On August 4, Maria Bartiromo asked the third-ranking Republican in the House a simple question. A new CNN poll had Democrats up eight points on the generic ballot. Why is America frustrated with the Republican Party?

Tom Emmer told her the frustration isn't real.

"I think it's perception, Maria. The perception and the reality of our economy. The two need to meet. Right now there are great things happening in our economy. Nobody wants to talk about 78 cent eggs, nobody wants to talk about milk that's under $2. No, no. They want to focus on gas prices. Americans are smarter than the elites in Washington."

He's right that Americans are smarter than that. They buy groceries.

What eggs and milk actually cost

The federal government tracks the average retail price of both of these items every single month. It is not a secret. It is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• Eggs, Grade A large, per dozen: $2.14 in June 2026
• Milk, fresh whole, per gallon: $4.32 in June 2026

Emmer said 78 cents. Eggs cost nearly three times that.

Emmer said milk was "under $2." It costs $4.32 — more than double what he told a national television audience.

And milk isn't even falling. It has gone up over the course of this year, from $4.10 a gallon in January to $4.32 in June.

Where the 78 cents came from

The number wasn't invented out of thin air. It appears to come from a wholesale price movement — what distributors pay, not what you pay at the register, as Crooks and Liars noted in flagging the claim.

That distinction matters enormously, and Emmer erased it. Nobody in Minnesota buys eggs at wholesale. The Majority Whip took a number from a market most Americans will never touch and presented it as the price on the shelf.

Then he used it to tell people their own grocery bill is a "perception" problem.

He's not a bystander to grocery prices

The most frustrating part of Emmer's answer is the pose — as if he's an analyst commenting on an economy that happens to him.

Tom Emmer is the House Majority Whip. Rounding up Republican votes for Trump's agenda is literally his job. When prices go up because of policies Congress passed, he is one of the people who passed them.

On tariffs — the policy that raises the price of imported goods for the people buying them — Emmer has been a cheerleader, not a critic. He told a telephone town hall that "these tariffs are going to protect American manufacturing," and he publicly applauded Trump's Section 232 tariffs, calling him "a master negotiator, especially when it comes to tariffs."

He also whipped through the budget bill he called "historic America First policy wins for the American people." Here's what those wins look like back home in Minnesota's 6th District:

• An estimated 19,294 people in his district are projected to lose health coverage — 12,994 losing Medicaid and 6,300 losing marketplace coverage.
• 19,033 households in the district rely on SNAP to buy food — including 11,613 households with children and 5,117 with a senior over 60.

Those 19,033 households are the ones who feel the difference between $2.14 eggs and 78-cent eggs most sharply. They are also the ones whose food assistance he voted to cut.

"They want to focus on gas prices"

Notice the rest of the answer. Emmer complained that people "want to focus on gas prices" — as though picking which grocery bill to worry about is a media trick rather than a household budget.

This is a familiar move. When David Valadao was asked about food assistance cuts in a district where more than a quarter of households are on SNAP, he said the drop in enrollment didn't worry him. The pattern is the same: cast the vote, then tell the people it lands on that their concern is overblown.

It is also familiar from Emmer himself. He is happy to talk loudly about his committee's investigations when the subject suits him, and goes quiet when it doesn't.

The bottom line

A member of Congress can be wrong about a number. It happens.

But Emmer wasn't off by a rounding error. Eggs cost nearly three times what he said, and milk more than twice — and he said it on national television while arguing that voters' own experience of their grocery bill is a misperception that needs to be corrected.

The prices are published every month, for free, by the government he works for. He could have looked.

Minnesotans in the 6th District don't have to. They already know what a gallon of milk costs.

Source

Emmer Claims Eggs Cost 78 Cents, Milk Is Under $2 — Joe.My.God., August 4, 2026, with the full Fox Business transcript. Image via Crooks and Liars.