The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1815 - The Hidden Reasons Why Grocery Prices Are Still Rising

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Grocery prices continue to rise with no solution in sight. What is causing this? Ep. 1815 - - - Today's Sponsors: Boll & Branch - Sleep cooler this summer with Boll & Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at https://BollAndBranch.com/walsh with code WALSH Christian Healthcare Ministries - If you're looking for an affordable, biblical alternative to the way most people approach health care costs, it's worth taking a serious look. Get started today by visiting https://CH-Ministries.org/WALSH - - - DailyWire+ Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://dwplus.watch/RealHistorySubscribe 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. 📜 Real History with Matt Walsh is available ad-free, exclusively on DailyWire+ https://dwplus.watch/RealHistory 👕 Get your Matt Walsh flannel here: https://dwplus.shop/MattWalshMerch - - - Socials:  YouTube — https://youtube.com/@mattwalsh Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/mattwalshblog Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/mattwalshblog TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@mattwalsh_ X — https://twitter.com/mattwalshblog - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just a couple of years ago that the price of eggs was the single most important issue in American politics, and for good reason. When a dozen eggs cost nearly $8, it's not easy to make the case that the economy is fine or that we're still a first world country even. It's also difficult to convince people to hold on to power, which is why Donald Trump hammered the issue at every opportunity. Even if Democrats hadn't nominated a dementia patient and an alcoholic in the same year, there's a good chance that all by itself the price of eggs would have sunk the party. A couple years later, there's some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the price of eggs has returned to Earth. Retail egg prices are now around 40% lower than they were in June of last year. And they're continuing to decline every month.

So problem solved on that front, I guess. There's evidently no more bird flu to worry about, and people can once again cook breakfast, or at least part of breakfast. The bad news is that the price of basically all of the other groceries in your refrigerator has been going in the opposite direction. And I'm not just talking about a small increase here. As you've probably noticed, it's very significant across the board, but it's probably even worse than you realize. So here are some hard numbers to give some historical context. This is from the New York Post. Quote, food prices in the U.S. have shot up by 33 percent over the last seven years,

the biggest jump in grocery prices in half a century with no relief in sight. While rampant inflation was to blame for the biggest surge during the pandemic, prices have continued to or cents with ground beef best demonstrating the out-of-control market as it hits 680 to a pound in June, a 79% increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now, a big part of the reason why beef is so expensive is that the supply of cattle has dwindled by some estimates to its lowest levels in many decades. And that's in part because of years of droughts, which have killed the grass that keeps the cattle fed.

And we'll talk more about the root causes in a moment because obviously it's very important. but beef is not the only problem. Food prices in general increased by more than 2% in 2024, nearly 3% in 2025, and food purchased away from home at restaurants and drive-thrus, for example, has been even worse. So-called food-away-from-home prices increased by roughly 4% in both 2024 and 25,

which is much faster than the historical average. And all of these increases, of course, are stacked on top of the previous increases. So it's a compounding problem. New York Post article continues, quote, between 2012 and 2019, the U.S. saw a total increase in food prices of just 6.4% with the cost skyrocketing once the pandemic hit in the early months of 2020. Following the pandemic's damaging effects between January 21 and January 23, food prices surged by about 21% and costs have continued to go up by nearly 10%. It's yet more evidence demonstrating that the COVID lockdowns ruined everything. The lockdowns had second order effects that no one in power considered at the time, or at least they didn't care about, even though they were obvious to anyone who'd ever worked a real job. But before we get into all of those second order effects, and there are a lot of them and how our leaders caused this crisis, the most important takeaway here is that food prices are worse than they've been in memory.

