President Trump's claims on affordability
Evaluating the president's claims with data. An experiment.
Affordability— the measure of whether someone has enough income or resources to pay for basic needs without undue financial strain— is much in the news after the 2025 elections. President Trump spoke about the issue today. His remarks are printed in full below.
Here is how voters think President Trump has handled the issue of affordability (scroll to bottom for image optimized for mobile):
Here are the president’s claims from November, 7 2025 (Scroll to bottom for image optimized for mobile):
President Trump’s remarks:
“We are much better than Biden and all of them now, just so you understand, do you remember that the Biden administration had the highest inflation in 48 years? But most people say ever recorded? Do you remember that? Right? Do you remember it? Did they have the highest inflation in 48 years? Did they answer me the question, you know the answer? The answer is yes, they had the worst inflation in 48 years. We have almost no inflation. We’re down now to 2% and we’ll be in maybe 1% you want to always stay above 1% actually, you want a little tiny bit of inflation, or the perfect number. They were at the highest level in recorded history. Okay? And when you talk about affordability, that one factor, let’s talk about the second biggest subject, after inflation, energy. We’re going to be a $2 gasoline. We approximately $2 very soon. We’re a little bit above $2 right now for gasoline now, under Biden, it was four and a half. It even hit five, but it was $4.03 and a half dollars, we’re going to be at $2 a gallon. So gasoline is much less. Energy costs are less when you have energy and when you have gasoline less everything else follows. It’s such a big category. So when you have lower energy prices, which I think you admit we do substantially, that means everything else. So we are the victors on affordability. But if I watched that election, which I was not much involved in, I didn’t support Virginia, the candidate didn’t do a lot of support for the other candidates. They asked me about Cuomo, and I said, Well, it’s a question, do you want a thug or do you want a communist? I mean, that was my response. So I wasn’t involved in that stuff too much, but, but I will say this, if you look at affordability, which they campaigned on, they lied, because they talked about, all prices are up. No, no. Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they’re down substantially. Energy prices are down by 3035 40% gasoline is way down. And the other big thing is we started, inflation is way down. The big the biggest thing is inflation. The second biggest thing is energy. Energy is way down. And what’s also down, gasoline, also the biggest thing is inflation, and it’s way down. We took over a mess, the highest inflation in recorded history. Some people would say, 48 years. I’ll take either one of them, but I believe it’s the highest inflation in recorded history. That alone makes it impossible for them to have done a good job affordability, right? So one other thing, when I came into office, Victor, two days into office, they were screaming at me about the cost of eggs. I was there for two days. Eggs had quadrupled. And I said, Listen, I just did. I just got here. Let me check it out, and they were right. Eggs had gone up by three, four times within a period of a few months. We had eggs down to a normal cost. We did a great job on groceries and affordability. The only problem is the fake news. You people don’t want to report it. And in fact, I’d like to ask Caroline, where’s Caroline? I’d like to ask Caroline a question. Where is she? She deserted us. She deserted me. Our great Caroline superstar deserted me. Anyway, she’s right outside she was going to talk about because the fake news yesterday, they talked about that, they said, Oh, I don’t want to talk about affordability. The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was on under sleepy Joe Biden and the prices are way down.”
Mobile optimized polling numbers on how the public thinks the president has handled these issues:
President Trump’s claims on affordability checked against available facts. Optimized for mobile:







As chair of the River City Journalism Fund, rcjf.org a non-profit that supports coverage of marginalized communities in St. Louis , John Dickerson is a role model for me. I can’t match his grace and wit. But I can heartily recommend his newsletter and everything else like The Gabfest where he holds forth.
A timely, much needed, comparative analysis of the affordability concept. Thank you for the hard work it takes to bring forward a close data driven examination.