CNN dismissed President Donald Trump’s claims about falling grocery prices just weeks before government data confirmed the sharpest monthly decline in food-at-home costs in nearly five years.
The latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed the food-at-home index dipping 0.4% in April — the steepest drop since September 2020 — with egg prices alone falling 12.7%, the biggest one-month plunge since 1984. Those numbers landed Tuesday, the same day CNN Business conceded the president’s previous claims about egg prices are “true now.”
CNN had previously taken a hard line against the idea that grocery prices in general were falling.
“Trump claimed last Thursday and Friday that grocery prices ‘are down’ and then claimed Tuesday that they have ‘come down.’ False again,” CNN reporter Daniel Dale wrote on April 23, citing March data that still showed modest increases.
.@POTUS: “Prices are down. Groceries are down… Gasoline yesterday in three states hit $1.98 per gallon… I keep hearing about prices and inflation. Prices are coming down. Not going up.” pic.twitter.com/jG58RviMsH
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 18, 2025
“You can have all the eggs you want,” the president said in April. “We have too many eggs. In fact, if anything the prices are getting too low … Prices are coming down, not going up. Only the fake news says they’re going up.”
CNN’s previous framing — which rejected not just Trump’s numbers but the broader idea of declining grocery costs — came weeks before official data turned in his favor. While CNN correctly knocked his exaggerated claim that egg prices had dropped “93, 94%,” the network’s “false again” verdict about falling grocery prices is inaccurate in light of new data. CNN did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for clarification.
Wholesale market trends were already were already pointing to an imminent drop in egg prices specifically. The Agriculture Department had logged a steady slide in egg prices through late March, and private trackers showed softening meat and produce costs. The April CPI confirmed those trends, leading CNN’s Tuesday follow-up to strike a more tempered note. David Goldman, executive editor at CNN Business, called the 12.7% egg plunge a “remarkable reversal” and acknowledged that while Trump’s math was flawed, the overall direction was accurate.
“So Trump’s claim that consumer egg prices are down is finally true — even if the timing of his claim and the wild percentages he threw around were grossly inaccurate,” Goldman wrote.
The same article noted that wholesale egg costs had already been halved, making a retail correction inevitable. Still, CNN emphasized eggs remain 49% more expensive than a year ago and above 2021 levels, which the latest CPI reflects — context Trump has not mentioned. The White House likewise didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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