Oh my beloved rabble rousers - sit down a minute. Auntie needs to talk to you about some things, because I have been watching the news and doing math, and I am about three seconds away from taking this shillelagh for a walk it won’t forget.
They are lying to you about groceries.
I know. I know. You know. But let’s say it out loud anyway, because apparently that still needs doing.
The gaslighter-in-chief stood up, in public and in full, grating, snorting voice and told Congress that grocery prices are “plummeting downward.” He claimed eggs were down 60%. He said beef was “starting to come down significantly.” And the MAGA faithful nodded along like those little bobblehead dogs in the back window of a 1994 Buick LeSabre.
Here is what is actually true. Eggs? Yes. Eggs came down, because the bird flu that sent them into the stratosphere in early 2025 has eased up some. That part is real. Now stop there, because that is where the truth ends and the carnival barking begins.
Ground beef? A record high. Six dollars and seventy-five cents a pound as of January. Up 22% from a year ago. That is the fastest beef inflation since June of 2020 — which was, for those keeping score, also during a Trump administration. Chicken is up. Coffee is up 35%. Orange juice is up 25%. Restaurant prices are up 3.8% year over year. The USDA itself - Trump’s own USDA - is projecting that overall food prices will rise 2.9% in 2026. Not fall. Rise.
Plummeting. He said plummeting, babies. With his whole mouth. The guy who doesn’t know what a corner store is and thinks affordability is a made up word. Seriously - he once called affordability a “con job.” That’s a quote. He said that. The man who ran for president on bringing down the cost of living told you, in a moment of unusual candor, that affordability is a con job. I am choosing to believe that was the one honest sentence of the whole production. Because if the grocery price speech was the con, someone needs to tell him his tell is showing.
Now. Let’s talk about gas.
They’ll tell you gas is the one thing that’s up, and that’s because of the war, and the war will be over soon, and then gas will come right back down and everything will be fine and wouldn’t you like a little flag to wave while you wait.
No. Auntie would not.
On February 28th of this year, the United States - with no formal declaration of war, no congressional vote, no authorization of any kind - started bombing Iran. The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil supply moves every single day, effectively closed. Crude oil prices shot up 44%. Gas at the pump went from $2.98 a gallon to over $4.00. In Ohio, up $1.64 a gallon — 58.6%. In Michigan, up $1.59 a gallon. In Utah, up $1.61. These are not blue coastal elite states being punished for their politics. These are red states full of Trump voters paying $4.50 for gas to get to jobs that haven’t given them a raise that’s kept pace with any of this.
The Energy Secretary went on television in March and promised it would be “weeks - not months” before prices came back down. It has been more than 60 days and there is no end it sight. It is now May. Congress is on recess. The war is still happening. The ceasefire is shaky. Middle Eastern refineries that were damaged in the conflict will cost an estimated $25 billion and years to repair. Global natural gas markets are projected to remain tight through 2026 and 2027. The chief economist at Moody’s Analytics said, plain as anything, “There’s no going back on oil prices, at least not any time in the near future.” Even under the most optimistic scenarios, analysts say gas settles around $3.50 a gallon by year’s end — which is still 52 cents higher than it was before this started.
But here’s the part that should make every single MAGA voter who said Kamala Harris would take us to war swallow very hard and take a long look in the mirror.
We were not going to be hit by an Iranian nuclear weapon. Not before this war. You know why? Because there was a deal. A real, functioning, inspected, verified deal called the JCPOA — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015. Under that agreement, Iran had dismantled thousands of its most advanced centrifuges. It had shipped out almost all of its enriched uranium. It had international inspectors on site, cameras running, monitoring in real time. The IAEA certified Iran’s compliance. Trump’s own Joint Chiefs chairman told Congress in 2017 that Iran was adhering to its obligations and the deal was delaying Iran’s nuclear weapons development.
Trump called it a disaster. He ripped it up in 2018. He didn’t like it because Obama’s administration did it. So, he could have sent negotiators (real diplomats, not his son-in-law and bud trying to line their own pockets) to improve it but instead, he ripped it up and promised a “much better deal.” A deal that took a decade to finally agree to gone and a guy whose timeline for everything is either “first day” or “two weeks” saying no problem.