And this is not merely a political problem. You know, it's not simply bad for Republicans in the midterms, just like the price of eggs was bad for Kamala Harris in 2024. History shows that when food becomes harder to obtain, people get restless and they get angry very quickly. If you, you know, drew up a list of every revolution that ever took place, by far the number one cause is that, or one of the number one contributing factors anyway, is that food suddenly became too scarce. or too expensive. Now, it doesn't matter where you look, from France to Russia to Africa to Europe, imperial China. In every single region, in every single era, people have had a rather strong and understandable desire to eat and feed their families affordably. Prevent them from doing so, or make it considerably more expensive and difficult for them to do so, and you will have created

a powder keg situation, and the worst people in the world will be ready to take advantage. In their the citizenry won't hesitate to vote for charismatic foreign-born socialists who promised to resolve the food shortages, even though everybody with a grade school education understands that socialism is how you cause food shortages, not how you solve them. Socialist leaders won't merely make things worse. They will destroy the country, which of course is their goal. This is not a hypothetical scenario. In New York, Zohran Mamdani just announced that five city-owned grocery stores will be open by 2029 with the first one opening by the end of next year. Now, he promised that the stores would simply set prices so that they're 30% lower than you can find anywhere else. So that's the plan. Yes, the government is going to implement Soviet-style price fixing and undercut the market

by running and subsidizing its own grocery stores. Now, the discount will apply to, quote, all fresh produce, meat and seafood, along with roughly 20 additional categories of pantry staples, dairy, and refrigerated goods. Everyone will be able to access the discount without regard for income. The mayor's office says that combined, the savings are projected to cut New Yorkers average grocery bill by 15%, about $90 a month or roughly $1,000 a year. Allegedly. Watch. Today, I am proud to announce a collection of essential staples that will be predictably 30% cheaper at all five of our city-run grocery stores. This core set of goods will include all fresh produce, meat, and seafood,

along with 20 other essential items like cheese, milk, and bread. Here's how it will work. Once a month, our five city-run grocery stores will set prices for this core set of goods at 30% below typical retail prices. No exceptions, no gimmicks. The savings will last for the entire month. That means no weekly fluctuations nor sticker shock at the checkout line. Not for our seniors living on fixed incomes, nor for the parents who rely on a regular supply of apple slices to keep toddler tantrums at bay.

Now, can we all see this incredible example of produce in my hand? Now, you will see these plantains here, so for anyone wondering how much these beautiful plantains might cost, you can use this QR code or head to Grocery.N.YC to access our policy report. I'm going to demonstrate exactly what that means. Ladies and gentlemen, the QR code does work. You can see this here. Wow, it's so simple. You know, just set the prices to 30% cheaper than, well, he doesn't say exactly,

but 30% cheaper than anything else, we can assume. It's ingenious. I mean, if stuff is too expensive, just have the government come in and require that stuff be not too expensive. Why don't anyone else think of that? I mean, other than the Soviets and the Cubans and the Romanians and the Vietnamese, and the Cambodians and the Ethiopians and every other third world population that's ever existed.

Aside from all that, this is a truly novel idea. While we're at it, why does the government just take over every industry and undercut the market by 30%? In fact, why stop there? I mean, why not undercut the market by 50%? Why not 75%?

Why not 99%? Why not 100%? Why not give everything away for free? Imagine a city-run Apple store or a city-run Porsche dealership. You know, just walk in and buy a luxury vehicle for 10 bucks. Nobody should ever have to pay more than $10 for a vehicle.

I mean, that's a human rights violation. If cars cost more than $10, just make them be less than $10. Pass a law saying they're not allowed to be more than $10. Problem solved. Who could possibly complain? Now, this is the extent of the logic on display here. To call it childlike would be an insult to children. I mean, really the historical.

comparisons to other countries aren't even relevant. You don't need to study other countries to understand on its face how disastrous this will be. If you think for a second that this is a good idea, then you should immediately self-deport to other countries that are already governed like this. Go visit Cuba sometime, where a $10 tip is more than most people make in an entire month. And by the way, as the National Review pointed out, Mamdani was holding up some bananas, plantains, or whatever during that press conference. A banana currently goes for 23 cents at Trader Joe's in Manhattan, so he picked maybe the least expensive food item in any grocery store

to illustrate why we need state-run grocery stores. And there's no universe in which 23-cent bananas could possibly be difficult for anyone to afford a New York, especially given that everybody in the city is on some form of welfare anyway. But we're supposed to pretend otherwise. I mean, he's legitimately trying to make the case that if New Yorkers only have to pay 16 cents per banana instead of 23% because other New Yorkers are being forced to subsidize the cost of bananas,

