Energy Secretary Chris Wright strips off some context from an argument, which Steve Benen restores but …
Over the weekend, Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared on ABC News’ “This Week” and was asked about the latest developments. “Gasoline prices today are more than $1 a gallon cheaper than they were four years ago under the Biden administration,” he argued.
The Cabinet secretary’s reference to “four years ago” gave away the game: Joe Biden’s presidency wrapped up a year and a half ago, but there was a price spike in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Wright apparently wants people to compare Biden-era data to Trump-era data, though he’s playing a tiresome shell game that’s intended to obscure a basic fact: Americans are paying more at the pump now than when Biden exited the White House.
… doesn’t really dig out the details. Specifically, President Biden or his people took a situation, Putin’s War, that was no fault of their own, so far as I could see, and worked that inflation down through opposition to Putin’s War by financing Ukraine and Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy.
Trump and those who advise him and/or direct him, on the other hand, are responsible for Trump’s War, and thus responsible for its consequences, such as devastation of the world economy, destruction of the American position as lone superpower and the advantages that came with a dollar-based international financial system, and, of course, the gas prices and general inflation.
The fact that Trump cannot remedy the problem, for whatever reason, renders Secretary Wright’s defense specious at best, fraudulent at worst. For all that Biden’s people were caught lying, a decision that cost the Democrats the White House, the Republicans elected a leader who is deeply incompetent, arrogant, lies ceaselessly, pardons criminals in order to win their allegiance, and permits his need for ego-inflation to direct his actions.
And that’s why the Republican Party should be dissolved and replaced.
