A claim by Trump administration official Dr Mehmet Oz that he was able to buy a stick of butter for a dollar was met with an incredulous reaction from Fox News host Lauren Ingraham.

Dr Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was appearing on The Ingraham Angle Monday to discuss the administration’s latest moves to make hospital pricing clearer to patients.

Ingraham was quick to tie the matter into wider concerns about affordability, which voters have consistently told pollsters they feel President Donald Trump has not done enough to address and which threatens to come back to bite Republicans in November’s midterms.

“We should know what things cost, OK?” Ingraham put it to Oz. “We wanna know what we’re paying. What the heck is going on, and how can you guys tackle this?”

The public health official answered: “Well, at healthcare, we write the prices in invisible ink. So, you have no idea what things are gonna cost.”

He continued: “I brought you something as an example. We went grocery shopping – stick of butter, bag of peanuts. Butter in America, it’s about a buck for a stick like this. If I charge you $10… ”

“Where are you shopping?” Ingraham interrupted him with scorn. “It’s not a buck. It’s like four.”

“Well, I just bought this, so it’s close to that,” Oz chuckled, going on to joke: “Maybe I got it – maybe it’s going bad.”

“OK,” Ingraham said. “A Mamdani store you bought it at.”

She was referring to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open five city-owned grocery stores in the Big Apple by 2029, which will carry food at prices 30 percent below the average in the hope of making life easier for local residents.

“Exactly,” Oz grinned. “So, you buy the stick of butter, and you buy it for the right price. In healthcare, we’re not doing this.

“This stick of butter could cost anything. You have no idea until after you’ve already made the purchase.”

A clip of the exchange was widely shared on social media, with one person wasting no time in turning it into a satirical cartoon casting Oz as a losing contestant on a game show.

Another challengedthe former TV doctor to join him on a filmed trawl through the grocery stores of D.C. in search of the mythic $1 packet of butter.

As Mediaite has pointed out, the exact brand of butter Oz had among the goods assembled on the studio desk in front of him is from Trader Joe’s and is currently priced on the chain’s website at $4.99.

The doctor has come similarly unstuck before, notably when he appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press last October and attempted to explain away Trump’s promise to cut the cost of medicines by “400 percent.”