then somehow life is going to get, you know, a lot more affordable. Well, the exact opposite is true. You know, bananas, like virtually every item in the grocery store, with the exception of alcohol and lottery tickets, are extremely low margin items. The typical net profit margin on purchases at a grocery store is between one and three percent, and bananas are no exception. If the government opens up enough of its own stores where everything is subsidized by taxpayers, then the existing grocery stores, including the crappy ones, which they call bodegas in New York,

will be unable to compete. People will stop buying the more expensive bananas when a subsidized option is available, which means before long bananas will become much harder to find outside Mamdani Marts. Privately owned stores will have no reason to sell them anymore. And then, because the only place to get bananas will be the Momdani Marts, before long, as this process repeats with every other grocery item, the lines will stretch out the, you know, out to the street, just like they did in the Soviet Union. Now, the only argument in defense of Mom Donnie's plan is that it's limited to five grocery stores at the moment. You know, by themselves, these stores won't serve enough customers to destroy the market for food in New York. And this is

always the best possible argument for any left-wing policy, by the way. The best argument is always that the policy won't be as destructive as everyone thinks, which means even the best argument still acknowledges that the policy will be destructive to some extent. And in this case, the hope is that people will see lines going out the door. They'll see the homeless people doing drugs in every aisle, and they'll notice that the shelves are empty all the time and everything is mismanaged. And, you know, they'll just go back to Trader Joe's. But if Mamdani's program expands, which is obviously the long-term goal,

that's the long-term goal with any government program, is to expand, then the result will be catastrophic. And that's not even getting into what will happen if the sub-term. subsidies run out, meaning if the few remaining taxpayers in New York decide to stop funding this insanity and leave the city, at a certain point, a death spiral begins, and it's impossible to pull out of it. Now, of course, socialists, particularly the female and foreign-born Mamdani supporters reject all of these complaints. They're convinced that Mamdani has the magical ability to set prices 30% lower without any negative consequences whatsoever. ever. There are no trade-offs. You know, one of the main things you learn in life as an adult

is that there are trade-offs for anything. There are always trade-offs for anything. And yet, according to Mamdani supporters, he's like a genie, right? He's magical. He is the one exception to that rule of life. For him, there are no trade-offs. He can just do stuff and it's fine. Watch. I don't understand how Mom-Dani can afford to sell groceries at 30% less if most grocery stores operate at a 1 to 2% profit, you set it yourself, you don't understand. The products that you sell at a grocery store don't have a 1 to 2% profit margin. They have a 40 to 60% profit margin. And logically, you understand that because you could go to the grocery store right now, get all the ingredients to bake a loaf of bread and sell that loaf of bread

for more than a 1% profit margin. The reason why the net profit for grocery stores is 1% to 2% is because their overhead costs are extremely high. What Mamdani is doing is removing the overhead costs that these grocery stores have. He's just changing the business model. It's the same reason why Aldi can afford to sell groceries for cheaper than your local grocer. They have a different business model. Mamdani's grocery stores are selling select items at a reduced rate, just like Aldi doesn't have everything your regular grocery store has.

They only have items they can afford to sell for less there. Momdani's grocery stores don't pay rent because the building is owned by the city, and they don't pay taxes because they are the city. That takes a huge amount of your operating costs off of your business every year. That money, you're able to put those profits back onto the consumer. First of all, you know, credit to this woman for sticking with just one camera angle, even if it is a weird one instead of 20 different cuts with 50 different poses. So that's a genuine improvement in TikTok production from the typical, liberal woman on the app, and so we should applaud it. At the same time, it needs to be said that the beginning of her video just doesn't, I mean, no part of nothing she said works.

