A Thanksgiving Primer to Help you Deal with Your Fox Loving Relatives

Some fact checking to keep you sane this holiday season.

Nov 20, 2025

For many Americans the winter holidays can be a treacherous field of emotional land mines triggered by family members who want to lecture them about politics. Say one wrong word and a loved one who is dedicating their lives to consuming as much Fox News as possible might promote a false story they saw on the Murdoch owned propaganda machine.

Facts, hyperlinks to solid primary sources and exhaustive investigative reporting won’t help someone who is deeply entrenched in the disinformation pipeline. Trying to correct someone fully committed to the MAGA movement using evidence won’t work.

Using words such as brainwashed, cult, propaganda and even lies won’t help you de-radicalize a friend or relative who is obsessed with the thrills of being constantly outraged and angered by a sophisticated media company that has poisoned minds in this country for nearly three decades.

What you can do is arm yourself with knowledge, facts and sources that will help keep you calm cool and collected. I don’t encourage fighting with relatives who might have emotional outbursts over their devotion to their glorious leader.

A true believer will only free themselves of the MAGA movement when they grow tired of it. It can a long and arduous process before they see the light.

I don’t think this newsletter will convince anyone lost to the MAGA cult but it can prevent others from being dragged into it and at least you know you have solid primary sources so you can show anyone what is actually happening with the U.S. economy.

I can’t get to everything as this newsletter would be hundreds of pages but I will go over some of his more egregious lies and misstatements.

Shows I covered on Fox News last week:

Fox & Friends
The Five
The Ingraham Angle
Hannity - Wednesday

Food Prices

Despite President Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, with a few exceptions, grocery prices have increased since the start of his second term.

All of these prices are from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) each item is a separate entry. FRED does not track prices for most manufactured food items such as breakfast cereals or frozen foods.

The latest data for October has not been released yet due to the government shutdown.

The USDA

Even the Trump administration’s own government agencies admit food prices are increasing. From the USDA:

The food-at-home (grocery store or supermarket food purchases) CPI increased 0.4% from July 2025 to August 2025 and was 2.7% higher than in August 2024.
The food-away-from-home (restaurant and other foodservice purchases) CPI increased 0.3% from July 2025 to August 2025 and was 3.9% higher than in August 2024.

Inflation

President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly lied about the history of inflation in the United States. He frequently says “Inflation was the worst it’s ever been in the history of our country under Joe Biden.”

This is not true. My source for this graph was Investopedia based on the historical rate of inflation from 1929 through 2025.

Trump also frequently lies about the current rate of inflation. He has said he has ‘defeated inflation,” or that he has eliminated it. The inflation rate has slightly increased since April 2025 the same month Trump started his tariff policies.

Source - Bureau of Labor Statistics. The latest data available was for September due to the government shutdown. The first column for December 2024 is blue to indicate the last full month of the Biden administration.

Energy Prices

Trump frequently says that energy prices are ‘way down.’ This is not true in terms of residential electricity prices. The source for this map is the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The only states that had a decrease in residential electricity prices from August 2024 - August 2025 were:

California -0.1%
Connecticut -1.3%
North Carolina -2.4%
Kansas -3.1%
Hawaii -7.8%
Nevada -8.9%

The states with the highest increases were

District of Columbia +33.7% (Not a state but treated as such for this list)
Maine +23.8%
New Jersey +22.2%
Utah 13.8%
Illinois +13.3%

Gasoline Prices

The current average price for gasoline in the United States is $3.09 a gallon according to AAA. A year ago (November 19) the price was $3.06 which was slightly lower. Gasoline prices fluctuate on a daily basis.

Trump’s Lies and Delusions about Tariffs

The PBS News Hour spoke to Erica York an economist with Tax Foundation about Trump’s many misstatements about how his tariff policies.

Tax Foundation is hardly a lefty liberal biased organization. Although it describes itself as an “independent tax policy research organization,” it is seen by many as a center right think tank dedicated to free markets, lower tax rates and limited government spending.

Tax Foundation is widely regarded as a reliable source for tax data and analysis.

Amna Nawaz opened the segment with a media clip of Trump speaking in the Oval Office from last week.

“This is trillions of dollars we’re talking about in terms of the tariff income and all the investment income that’s come into our country. You know, we have more than, I would say, right now more than $18 trillion,” said Trump.

