A cattle farmer turned U.S. senator is suggesting Americans buy other food items if they feel beef is too expensive.
Republican Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who sits on several Agriculture committees in the Senate, dismissed concerns about affordability and the cost-of-living crisis.
Local ABC and CBS affiliate WLOX pressed Hyde-Smith on rising costs, notably the cost of beef, which has skyrocketed since Donald Trump assumed the presidency last year.
“What do you think Republicans are doing right now? You’re involved closely with agriculture, you’re on the committee. The price of food is high. We just did a story this week on price of beef continuing to go up,” the reporter said. “What are Republicans doing to get this cost of living under control?”
“You have so many proteins to choose from,” Hyde-Smith said in a winding answer. “All commodities go through peaks and valleys.”
Hyde-Smith suggested that the “cost of fuel” could be the cause for the high price of beef, arguing that it impacts the prices of all other commodities.
“Everything in this place at one time was one a truck. So any time you go to purchase anything, if you’re going to build anything, the price of fuel affects everything,” she said.
“So, with that being down, you know the ‘Gulf of America’ right out our door right here. Beautiful Gulf Coast, ” she continued. “No permitting, no drilling for four years, no permitting. So now that we can undo some of those cumbersome things that restricted energy production, you’re even going to see that in a more significant way.”
Hyde-Smith quickly caught online heat for her remarks.
“From the party that’s always shrieking about liberals wanting to take away your burgers,” a communications director on Capitol Hill wrote.
Journalist Matthew Yglesias said, “You will eat the bug.”
“Republicans are trying to take away burger,” independent journalist Dan Shafer said.
“Wow! The modern day let them eat cake,” one user said.
Hyde-Smith, a Democrat-turned-Republican, is up for reelection in this year’s midterm elections.
The Daily Beast reached out to Hyde-Smith’s office for comment.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, one of her Democratic opponents, Scott Colom said “Mississippi families aren’t choosing between beef and other proteins as a lifestyle preference, they’re stretching every dollar to put food on the table. Meanwhile, Cindy Hyde-Smith sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, and her answer to Mississippians struggling at the grocery store is to just eat something else?”
“That’s an insult to the people who sent her to D.C. Mississippi deserves a senator who fights for lower costs, not one who tells you your grocery list is your problem,” Colom’s statement continued.
Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has grappled with the cost-of-living crisis.
A recent poll from Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos found that inflation is the most significant issue that Trump faces, as 65 percent of those polled disapproved of how he was handling it.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was ridiculed earlier this year for suggesting that American families could eat for just three dollars.
“It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing,” she said in January.
She also claimed her team had “run over 1,000 simulations” to calculate the price of that meal.
The president’s advisors have pushed him to focus more on affordability going into the 2026 midterm elections after Republicans suffered serious losses in the off-year 2025 elections.
Trump, however, insists even the word “affordability” is a “hoax” created by Democratic officials.
“Affordability is a hoax that was started by Democrats,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting in December.
“The word affordability is a Democrat scam,” Trump said at the same meeting. “They say it and then they go into the next subject, and everyone thinks, ‘oh, they had lower prices.’ No, they had the worst inflation in the history of our country.”