You know, if somebody says, I don't understand how Mom Donnie's plan's going to work, seems like communist nonsense that will destroy the economy. You know, it doesn't work to reply with, well, you said it yourself, you don't understand. So if you're going to, you're going to, you know, sass an imaginary person who you made up for the video, the quip needs to make some sense. Yes, he admitted he doesn't understand, this hypothetical person, because it doesn't make any sense. So the act of not understanding something doesn't mean you're an idiot, just as easily. It could mean you're dealing with an incoherent concept. So when someone says they don't understand Mamdani's socialist policies, they don't mean they don't understand in the way that like they

don't understand calculus or some other coherent, though complex topic. They mean they don't understand in the way that they don't understand the gibberish ramblings of the homeless crackhead on the subway platform. They don't understand it because it's nonsensical. There is nothing to understand. Now, she tries to make the case that if you buy up all the ingredients for a loaf of bread, you could sell the loaf for more than a one to three percent profit margin, and therefore, we're supposed to conclude that the grocery stores are raking in big bucks. But the ingredients themselves are not the only input that creates a loaf of bread. A labor counts as an input. Someone has to mix those ingredients. These people always forget that part of it. And then there are,

And you have to pay for that unless we're going with slavery. I mean, that's one way to get around the labor costs because they never factored into their calculations. Oh, you know, it's, you know, profit margins are much higher than that. You know, because labor is free, apparently. Yeah, well, if we're going to, I mean, are we bringing slavery back? Is that what you're advocating? Probably. And then there are many different fixed costs like an oven, a building for the oven, you know, stuff like that.

It's actually more work and more money than people like this apparently think. Now, Mamdani's plan to short-circuit these overhead costs, contrary to what this woman says, is not remotely similar to Aldi's model. Aldi maintains its profit margins by selling Aldi brand slop and making the shopping experience as unpleasant as possible. They market themselves to people who don't care about variety or shelves that are stocked properly or employees who will bag their goods or have any will to live. But Aldi does not force New Yorkers at gunpoint to subsidize any of the items they sell. They don't demand that New Yorkers pay for their rent and their tax bills and their employees' salaries and everything else. So this is a very important distinction. It is not a different business model that Mom Dani is proposing.

He's not proposing a business model. He's proposing no business model at all. He's taking people's money and redistributing it using a grocery store as a mechanism. He's taking people's money by force at gunpoint, which is how the government operates, and redistributing it. That's it. And the cost, again, cannot possibly be matched by competitors. Momdani's stores won't convince Trader Joe's to lower their prices on bananas because they can't go any lower without losing money. They actually have to pay for the labor and the building and all that other stuff. Instead, this operation will quickly drive countless grocery stores at a business to the point that people have no choice. But to form breadlines at their local Momdani Mart. And this socialist woman does the same thing that socials always do by pretending that, you know, things that are government subsidized are somehow free. She says that Mamdani Marts don't pay rent.

And that's true, but that's only because the taxpayers are forced to cover the cost. Yes, it's incredible just how cheap everything suddenly becomes when you put a gun to the head of the taxpayer and force him to pay for it for you. But cheap for who exactly? Not for the taxpayer. He's the one whose pockets you're ringing out. So this is cheap specifically for people who aren't paying taxes. For the leeches, the non-contributors, it's cheap. You're not erasing any burdens. You're just shifting more of the burden onto the dwindling group of people who are already forced to carry almost all of it. There's another massive problem too, which is that these stores create an incentive for members of the public, including people from outside New York, to buy up everything. from the shelves in order to resell it. You know, there's a guaranteed 30% margin, after all. That's already what happens very often with merchandise in third world cities like Los Angeles.

People steal from CVS and then sell the merchandise on the sidewalk and then go buy drugs with it. In this case, the city is making it very easy to do the same thing. They're inviting theft. Mom Dani was asked about his plan to prevent this from happening. And his answer or, you know, really the answer from one of his stooges is great. I mean, it belongs in a museum, really. Watch. How are you going to keep people from taking advantage of that, you know, that deal, basically,

and is there going to be a limit on the number of items that someone can take that are discounted at that level from that essential basket? So our RFP makes very clear that this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling. I'm going to pass it over to our EDC head GPAC to add some additional details. Yes, if you look at our RFP for the operator, we are looking to make sure that we target New Yorkers, whether it be at sort of a library card-esque, and also we manage who's buying and that is focused on everyday New Yorkers. So we are mindful of that. And so we're going to make sure that we have all the things in place to make ensure that that does not happen.

