now. How is it going to continue to work, you know, for a year, for three more years of this? I don't know. Will, do you have any closing thoughts for us as we go out here? I think you've sort of put your finger on it, which is people like you and me, and a lot of us, we've been watching Donald Trump for a while. I mean, we've been

waiting for him to pay the price for, like, denying reality. And he keeps not paying it. As you say, he keeps getting away with it, right? I mean, the guy attempted a coup, got away with that. literally like every day now he's lying about January 6th about the 2020 election and people around them have ston even don't even argue with it so he lives in this bubble he gets away with it he's going to try to do it again with Epstein I maybe I don't know if that'll work but I feel like Andrew if it if ever it's going to fail it should fail here it should fail when what you're lying about what you're deluded about is like the everyday reality that people can feel like something as

simple as the price of groceries. My God, if the man can get away with lying to people, being deluded, spreading his delusions, just denying it. And if MAGA people will just be like, yeah, you know, maybe it's not that bad, then I would believe it. But I have to say my gut says, Andrew, eventually reality intrudes. And if reality is going to intrude, this is the issue on which it's going to happen. And as you said, we got the first taste of that in the elections last week. And if it's true, we should see a much bigger taste of it in the midterms this coming year. I think we can leave it there. We'll keep following it. Obviously, we'll be back to talk about the economy again and again and again. Hopefully things just turn out great. Hopefully

the tariffs actually do start to work. And we do actually enter a golden age. And everybody is actually happy. And Donald Trump is proven correct. I would not mind that in the slightest. I think, I think prosperity is a good thing. I'm not 100% sure that is, that's the road that we're headed down right We'll keep following it. We'll be back to talk a lot more about it. Thanks, Will, for talking about it today. Thanks to all of you guys out there in TV land for listening, for watching, for sending us around, showing us to your friends, to your grandma, to your children.

If you feel like it, I don't think we really curse your score too much. I feel like this one's fine. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. We'll see you all next time.