Matt Walsh, the Daily Wire host, kicked off days of debate with an August 3 comment on X:
Grocery prices are insane. They’re still rising. Addressing this problem should be the number one priority of every elected leader. End the stupid foreign wars and focus on this issue. It’s one of the main reasons socialists are gaining power.
Walsh’s reference to “foreign wars” was a criticism of President Trump’s military fight against Iran, which is entering its seventh month. His reference to socialists referred to self-identified socialist candidates backed by DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America.
AFN similarly reported this week that five city-run groceries stores are planned for New York City's five boroughs by that city's communist mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
Walsh’s X post has been viewed more than 4 million times since Monday. His comment generated more than 4,000 comments that criticized or defended the Iran war; blamed current grocery prices on double-digit inflation during President Biden’s term; and questioned if current grocery prices really have skyrocketed in cost.
The online debate took an odd turn when Turning Point USA leader Andrew Kolvet weighed in. He cited a comment from a college student, a TPUSA member, who commented that a burrito shouldn’t cost $20.
“Cry me a river. The burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan,” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, replying to Kolvet, wrote on X.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, the Texas Republican, wrote a similar post. “Stop whining, get a job, eat Ramen like the rest of us did in college, on a budget with 4 roommates,” he wrote.
Responding to that discussion, Southern Baptist leader William Wolfe wrote that debate shows the difference between how the Left reacts to complaints like that versus how the Right reacts to it. The reaction of the Left is to promise free burritos to their base, he wrote, while the Right says to “suck it up” and dismisses their side's complaining as stupid.
“Merits aside, it’s not at all surprising one of those is a winning message (see the rise of the DSA) and one is not,” he warned.
Meg Brock, a Daily Wire reporter, gave a real-world example in an August 5 X post. A family-sized package of ground beef, which cost $10 at Aldi in 2018, now costs more than $25 to feed her family, she wrote.
When X commenters disputed her claim, even calling her a liar, Brock went online and posted a photo of a five-pound pack of Aldi ground beef for $25.95.
Brock wrote that the online criticism – much of it crude, dismissive, and vulgar – doesn’t represent the “real world” where families are struggling with the grocery budget.
“Frugal families feel this every time they shop,” she wrote.
U.S. beef prices are tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Its tracking data, viewed by AFN, shows beef prices have jumped 75% since 2020. Before the pandemic, the U.S. average for a pound of beef was $3.89. It is now averaging $6.83 a pound.
Joining the debate, former Babylon Bee editor Joel Berry shared a graph showing the U.S. national debt reached $38 trillion in 2026.
“This is why your burrito costs $20,” Berry wrote, “and the only way to fix it is to cut entitlements and no one wants to do that so…”
Down in the comments, another X user called that graph “outdated” because the U.S. national debt has now topped $39 trillion.