So they're going to require an ID. By the way, so requiring the question is how you're going to stop people from buying? buying the cheap items and reselling them. And her answer is, well, we're going to make sure it's only New Yorkers who are able to, you know, buy things at the store. That doesn't solve the problem at all. That doesn't answer the question. But are you implying that New Yorkers would never do this?

Well, no, only outsiders would come in and buy up cheap items and resell them. Actual New Yorkers would never scam. They would never steal or scam. Oh, not New Yorkers. New Yorkers are saints. So yes, MAMDANI Marts will require ID. So now your library card won't just buy you a front row seat to hobos doing indecent and unspeakable things at the library. Now, it will get you access to state-funded grocery stores, too.

Now, of course, you still don't need your ID to vote. That would be preposterous. You know, you don't need your ID to vote because voting is a right, which means, for some reason, that we shouldn't need to do anything. We shouldn't do anything to protect it. But hold on a second. Momdani also says that access to affordable food is a right. And yet, in that case, he will require an ID. So if you didn't know any better, you get the distinct impression that socialists just make up the rules as they go.

What they said five seconds ago has no bearing on what they're saying in the present moment, which is exactly the case. And by the way, since we're on the subject, Mamdani hasn't limited himself to increasing grocery prices for New Yorkers. He's also doing everything in his power to make takeout and fast food delivery. even more absurdly expensive than it already was. Last week, Mabdani posted on social media bragging that since he took office, tips for food delivery drivers

have gone up by tens of millions of dollars. Actually, like $100 million or something. Now, it turns out that this was actually thanks to a piece of legislation that was passed before he took office, and it were a policy mandating that Uber Eats, DoorDash, and other food delivery apps set default tips at 10%

and make the tipping options more prominent so that people are more likely to click on them. And thanks to this change, $104 million have gone back into delivery workers' pockets, as Mamdani puts it. Which is a funny way to say that food delivery has become even more expensive for New Yorkers. And keep in mind, of course, that food delivery apps already charge a premium for all the taxes and fees, the delivery fee, the service fee. Sometimes they have like a small order fee or a long range fee or the priority delivery fee. And if users are hesitant to add a tip after all those fees, it's because their $14 burrito, which is already too expensive, is going to run them $27 without tip. Not to mention,

the tip is added as a percentage of the grand total, including taxes and fees. So they artificially inflate the price to an absurd degree, and then expect you to give a tip based on the artificially inflated price. So by this bit of voodoo magic, a 20% tip on a $14 burrito ends up being $6. even though 20% of 14 last I checked is actually like $3. So it's all a giant scam, and Momdani has intentionally made the scam worse and more expensive, and he's proud of it. Actually, he wasn't even responsible for this particular scam, but he's taking credit for it, which is somehow even worse. Now, it's also obvious and so demoralizing. You have to wonder how we got to this point. Momdani's election is largely the result of the foreign takeover of New York City, as we've discussed many times before.

in the third world, socialism is an attractive ideology because people aren't bright enough to realize that it doesn't work. You know, morality is often a foreign concept to them. There's a classic Polish book called In Desert and Wilderness that makes this point using something called Collie's morality. And the book, an African boy named Collie, tries to explain his understanding of right and wrong. He says, if somebody takes Collie's cow, it's a bad deed. If Collie takes somebody's cow, it's a good deed. And that's the end of that. and that's actually how much of the world operates. All the same, it's too simplistic to say that foreign invaders are the only explanation for what's happening.

The fact remains that Americans, especially white liberal women, are lining up to support socialist candidates all over the country. And many people, regardless of their politics, are understandably and justifiably furious that groceries are now so expensive. So how did this happen? Why exactly did groceries get to be so expensive? One explanation, which you rarely hear, relates to the wars in Iran and Ukraine. There's been a ton of price pressure on fertilizer, which just so happens to be made from the same precursors as explosives and propellants, use in ammunition, artillery, et cetera. Natural gas in particular is a huge part of the production for nitrogen fertilizers, and the wars have made the fertilizer and the gas far more expensive. Farmers can pass the cost along to consumers in the form of higher prices,

or they forego some fertilizers in exchange for smaller yields, which has the same effect, higher prices. This was a report from the beginning of the Ukraine War by the Wall Street Journal. Watch. Fertilizer prices have hit record highs, driven by supply shortages caused by the Ukraine-Russia war, along with a host of pre-existing factors.

