MSNBC’s Jen Psaki Ridicules Trump With ‘Affordability’ Clips — Days After Gatsby Blowout At Mar-a-lago

MSNBC host and former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki roasted President Donald Trump for adopting “affordability” rhetoric from Democrats just days after hosting a glitzy Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-lago.

Trump has been fighting a battle over “affordability” this week by citing a false claim about Walmart and repeatedly claiming he’s already solved the issue.

On Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, the host opened her show by contrasting those assurances with the facts, and with Trump’s recent partying down:

JEN PSAKI: Which brings me to the lie.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Mr. President, since you brought up the Walmart Thanksgiving meal —

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yeah.

REPORTER: — and it is cheaper, but it also contains less — as affordability —

TRUMP: Well, I haven’t heard that. You’re telling me — who are you with? Who are you with?

REPORTER: I’m with NBC News, sir.

TRUMP: Fake news, NBC. You’re fake news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: That’s right. The Walmart Thanksgiving meal that Trump has been touting as proof positive that he has made the country more affordable is cheaper this year because it has less stuff. Like a lot less stuff.

I mean, for days now, Trump has been pushing the fact that the prepackaged Walmart Thanksgiving dinner is 25 percent cheaper than it was last year. But he has been conveniently ignoring the fact that this year’s Walmart Thanksgiving package is missing a bunch of items it had last year, like onions, celery, sweet potatoes, chicken broth, seasoning, muffin mix, marshmallows, whipped topping, and pecan pie. I mean, those were all pretty key delicious parts of Thanksgiving, right?

The meal also downgraded certain items like swapping Hawaiian rolls for cheaper dinner rolls. So yeah, surprise, surprise, his claim is completely misleading.

But he was pushing this whole Thanksgiving meal narrative for a reason. I mean, since Democrats swept Tuesday’s election, the right has all of a sudden woken up to America’s affordability crisis. Fox News is even talking about how much prices have risen for consumers all across the country. Trump himself is even starting to talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It’s no good if we do a great job and you don’t talk about it. And I don’t think they talk about it enough. You know, they have this new word called affordability, and they don’t talk about it enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: They have this new word called affordability.

I mean, apparently the concept is entirely new to him, I guess. But ever since Tuesday, affordability has become one of Donald Trump’s absolute favorite things to talk about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump, so I don’t want to hear about the affordability because right now we’re much less.

It was a con job, affordability, they call it.

But we just lost an election they said based on affordability.

You know, I saw that they kept talking about affordability.

So, we talk about affordability.

We should be talking about it because they talk about affordability.

The affordability is much better with the Republicans.

We are the ones that have done great on affordability.

So, we are the victors on affordability.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PSAKI: Yes, when I hear the name Trump, I don’t know about you. I think affordability or the affordability, as he called it there. I mean, holding a lavish, Great Gatsby themed party in the middle of a government shutdown hours before SNAP benefits were set to be cut off, a party titled, I kid you not, “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody”. That was the title of the party.

That does not exactly scream. I am a president who cares about affordability. So, Trump has been partying and his biggest donors now on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. There’s that — all the while. This week, nearly 42 million Americans, most of whom are children, elderly or disabled, went without SNAP benefits, despite two federal judges ordering the Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits last week. This week, the administration actively chose to drag their feet, and that has meant a week without money for food, for tens of millions of America’s poorest people in the country.

“The New York Times” spoke with people all around the country to ask how they managed to get by. And here’s what they learned. Here are some of the stories. A single mother in New Jersey described her struggle to feed her two young sons, with a budget of just $50.

In Oklahoma, a 61-year-old woman questioned whether driving to a food pantry was worth the gas money because a gallon of gas near her cost $2.50 and she only had $1.18 left. In Wisconsin, a mother of a four-month old with a heart defect was in need of a specialized baby formula, and she said it runs $75 a can. She didn’t have the money for that baby formula.

In Colorado, a 25-year-old with health issues, tried to — tried the only nearby food bank, but everything there was already gone. Desperate, she snuck into a Walmart parking lot and grabbed as much as she could from the dumpster. Bags of frozen vegetables, meal replacement shakes, cheese, fruit, loaves of moldy bread that she thought she could salvage.

I mean, that’s just a taste from “The New York Times”. That’s just some of what tens of millions of Americans have had to suffer through this week. While Trump claims he’s the champion of affordability, while partying all the while.

Watch above via MSNBC’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.

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