The Trump administration Medicare and Medicaid administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, made a claim about grocery prices on Fox News — but even far-right host Laura Ingraham wasn't buying it.
"You have no idea what things are going to cost," said Oz. "We went grocery shopping. Stick of butter, bag of peanuts. Butter in America is about a buck for a stick like this."
"Where are you shopping?" Ingraham cut in. "It's not a buck."
"I just bought this; it was close to that," said Oz. "Maybe it's going bad."
Oz's claim is slightly misleading. It is possible to get butter in certain parts of the country for around $1 per stick, though certainly not per pack.
Nevertheless, the skepticism comes following over a year of Trump administration officials publicly downplaying inflation in ways that left observers offended or disbelieving.
In one of the most infamous cases, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins got raked over the coals for claiming her office had "run almost 1,000 simulations" and it "can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing."