It's a challenge for all of U.S. agriculture right now. For farmers who are just walking in to buy fertilizer today, They're twice as expensive as they would have been last August, close to three times as costly as they would have been in early 2021. Fertilizer is typically among farmers' biggest expenses each year, and the rising costs are creating cascading impacts for farmer incomes, crop yields, and food prices. Fertilizer is about three to four times costlier now than in 2020, and farmers around the world are feeling the pinch. High fertilizer prices has affected really the flow of how our operation does business. And really it comes down to timing and how much risk does the retailer take. How much risk does the farmer take?

Now this war, as you may have noticed, never ended. Instead, we now have a new war, one involving Iran, a major global energy producer that holds the second largest natural gas reserves in the world. So we have simultaneous wars involving the biggest fertilizer exporter, Russia, and two of the biggest energy producers in the entire world, Iran and the United States. So this is a recipe for exactly what we're seeing in grocery stores and every other sector of the economy that's dependent on these particular inputs. Add in disease and droughts, and you get the perfect storm, as Douglas Holtz-Eakin told the New York Post, quote, the spike in grocery prices has remained persistent due to shrinking U.S. cattle herds in the start of the Ukraine War in 2022.

Grocer grocery prices have gone up, especially in 21, but they have stayed high due to cattle disease, and bad growing conditions, he said. The war in Ukraine hurt as well because it's essentially the grain basket of the world. But the wars are only part of the problem. As we mentioned earlier, the COVID lockdowns were the beginning of the decline. We were all forced to stay indoors and businesses were forced to close down, even though all the experts, including Johns Hopkins, now concede that the lockdowns serve no purpose whatsoever in exchange for suspending our personal freedoms and destroying the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans, the federal government started mailing stimulus checks and funding other welfare programs that cost around $5 trillion.

And additionally, because the markets were crashing, the Fed spent trillions of dollars buying up assets, started officially keep the markets afloat. This money was essentially created out of thin air. The Treasury borrowed the money, and the Fed in turn bought treasuries from the market. It's like we fired up the money printer. And naturally, when you introduce all of this money into the economy, the value of every dollar goes down. That's basic supply and demand. Therefore, prices go up across the board, including at grocery stores. I should note, because not enough people mention this, that a lot of this money was created specifically to fund pension programs for the elderly, as well as welfare for non-white foreigners and emergency

top-ups for hospitals during the lockdowns. We weren't generating nearly enough tax revenues to cover these obligations, so we simply created the money. Congress, Carliners, have got all kinds of exceptions for illegal aliens with the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the CARES Act to ensure that foreigners would receive preventative care for COVID, as well as COVID testing and treatment for acute emergencies and so on. Community health centers received billions of federal dollars in exchange for treating anyone who walked in the door. States received even more money to help ensure that foreigners, in case they came down with the flu, you know, I mean COVID would be okay.

And on that note, since he's been in the news lately, here's Tony Fauci talking to a random guy in D.C. about COVID. You may remember this clip. But notice what Fauci says at the end of it concerning the number of fatalities from the flu. Listen. The people in America are not settled with the information that's been given to us right now.

So I'm not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn't clear in the first place. And then you all create a shot in miraculous time. It takes years to create vaccination. Well, it used to take years. Okay, it used to. You know how many years we're invested in this approach? About 20 years of science to get us to be able to do it quickly.

And nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with. The only reason I'm talking to you right now, as close as we are, is that I've been vaccinated. Right. But if it allow thousands of people like you don't get vaccinated, you're gonna let this virus

continue to percolate in this country and in this world. Something like the common flu then, right? And basically. It's much more serious than the flu. Well, the flu kills a lot of people annually, too. You know how many people died of the flu the last year? I mean, not this year, virtually none, but the previous year, about 20 to 30,000.

