President Donald Trump hosted an “End of Summer BBQ” in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday where his guests were served gourmet hamburgers - a choice that has provoked an uproar in light of the ongoing affordability crisis.
Trump’s bash was attended by Cabinet members and Republican lawmakers, who spent a humid evening listening to the president deliver a speech in which he joked about a friend taking Ozempic and attempted to dispel rumors that he wears a wig.
According to the event’s menu, those invited were treated to three courses: heirloom tomato and burrata salad, prime-aged beef burger and frozen strawberry curd.
It was the main course that offended, given that the average retail price of ground beef stands at $6.89 per pound, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 10 percent rise year-on-year, pricing many working American families out of a favorite meal.
The panelists on CNN’s NewsNight were quick to cite the matter as the latest evidence of Trump behaving in a tone-deaf manner towards the concerns of voters, placing it alongside a recent CNN/SSRS poll that found that 73 percent of people consider him to have the wrong priorities.
“He’s in the Rose Garden tonight eating fine beef, eating a three-course meal, out on the patio,” MeidasTouch reporter Scott MacFarlane said.
“Hamburgers cost $6 apiece at the grocery store right now. The box of sugar cereal – which sometimes is dinner – $6 for the box of cereal, $4 for a loaf of bread. It’s not the culture war c***. It’s food can’t be purchased at the levels you need when you have two teenagers.
“They can’t afford college, they can’t afford healthcare. Fertilizer costs too much, which means farmers are struggling, which is why Iowa is in play.”
Trump’s barbecue was also held just a day after his deal allowing 300,000 metric tons of imported beef into the U.S. tax-free for a 90-day period came into effect.
The president announced the news on Truth Social last month, saying his administration was dedicated to helping domestic livestock farmers while adding: “We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”
The move was intended to appeal to conservatives ahead of November’s midterms – who might otherwise complain his administration has not done enough to bring down prices – but risked ushering in unwelcome competition for beleaguered ranchers, a point made by several GOP senators representing predominantly rural states.
“Americans want U.S. beef on the table – not foreign imports,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso told The New York Times.
Republican Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy similarly said he had advised the president against making the move “because American ranchers have been struggling against the packer monopoly for decades, and this will further harm them.”
Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts likewise said he has told Trump his “short-term solutions” were “not gonna work.”
Neither Trump nor Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said where the incoming imported meat originates from and a White House official pressed by The Independent would only say it was from “foreign beef exporters.”
Trump has since attempted to soothe the sector’s concerns by other means, pledging to allow farmers to process their own beef – after receiving a prompting from conservative pundit Glenn Beck, who warned him that a small number of processing plants held a “monopoly.”
He has meanwhile repeatedly promised that the price of beef will come down “very rapidly,” a guarantee he was also making last September.