Nawaz asked York if Trump’s claim was accurate.

“The Treasury Department has reported that through September, all tariffs have raised about $195 billion for the federal government. That, of course, includes preexisting tariffs as well as the new tariffs that the president has imposed this year. If you break it down further using data from CBPP (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), those new tariffs have generated about $117 billion of collections for the Treasury.”

York explained further how Trump’s claims were wildly exaggerated.

“At Tax Foundation, we estimate that all the tariffs will raise about $2.4 trillion over the coming decade. So still a mismatch there. I think part of what explains the difference is that the president is pre counting, things that are very separate from tariff revenues, pre counting, promises of investments made by foreign countries. So we’ve heard of these investment pledges that, you know, a country might invest 100 billion or 300 billion into the US economy. That of course would be private sector investment, very different from tax collections that flow to Treasury,” said York.

Will Trump Be Able to Give American $2000 Dividend Checks?

York also explained that the tariffs would harm the U.S. economy.

“We have found that the tariffs are a net negative for the US economy. So we estimate overall the economy will shrink by about 0.6% if the tariffs remain in place. There will be more than 600,000 fewer full time jobs. And the tariffs add up to a tax burden on US households of an average of between $1200 and $1600. So whether that is experienced through higher prices that we have to pay at the store or whether it’s experienced through higher costs, that business is dragging down, hiring and dragging down wage growth. The real burden lies with American taxpayers.”

PBS included another short media clip of Trump speaking from the Oval Office.

“We’re going to issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people of about $2,000. And we’re going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt,”

York doubted the tariffs would generate enough income to cover the cost of dividend checks for millions of Americans.

“We don’t know exactly who would qualify for these checks, but if it would be something similar to the Covid relief payments, the minimum cost would be about $300 billion. That would be if the cutoff was set at $100,000, and all adults making under that amount got a $2,000 check. It would cost about $300 billion, so you could easily see the cost go up from there . . . that $300 billion minimum price tag compares to about, like I mentioned earlier, $120 billion of tariff collections through September. So even an even a narrowly targeted rebate would use up all of the collections. So far would have to be deficit financed, and that leaves no money left over to reduce the deficit or begin to pay down the debt.”

Will Trump Pay Down the National Debt with Tariff Revenue?

Well, let me ask you about the other claim there the president made about the tariff revenue helping to significantly pay down the national debt. The national debt for the country currently stands at $38 trillion. By your math, that’s about 200 times the revenue that’s actually been brought in by the tariffs so far. Is there any path you see towards tariff revenue going to pay down the national debt?

There’s not a path for that, particularly particularly when you take a broader look at all of the policies of the Trump administration. So this summer, Trump signed into law the one big beautiful Bill act that was major tax cut legislation. It did include some spending cuts, but that was a law that increases the deficit. We’ve heard the president’s advisors say that tariff revenues will help pay down that price tag for the tax cut law.

Well, tariff revenues won’t earn enough to fully pay for that tax cut law, let alone pay for these $2,000 checks. And pay for reducing the debt. So there’s just not a viable path to use a tax like tariffs to reduce the debt or even to, minimize the deficit that the government runs year after year.

The Tax Foundation also recently published a comprehensive analysis of Trump’s trade policies Trump Tariffs: Tracking the Economic Impact of the Trump Trade War.

Jessica Tarlov - Most Americans are NOT Happy about the U.S. Economy

On Monday on The Five Jessica Tarlov the liberal voice on the program dropped some truth about the recent off year elections.

“The problem is, if these numbers from what happened on Tuesday hold, like in Texas, they’re supposed to get five seats, but two of those seats you won’t get if the Latino turnout isn’t as they expected from 2024, there is work to be done. And this idea, you can just sit back and yell socialist at us or bad with men.
It’s not going to work. And Gavin Newsom is understanding the moment and has since the election when he started talking about, you know, a change in attitude about the trans athlete conversation. And it, as always, will come down to the economy. And Harry Enten, this morning, we’re dealing with one of the worst views of current economic conditions since 1951.
Sentiment down 30% from January. More than 3 in 5 Americans say that Trump’s policies have worsened their economic conditions. 51% say that Trump’s policies have worsened their own finances. People vote on their pocketbooks, and Donald Trump is not delivering for them,” said Tarlov.