What happened next is not complicated. Iran, no longer bound by the agreement and no longer being watched by inspectors, started enriching uranium again. And then more. And then more. By early 2024, it had enough material for three nuclear bombs. By 2025, the IAEA formally declared Iran noncompliant. After Trump pulled out, Iran went from a carefully monitored, constrained program to stockpiling 11 tons of enriched uranium — potentially enough for up to 100 nuclear weapons. The experts Auntie has been reading this week are not mincing words: “Iran simply would not have been able to enrich to this level had the JCPOA remained in place.”
So. We had a deal. It was working. We ripped it up. Iran built the bomb stockpile we ripped it up to prevent. Then we started a war to deal with the bomb stockpile we created by ripping up the deal.
And now Trump is at the negotiating table trying to get something better than what he threw away. His team is demanding Iran agree to a 20-year pause on uranium enrichment. Iran has offered five years. The UN’s own nuclear chief has said the JCPOA can’t even serve as a template anymore because Iran has made so much “exponential progress” since it fell apart. One senior analyst called Trump’s chief negotiators “too technically ill-informed to understand the significance of what was on the table.” Translated: Jared and Steve Witkoff are there to make money and no diplomats with nuclear experience are there.
The best case scenario is that we end up with something weaker than what we started with. The more likely scenario, if history is any guide, is that we end up in a longer conflict that costs more American lives and more American dollars — and Trump is already laying the groundwork. When reporters asked him about the 60-day War Powers deadline - the Vietnam-era law that says a president must get congressional approval to keep fighting after two months - he told them: “Don’t rush me. We were in Vietnam for like 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years.” He then suggested the War Powers Act itself might be unconstitutional.
He is telling you. He is right there, telling you, that he expects this to go on. Congress — which has tried six times to pass a resolution requiring authorization and failed six times — went on recess this week rather than do its job. They left town. On the 60th day of an unauthorized war. They went home.
Auntie needs a moment to breathe.
Okay. One more thing, because apparently the week wasn’t full enough.
Yesterday — yesterday, loves, on May 1st, while the war is still technically happening and the economy is gasping - Trump announced 25% tariffs on European automobiles. Why? Because, he posted on Truth Social, the European Union is “not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal.” The EU says it doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Their spokesman called the announcement “clear unreliability” and accused the US of “repeatedly breaking its commitments.” There was a deal - the Turnberry Agreement, named after Trump’s golf resort in Scotland, which is a sentence that makes Auntie throw up in her mouth a little - that set EU tariffs at 15%. The Supreme Court already knocked that down to 10%. Now it’s 25%, for reasons that remain unclear to everyone including apparently the people who made the deal.
Here is what 25% tariffs on European cars means for you. It means Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen — which import a significant portion of the vehicles they sell here from European plants — are either going to raise their prices to cover the tariff, or they’re going to stop importing those models entirely. They will not be sending a check to Washington. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that nearly 90% of tariff costs fall on American consumers and firms, not foreign countries. The president has explained this. Multiple times. The receipts exist. And still, every week, someone goes on television to explain that the foreign countries are paying.
They are not paying, my lovely good troublemakers. You are paying. You are paying at the gas pump for a war Congress never authorized. You are paying more for beef than at any point in recorded American history. You are paying the tariff on your next car. And you were told all of this would make America great again.
Here is what Auntie wants you to hold onto, because she didn’t come here just to make you feel worse.
They are lying to you because the truth won’t sell. The truth is that a working agreement was destroyed out of spite and ego, and we are now at war with a country that would not have had the nuclear program we went to war over if we had left the agreement in place. The truth is that groceries are not down - eggs are down and everything else is up, and inflation is running at 3.3% and climbing. The truth is that you are paying for tariffs that you were promised someone else would pay. The truth is that Congress has gone on vacation rather than do the most basic thing the Constitution requires of it - decide whether this country goes to war.
And the truth is that you are not stupid. You are standing at the meat counter paying $6.75 a pound and you know something is wrong. You are filling your tank for $65 and you know something is wrong. You are watching Congress walk out the door on Day 60 of a war nobody voted for and you know something is wrong.
Trust that. Hold onto that. And when November comes, remember every single name that left town.
** Auntie Fah is broadcastin’ live, independent, and entirely reader-supported from somewhere in Gilead with a strong cup of tea, a grocery receipt, and a list longer than her arm. Everything she says is fact-checked, even the parts that sound like she made them up — she didn’t. If you want to keep the lights on and the kettle hot, buy us a cuppa at buymeacoffee.com/unfugginbelievable. Tits up, elbows out, you brilliant, exhausted, beautiful people. Auntie’s got the shillelagh, and she’s not afraid to use it.
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