Donald Trump Admits ‘Prices Are Too High’ After Calling ‘Affordability’ a ‘Democratic Hoax’

Donald Trump is now openly acknowledging that everyday costs are climbing across the United States.

On Tuesday, Dec. 9, the president, 79, headlined a rally at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pa., an event centered on rising prices for basic necessities.

Speaking beneath a large banner that read, “Lower Prices, Bigger Paychecks,” Trump discussed the surge in consumer costs and declared, “I have no higher priority than making America affordable again.”

Grocery prices have jumped significantly compared to a year ago, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some of those increases — including coffee, which is up 41% — have been partially linked to Trump’s tariffs, according to CNBC.

On Wednesday, Trump shifted the blame for the price spikes to Democrats.

“They always have a hoax,” he told the Pennsylvania crowd. “The new word is ‘affordability.’ Democrats are like, ‘prices are too high.’ Yeah, they’re too high because they cause them to be too high. But now they’re coming down.”

Despite previously branding affordability concerns as a “Democratic hoax,” Trump went on to say, “I can’t say affordability is a hoax because I agree the prices were too high. So I can’t go to call it a hoax because they’ll misconstrue that.”

Trump also repeated that his “favorite word is ‘tariff,’ ” boasting that his trade policies have generated “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

At one point, he suggested Americans could simply cut out some items: “You can give up certain products,” he said. “You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, you know, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two, you know. They don’t need that many.”

Earlier this month, during a televised Cabinet meeting, Trump dismissed the term “affordability” as a “Democrat scam.”

“They say it, and then they go on to the next subject,” he added. “And everyone thinks, ‘Oh, they had lower prices.’ “

He also claimed that “nobody could afford anything” during former President Joe Biden’s administration and inaccurately asserted that Biden’s policies produced the “worst inflation in history.”

“Now some people will correct me, because they always love to correct me,” Trump said. “Even though I’m right about everything. But some people like to correct me, and they say 48 years.”