Trump’s Latest Approval Rating

According to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll the share of Americans who approve of the president’s job performance?

38% Approve

60% Disapprove

This is the lowest rating for the president so far in his second term.

Stories Fox News Ignored

Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS News Hour. The following list contains stories taught PBS covered that Fox News did not. This list is slightly truncated due to space. Source - PBS News Hour transcripts.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to revisit its 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage. The justices, without comment, turned away in appeal from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses on religious grounds. (PBS News Hour)
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge over Mississippi’s counting of mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day. More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia allow such votes to be counted, a practice long criticized by President Trump. The outcome of the case could have a major impact on next year’s midterm elections. (PBS News Hour)
In the Philippines, officials say Super Typhoon Fung-wong killed at least eight people and forced over one million to evacuate. The typhoon comes on the heels of a separate storm that caused widespread damage last week and killed more than 200 people. (PBS News Hour)
The editor of The Marion County Record in Kansas says the county government will pay $3 million and will formally apologize for a raid on the paper back in 2023. Police raided their offices as part of an investigation into whether the paper committed identity theft and illegally accessed information in reporting a story which it denied. The incident sparked an outcry over press freedom and prosecutors later concluded no crime was committed by the paper’s publisher or its staff. (PBS News Hour)
In Utah a judge adopted a new electoral map that will create a Democratic-leaning district. The new map will keep Salt Lake County almost entirely within one district, rather than it being split into four. The result gives Democrats a chance to pick up a seat in next year’s midterm elections, as they try to counter Republican redistricting efforts in states like Texas, Missouri, and elsewhere. (PBS News Hour)
In Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, a suicide bomber targeted a district court, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more. A breakaway faction of the Pakistani Taliban initially claimed responsibility, but, soon after, its commander denied the claims. (PBS News Hour)
In India, a deadly car explosion in New Delhi is being investigated under an anti-terrorism law, giving authorities broader powers to detain suspects. The attack occurred near the historic Red Fort in a densely populated area, killing at least eight people and injuring several others. Police believe the blast originated from a car at a traffic stop. They’re trying to trace its owner. (PBS News Hour)
Last Thursday Israeli settlers burned and defaced a mosque in a Palestinian village in the West Bank.The torching comes a day after Israeli leaders condemned an earlier attack by settlers on two Palestinian villages. A government official said the Israeli military does not condone any such acts of violence. (PBS News Hour)
Separately, President Herzog issued a rare condemnation of violence in the West Bank, after masked Jewish settlers hurled stones at car windows and set trucks on fire. Some locals called for an end to such violence. The Israeli military says four Palestinians were injured in the attack, part of a growing wave of settler violence in the occupied territory. (PBS News Hour)
Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world, a reminder of the war’s horrific toll on the youngest victims. Before the State Department paused new medical visas for Palestinians in August, a group of children and teens was able to leave Gaza for life-saving care in the U.S. Amna Nawaz and producer Zeba Warsi captured their stories. (PBS News Hour)
Military service personnel have been seeking outside legal advice about some of the missions the Trump administration has assigned them. The strikes against alleged drug traffickers and deployments to U.S. cities have sparked a debate over their legality. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Frank Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, which runs The Orders Project. (PBS News Hour)
Republican lawmakers in Indiana are canceling plans to meet next month to redraw their state’s congressional maps. The president of the state’s Senate said there isn’t enough support among members to carry out such a redistricting. This comes after months of pressure from the White House, which included two visits by Vice President J.D. Vance. And it’s seen as a major blow to the Trump administration’s broader efforts to create new maps that would favor Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. (PBS News Hour)
The Trump administration is officially dropping plans to make airlines compensate passengers for flight delays caused by carriers. The announcement formally puts an end to a Biden era proposal that would have guaranteed fliers up to $300 for domestic delays of at least three hours and more for longer delays. Passengers are still entitled to refunds if their flights are canceled and they choose not to rebook. (PBS News Hour)
A new investigation by ProPublica found that immigration raids hailed by the Trump administration as a major strike against terrorism did not live up to those claims. Dozens of Venezuelan migrants were detained in a September raid, with officials alleging they are members of the dangerous Tren de Aragua gang. Ali Rogin discussed more with Melissa Sanchez of ProPublica. (PBS News Hour)