Media Matters noted previously that several economists explained that Trump’s proposal would raise food prices, not lower them.
Some national news outlets, including Axios, noted that “Trump’s vow to lower grocery costs will backfire,” and writing in The Atlantic, the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome and Sophia Bagley described the folly of “Trump’s deranged plan to lower food prices by raising them.” MSNBC prime-time host Chris Hayes also mentioned Trump’s response to the food price question.
But many of the most prominent and influential major news organizations in the country failed to cover Trump’s comments at all.
Factiva searches turned up no coverage at all from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Reuters between September 17 and noon on September 24.
A SnapStream search of the same time frame also turned up no coverage from the broadcast morning and evening news programming of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS, along with the corporate networks’ Sunday political talk shows.
Instead, CBS’ Evening News and PBS’ NewsHour covered Trump’s farming-focused September 23 event in Pennsylvania, during which he threatened farm equipment manufacturer John Deere with 200% tariffs.
NBC’s Nightly News and Today covered Trump’s prearranged visit to a Pennsylvania grocery store the same day, where he gave $100 to a potential voter as a campaign stunt (a possible federal crime).
And The Associated Press reported on both September 23 events. These reports, however, failed to mention Trump’s incoherent answer on food prices from the previous week, even though he specifically mentioned that he would restrict imports of “farm product.”
Meanwhile, two of these networks’ late night comedy shows did cover his rambling response.
Both NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and CBS’ Late Night with Stephen Colbert drew attention to the incoherent nature of Trump attempting, and failing, to explain how he would lower food prices, while their networks’ news programs ignored it.
Seth Meyers even helpfully contextualized the actual reason that grocery prices spiked in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting both the incoherence of Trump’s rambling response and the ease with which a news network could have informed its viewers about the topic.
