President Donald Trump just keeps making up numbers about the prices of groceries and gas.
Trump repeated his false claim on Wednesday that some states had an average price of $1.98 per gallon of gas ahead of Memorial Day weekend last month. He also said that grocery prices are “down,” despite offering no evidence of that claim.
“Grocery prices are down, gasoline prices are down, and we’re down...We had numerous states, $1.98 a gallon. Just in time for Memorial Day weekend. How about that?,” Trump said during a summer soiree on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday.
Both of Trump’s claims about lower prices were fact checked by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, on social media platform X. According to Grok, grocery prices “have generally increased since January 21, 2025, based on BLS and USDA data.”
“From January to April 2025, prices for items like milk (+1.2%), ground beef (+9.1%), and bananas (+2.3%) rose. Eggs, despite a 17.7% drop in April, were still 3.4% higher than in January. A 0.3% decrease from March to April 2025 is an exception, not the trend. Annual food inflation was 2.8% through April,” Grok’s post stated.
Grok also addressed Trump’s false claim about gas prices below $2 per gallon.
“No credible evidence shows gas at $1.98/gallon anywhere in the U.S. as of June 2025,” the post from Grok stated.
Trump has previously claimed that gas prices were below $2 per gallon despite that claim being easily debunked by a number of different analyses. According to AAA, the national average is $3.14 for a gallon of gas as of June 5.
Mississippi has the lowest average cost of gas at about $2.64 per gallon as of June 5, according to AAA.
Patrick De Haan, a price analyst at GasBuddy, also fact checked Trump’s claim.
“While a handful of stations saw gas below $2/gal from 4-7pm as part of a gas station loyalty promotion on Thursday, GasBuddy data showed no stations below $2 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday of the long weekend, with the cheapest state (Mississippi) averaging $2.63/gal,” he wrote on X.
Stories by Lauren Sforza
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.