How many people have died from COVID-19 in the United States? 600,000 Americans. Hey, has Fauci ever stopped by that guy's house to apologize because, you know, that guy was right about everything he said, and Fauci was wrong and lying? If you listen closely, he admits that the death count from the flu was virtually none during COVID, which is amazing when you think about it.

At precisely the same moment, COVID was spreading like wildfire for the first time in recorded history, no one in the entire country managed to die from the flu. You know, many of us made this point at the time. It's almost as if we started counting all deaths from the flu and many other diseases as COVID deaths. It's almost as if hospitals had a financial incentive to count as many COVID deaths as they possibly could because they'd receive more federal funding if they did. More specifically, if hospitals documented that they were treating someone on Medicare for COVID,

then they'd receive a 20% increase in Medicare payments. In other words, if a hospital was treating an old person, the population most likely to die by far, they'd have a massive incentive to claim that the person was suffering from COVID. If they did that, they'd get more money. That was another invention of the CARES Act, which paid out hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, all this spending with money the government didn't have for the benefit of a very specific subset of the population, has led to the higher prices that we're seeing right now. This is part of a much broader issue, which is that our leaders have a perverse incentive to

provide an extraordinary amount of entitlements for the elderly and illegal aliens. You know, the elderly, of course, are one of the most powerful voting blocks in the country. They show up to the polls in greater numbers than anybody else. Many of the politicians they vote for are also elderly. Retirement does not exist as a concept for our elected leaders. Mitch McConnell has been essentially catatonic and bedridden for months, if not years, and he still has not resigned. And there's a lot of self-interest here among both the elderly,

politicians and the people who vote for them. That's why older voters refuse to consider the possibility of Social Security reform, even though Social Security is a giant Ponzi scheme that forces every working American to waste a portion of their paycheck every two weeks, money that they could have invested themselves for infinitely better returns. Yes, we should respect our elders, obviously. Yes, people who paid into Social Security should ideally have their money returned, but many of our policies favor older Americans at the expense of young families who are in the process of being economically strangled, and nobody seems to care. Again, our politicians have no incentive to tell the truth about any of this, because any politician

who does so will immediately be expelled from office. As for illegal aliens, of course, they're vital to the globalist campaign of mass demographic replacement, so they're entitled to infinite spending as well. To the extent that our elites panicked during COVID, it was because they feared illegal aliens might get wiped out, reversing the effect of, you. years of their open borders policies. So we had to spend hundreds of billions of dollars making sure that illegal aliens had emergency room care, masks, fake vaccines, and on and on and on. Now, the result is that interest payments on the national debt are now more expensive than defense spending. The defense budget is around $900 billion, and the CBO expects that interest payments

on our debt will exceed a trillion dollars this year. In just the first quarter of 2026, the interest payments totaled more than $270 billion, so we're well on our way. Other than Social Security payments, nothing is more expensive for this country than interest payments on our debt. Since the COVID lockdowns for context, we've more than doubled our interest payments. In all of 2019, we only spent something like $375 billion in interest payments, only, only $375 billion. But now the Fed refuses to lower rates, and we've spent so much. money and more money that the payments are now completely out of control. In related news, we're losing control of our ability to manage interest rates. Now, you can sense this from the

tension between the White House and the Fed, which refuses to change interest rates, despite a lot of pressure from the president, as well as the new appointment of a new Fed share. The problem is pretty clear. A single percentage point increase in the interest rate now means that we'll owe $3 trillion more dollars over the next decade. Raising rates could have disastrous consequences for our finances. And meanwhile, if the Fed cut rates, as the president wants, there's a legitimate risk of making inflation even worse. And this inflation risk is higher because the government is already spending far too much money and injecting far too much money into the economy. So we box ourselves into a position where there's no clear right answer. And in the meantime,

some of the most prominent commentators and podcasters in the country are busy every day rambling about conspiracy theories and, you know, getting into soap opera feuds with other prominent commentators and podcasters, there's been very little discussion about one of the most dangerous developments in this country's history, which is that people are struggling to pay for their ever-increasing grocery bills. As long as the left is responding to this crisis, while the right obsesses over nonsense and gossip, the Socialists will continue to win elections all over the country. That's how socialists have always risen to power all over the world. Most people think a bed should be one of the most comfortable places in your house,

