Trump/Walmart Turkeygate Check Shows 2025 Price Drop, but Less than Claimed

 

On Thursday November 6, a reporter at President Trump's offered the observation that Walmart's 2025 Thanksgiving dinner is 25% cheaper than the 2024 dinner. So, wow, many persons including DJT himself, took that at face value and tweeted the news at face value.

"Not so fast!" retorted the critics, operating at near warp speed.  The 2024 dinner had different items.  In fact it had more items!  It's not an apples to apples comparison!  

True that.  So, why don't we make an accurate comparison and see where we stand?  The truth is that if you did buy the 2024 deal at 2025 prices, you would play $51.75, according to prices I picked off the Walmart.com website as of 11/6/2025.  The numbers are shown below.  

Walmart says that in 2024, "Walmart's 2024 meal basket was about $55. The 2025 curated meal basket costs $40 ($39.93), which is about 25% less than last year."

So the price drop of the 2024 meal is 5.9% without taking inflation into account.  

A point of vagueness is that we don't know how much turkey Wal-Mart assumed that the 8-person dinner would contain. However, since they listed 10 pounds as the lower part of the range, it's reasonable to assume that that is what they would have used to arrive at a low estimate.  

There are some noteworthy differences between 2024 and 2025. On the whole, I would rather eat from the 2025 menu, actually.  The 2025 menu features a Butterball turkey rather than a frozen turkey, which is generally regarded as a superior tasting bird. Also, the critics rightfully point out that the 2024 menu has several more items, but how many of these items do you really want to eat?  8 persons are supposed to eat two pies, which comes out to a quarter of a pie per person, with whipped topping and marshmallows and stuff. The 2025 meal has 10 people sharing only one pumpkin pie.  I don't know about your family, but in my family not everyone eats dessert, so we probably won't miss the pecan pie.  I don't know that we need to make the stuffing from scratch (onions, corn bread, etc).  Stovetop stuffing is a blessing.  Let it happen.  The biggest uncertainty is the size of the 2024 frozen turkey that was assumed.  Logically, it would have been smaller than the 13.5 pound bird that feeds 10 people.  They list 10 pounds as smallest option.  On the other hand, 80% of 13.5 pounds is 10.8 pounds.  Given that the 2024 meal contains plenty of extra calories for desserts, i think that the 10 pound bird is probably appropriately sized. 

 

CONCLUSION:

The overall conclusion is that Thanksgiving Dinner is more affordable in 2025 compared to 2024, although the 25% figure is based on comparing different dinners.  This author likes the 2025 dinner more than the the 2024 version because we are getting somewhat more turkey, beans and corn and less sweet pie for desert.  The 2025 meal offers a Butterball turkey rather than a frozen one. My best estimate is that the 2024 dinner would be 6.9% less expensive this year compared to last year.   

6.9% is actually a really good number.  However, it needs to be viewed in context with all the other good and commodities that make up our lives. I don't think you can conclude, for example, that Thanksgiving dinner can be used as a proxy for the entire economy.