In the aftermath of Democratic victories in municipal and statewide elections from coast to coast last month, and with public opinion surveys clearly signaling that Americans increasingly blame Donald Trump for rising costs, on-air personalities at Fox News and Fox Business launched a campaign to shift blame for rising costs away from the current president and onto his retired predecessor — even though Trump ran on promises to immediately lower prices.

In the days after Election Day, many right-wing media figures abruptly pivoted to advising Trump and the Republican Party to embrace “a course correction” on the economy and acknowledge concerns about affordability. Fox personalities praised Trump for reducing his own self-imposed tariff rates on imported foods in an effort to bring down costs, while others championed Trump’s proposal to investigate companies for “price manipulation.” (Then-Vice President Kamala Harris was derided by Trump and his supporters for proposing a similar policy last year.)

Fox also significantly increased the pace at which high and rising grocery prices were mentioned on-air.

In the 31 days leading up to Election Day, Media Matters counted just 34 segments about the higher grocery prices. Four of those 34 segments (nearly 12%) included at least one comment that placed primary blame for grocery prices on Biden instead of Trump.

In the 31 days after and including Election Day, Media Matters found that the number of segments about higher grocery prices nearly tripled to 94. Thirty-one of those 94 segments (nearly 34%, also nearly triple the prior period) included at least one comment from a Fox personality or guest blaming Biden, a nearly eightfold increase in the number of segments blaming Biden. Both the amount of attention to grocery costs and the pace at which Biden was primarily blamed spiked in the wake of Election Day.

Fox’s attempt to shift blame to Biden came despite the fact that Trump himself continued to deny the fact of rising grocery prices and claimed that concerns about affordability were “a Democrat hoax.” Fox contributor and former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore exemplified the networks’ pivot during a November 10 appearance on Fox Business' Varney & Co., claiming persistent high grocery prices were “leftover remnants of what happened under Biden.”

A November 16 interview on Fox & Friends Weekend between co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo went even further, with the two personalities acknowledging that the Republican Party should pivot to “affordability” following recent election losses and with an eye toward next year's midterms. Campos-Duffy praised Bartiromo's pro-Trump political spin, stating: “I love how you point out how much inflation rose under Joe Biden.”

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on Fox Business Network and Fox News Channel for any of the terms “food,” “beef,” or “supermarket” or any variation of the term “grocer” within close proximity of any of the terms “cost,” “price,” “dollar,” “amount,” “pay,” or “spend” and also within close proximity of any of the terms “increase,” “surge,” “spike,” “up,” “skyrocket,” or “more” or any variations of either of the terms “high” or “rise” from October 4, 2025 — the month leading up to the November 4, 2025, elections — through December 4, 2025, one month after the aforementioned elections.

We included segments, which we defined as instances when rising grocery prices were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of higher food prices. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the higher food prices with one another.

We then reviewed the identified segments for whether any speaker blamed former President Joe Biden for the increased prices.