Former US President Donald Trump during a news conference at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, US, on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024.

WASHINGTON ― Standing in front of a table stacked with food items at his New Jersey golf course last summer, Donald Trump complained that grocery prices had “skyrocketed” and promised to fix that if Americans made him president again: “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.”

Ninety-six days later, grocery prices have not come down, not even a little.

In his first 100 days in office, Trump has managed quite a bit: upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers; unilaterally sentencing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrants to life sentences in a notorious El Salvador prison; switching sides in the Ukraine war to favour the aggressor; and costing Americans trillions from their retirement accounts while putting the country on the path to a trade-war-induced recession. One thing he has not done: lower Americans’ grocery bills.

While overall inflation has trended slightly downward since Trump took office, food inflation has not. In fact, not only have grocery prices increased each month since he took office, that inflation rate itself has increased in each of the three months since Trump’s return, so that the inflation rate for groceries is now at its highest point in nearly two years.

“Just 100 days in, the reality is wildly different, and voters are noticing,” said Democratic pollster and consultant Matt McDermott. “Day One was supposed to bring relief, not recession.”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who for years has been conducting focus groups studying Trump’s supporters, said they, too, are noticing. “There is a meaningful slice of Trump voters who voted for Trump specifically because he promised to lower prices on groceries, etc,” she said. “Many of these voters express frustration that Trump isn’t doing more to lower costs.”

Trump’s response to his failure on the single most important issue to the median voter in the November election has been a favorite standby: He has simply lied about it.

“Groceries have come down,” he said in an Oval Office photo opportunity on........

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