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Walsh, use code Walsh to unlock 15% off Bollin Branch.com slash Walsh, use code Walsh. Exclusions apply. One of the many things we've lost in modern life is the ability to depend on each other. We've become dependent on systems rather than on our communities. Christians are called to support one another, pray for one another, and bear one another's burdens, and that's one reason I appreciate Christian healthcare ministries. CHM isn't health insurance, it's a health-cost-sharing ministry where Christians voluntarily come together to share one another's eligible medical bills. It's a practical way of living out the Christian life, not just talking about it. Christian Healthcare Ministries has been doing exactly

that since 1981. In 45 years, CHM has satisfied 100% of every eligible medical bill that they've received. Programs start as low as $115 per person per month with added protection for catastrophic medical events. If you're looking for an affordable, biblical alternative, you should check these guys out. Can start it today by visiting. C.H. Ministries.org slash Walsh, that's C.H.ministries.org slash Walsh. In February of 1917, International Women's Day, female textile workers went on strike, demanding bread. And in a matter of months, the Bolsheviks quickly rose to power with the slogan, Peace, Land, and Bread. They were forcing people to empty out their bank accounts at

gunpoint soon afterwards. And we discuss all this in our latest real history special, but it's hardly the only example. The Hungarian Soviet Republic formed after severe food shortages in Budapest. The head of the French Revolution, bread prices cost something like 80% of the typical family budget. Rioters stormed the Bastille in part to find grain. The German revolution of 1918 followed failed potato harvest, which led to mutiny strikes and the ouster of the Kaiser. The Paris Commune of 1871 followed food shortages after the Franco-Prussian war in which people were reduced to eating zoo animals and household pets. Hundreds of thousands of people died in Greece during the Great Famine following

access occupation, leading to the rise of a Communist Party called the National Liberation Front and setting the stage for a civil war. In America, following the Great Depression, Democrats began trying to pack the Supreme Court and destroy our institutions, which was the closest we've ever come to a genuine leftist revolution here. Until now. Well, less than a century later, suddenly a large-scale leftist revolution is once again plausible. All the elements are there.

The foreign wars, the days of rage, the constant left-wing assassinations and domestic terrorism, inflation, an affordability crisis that's making groceries more difficult to obtain than they've been in memory. All of it stacks. All of it compounds. Now, the left has no solution to any of this. All of their ideas would make the problem far worse. But unlike the leaders of the right, these socialists have one major advantage, which is that they understand that these problems do exist. They're speaking to an audience about issues that actually matter, even if their solutions always involve creating more of the exact kinds of problems they're supposedly trying to solve. If we spend the next five months focused on foreign affairs and intra-right-wing squabbling while the left talks about groceries,

well, the truth is it doesn't matter if they propose Soviet-style grocery stores that will obviously fail. They'll win anyway, because at least they're doing something. They might be doing the worst possible thing, but generally the people who do something, even the worst thing, tend to win over the people who do nothing at all. That's the lesson of every socialist revolution throughout history. And unless we start taking some legitimate action to reverse this trend, starting with an immediate end to these foreign wars,

and a refocus on the most important domestic matters starting with the price of food, it'll be a lesson that we inevitably learn as well. And we're going to learn it the hard way. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day.

Godspeed. Once upon a time, there was a country. Not just a country, but a big one, an empire. And in that empire, there was an upper middle class family. Where two boys were raised by their mother, loved books, Uncle Tom's cabin in the Bible. Their father admired the country's leaders. They were patriotic and happy.

Both sons went to universities where they were radicalized. One of the brothers read a book and convinced him to try to shoot the country's leader. He was hanged. The other brother read the same books. They decided to lead a movement. First they came from the universities and no one seemed to care. Then they took over the unions. And again, no one seemed to care.

Then they created their own media organizations and took over the cities. And again, most people just ignored it. Change, after all, was something they could believe in, until it was too late. Sound familiar? This is the real history of communism, the Russian Revolution.