Gas price averages keep skyrocketing upward in line graphs resembling Mount Everest, and it’s astonishing in light of the rosy way President Joe Biden painted the state of our union just last week during his eponymous speech.
It’s almost comical to consider how Biden proudly and delusionally compared himself to his predecessor, under whom gas prices lived in the $2.00 territory — especially when you consider that Trump’s predictions about Biden being a presidential disaster have proved to be spot-on.
Donald Trump’s tax cuts only helped the rich, Biden said during his address, and now anyone earning less than $400,000 a year doesn’t have to pay any more in taxes. Buying American products is a priority, he added, and my tax plan will lower costs. Oh, and our economy has roared back since my administration took the reins.
Americans didn’t need Glenn Kessler fact-checking these statements to rightly conclude that they’re lies; they feel it at work, the grocery store, and the gas pump. The exorbitant price of fuel sure doesn’t feel like the result of a “made in America” pledge, nor does it feel like a tax cut or a roaring economy.
Even more laughable than Biden’s obvious Pinocchios, however, is how right our ex-president was about the realities of what a Biden presidency would bring. This was from a stereotypical Trump rally speech before Biden was elected in 2020:
We have more oil than anybody, OK? And it’s an incredible thing that’s happened over the last few years — a lot of great things. And you’re paying what? $2.00 a gallon for your gasoline? That’s OK. You know what that’s like? That’s like a tax cut. That’s bigger than a tax cut. If Biden got in, you’d be paying $7.00, $8.00, $9.00. Then they’d say, ‘Get rid of your car.’
Trump’s accuracy is a little spooky. Under Trump’s administration and thanks to their efforts toward achieving energy independence, the United States began exporting more petroleum than we imported for the first time in more than 70 years. These were strides Biden undid in his first hours in office, giving up crucial energy independence that has crippled our foreign policy capacity to devastating effects. Now the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that we’ll become a net importer once again in 2022.
Trump was right in another way, too — in a way that hits a little closer to home and to your bank account. The low gas prices achieved under his watch, in massive contrast to costs now, were like a tax cut. For millions of Americans now struggling to make ends meet thanks to the cost of basic necessities such as mobility, cheap gasoline was indeed better than a tax cut.
Now under Biden, gasoline has reached about $7.00 and $8.00 in Los Angeles and continues to climb everywhere else, just as Trump predicted. Also as he predicted, Democrats’ solution is to “get rid of your car” and buy a Tesla instead. In fact, they bask in high gas prices, hoping it will price all those blue-collar rubes out of affordable gas-powered vehicles and into the electric cars of their radical climate dreams.
Biden can jabber about how good he is for average Americans and about all the things he’s “going to do” during the rest of his time in office. And his press secretary and friends in the media can spin the facts to pretend that the high costs of fuel are all Vladimir Putin’s fault. The American people aren’t buying it, as Biden’s tanking approval rating demonstrates.
What they know to be true instead is exactly what Trump said: Having lots of oil is an incredible thing, affordable everyday necessities are even better than a tax cut, and life under Democrat rule is costly in more ways than one.
There’s a reason stickers with Biden’s face and an “I did that” caption are ubiquitous on gas pumps around the country: because countless Americans believe it to their core. No amount of fake talking points and blame-shifting at Trump will convince them otherwise, especially when they’re old enough to remember what the last president predicted — and can now see that it’s come true.