We are stooges for a bamboozler

Donald Trump pledged repeatedly that he would lower food costs on Day One — Jan. 20. Instead, egg prices shot up 15% last month. Since Trump was sworn in as president, Waffle House added an egg surcharge. Some grocery stores are rationing eggs. The Easter Bunny is bummed.

When will Trump make good on his promise?

“I don’t have a timeline on that,” his press secretary said.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Vice President JD Vance said.

“It’s very hard,” Trump admitted.

Now they tell us. Another case of bird flu hit a Buena Vista County turkey barn last week. You might have to take out a second mortgage for a club sandwich.

RFK2 is large and in charge. Avian flu continues to spread unchecked. Veterinarians are coming down with it now. Kennedy might know a way to goose a hen to lay more eggs faster, perhaps through acupuncture. Vaccinating layers, broilers, turkeys or dairies appears to be verboten. The vaccine exists, and in fact was developed in Ames, and deploying it would benefit Iowa, but it ain’t gonna happen because the big meat players don’t want the extra burden.

Trump promised. He said he keeps his promises. Prices keep rising. It was all, to use a polite term, bogus. A substantial majority of local voters swallowed it whole.

Trump could no more control egg prices than he could end the attack on Ukraine on Day One, as he said he would.

Is he lying? Are his lips moving? Yes. Are we stupid? Well …

He threatened 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada until someone explained to him that it would tank the economy. So he paused those tariffs for 30 days. He has since ordered a 10% tariff on all imports. Sen. Chuck Grassley begged him to exempt potash — the K in NPK vital to corn fertilization. Ninety percent of it comes from Canada, which is not yet our 51st state. Trump responded: No exceptions, now go get back to your plow.

Trump has frozen $10 million in conservation payments to Iowa farmers. Grassley said he is not worried. Why would he be, when his salary is $174,000 and the perks are endless? Better than working in a chicken barn. Everything is on the butcher block, except payments to Elon Musk, so you should not bank on getting paid.

Trump said he would beat food costs on Day One. No modifiers or caveats. Done deal.

Okay, so Trump lies. And we are suckers. At least he isn’t a lib.

The fact is that we have been ignoring avian flu since the first big outbreak hit BV County in 2015. Research funding was frozen in the Grand Bargain between House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama.

We have been publishing editorials about it for a decade and nobody listened.

Mind you, research also was stunted all those years into various swine diseases that can jump to humans like meningitis or ebola, and we live in Swine Central. So it is not Trump’s fault. It is the voter’s fault for believing that he would do a damn thing about it.

The Trump Administration is trying to cut funds for the National Institutes of Health to eliminate overhead in medical research grants at places like the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — $33 million gone from Iowa City. UIHC employs 4,200 people. They are the overhead. Who will answer the phone at the Holden Cancer Center for your question about whether you may continue your clinical trial? Kim Reynolds? No, she says she wants to gut services, too, in order to Make America Healthy Again. By reducing Medicaid benefits to the elderly, for example, such that the nursing home at Newell or Albert City shuts down. The residents should get a job. They will need one after Musk gets his hands on Social Security.

Okay, so Trump backpedaled off his pledge to Whip Inflation Now in December, after he won the election, by saying it would be difficult to cut food costs. The good news is that no queers will play girls basketball. He made good on that. I was sweating that one.

His new and improved EPA seeks to immunize chemical companies from lawsuits over chemicals — and so is the Iowa Legislature. The Meat Institute has moved to throw off restrictions on line speeds with less inspection, and probably will get its way. That should make your bacon fry.

It’s hard to admit when you have been bamboozled. To distract, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico and barred the Associated Press from the White House, and Iowa is okay with it. Except for the tariff on potash, of course. We Iowans are a bunch of stooges. We got so used to bending over and taking it that we think it feels good.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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