CNN’s Daniel Dale Fact Checks Trump’s ‘Meet the Press’ Interview — Including a Whopper About the Price of Bacon

Sarah RumpfSep 18th, 2023, 10:47 pm
 

CNN’s Daniel Dale ran through a fact check of former President Donald Trump’s interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, naming fourteen false claims — including a notable one about the price of bacon.

The ex-president’s chat with Welker aired over the weekend, and covered a wide-ranging selection of topics including whether he’d pardon himself, his reaction to Hunter Biden’s new indictment, his own criminal cases, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the upcoming 2024 election and more.

Trump’s comments during the interview had “add[ed] more lies to the laundry list,” said CNN Primetime anchor Pamela Brown to introduce Dale.

After Dale dissected Trump’s claims about his “perfect” call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, blaming then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, inaccurate portrayals of abortion laws, and misrepresentations of his past comments about directing the Department of Defense to use special forces to “inflict maximum damage” on drug cartels, the topic turned to a topic near and dear to many Americans’ hearts (perhaps to the dismay of their cardiologists): bacon.

“Let’s talk about bacon,” said Brown. “Because apparently that is Trump’s inflation gauge.”

Replied Dale:

Yes, so in this interview, Trump, for the second time in the last two weeks, claimed that the price of bacon has gone up by five times — that it has quintupled under Joe Biden.

Well, we have very good stats in this country on the price of bacon. It has increased about 12% under Joe Biden, going from about $5.83 per pound to about $6.50 per pound.

Now, Trump could just say that. This is another case where Donald Trump could — he has a stat that could work to his purposes, if he had just cited it accurately. Instead, it seems like he can’t help himself, he has to extremely exaggerate it, claiming it’s a 400 percent increase instead of again, the 11.5 increase we actually had.

“That’s probably one of your easier fact-checks, I would imagine,” Brown remarked.

“It was,” Dale agreed with a chuckle.

The CNN graphic during the last part of this segment showed that the price of bacon was $5.83 per pound in Jan. 2021, when Biden was inaugurated, and was $6.50 per pound in August.

Watch above via CNN.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law & Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on the BBC, MSNBC, NewsNation, Fox 35 Orlando, Fox 7 Austin, The Young Turks, The Dean Obeidallah Show, and other television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe.