Rising gas prices are supposedly the fault of GOP lawmakers and everyday Americans — really, anyone besides Joe Biden — or so the spin goes.
Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we dive into the media’s lunacy on rising gas prices, refute false claims about Biden’s popularity, and hit more media misses.
Media Creates Another ‘Republicans Pounce’ Moment on Rising Gas Prices
The U.S. national average for regular gas hit $4.325 a gallon on Monday, nearly one week after it surged past the previous record of $4.114 set in July 2008, according to AAA.
Americans are understandably upset that, after months of watching the cost of living rise due to inflation, they are now taking bigger and bigger hits at the pump.
But Democrats and the mainstream media have taken this difficult time as an opportunity to turn the blame onto any number of targets: Republican lawmakers, everyday Americans, and former president Trump.
The New York Times published a “fact-check” titled “Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices.” The fact-check claimed “top Republican lawmakers took to the airwaves and the floors of Congress with misleading claims that pinned the blame on President Biden and his energy policies.”
“While Republican lawmakers supported the ban, they asserted that the pain at the pump long preceded the war in Ukraine. Gas-price hikes, they said, were the result of Mr. Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline, the temporary halt on new drilling leases on public lands and the surrendering of ‘energy independence’ — all incorrect assertions.”
Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote, “Biden heeded Republicans’ pleas to ban Russian oil. Then they pounced.”
Milbank writes that Republicans pressured Biden to ban Russian energy and then, once the president instituted a ban, blamed his energy policies for spiking gas prices.
“It’s not only that the charge is bogus — the current price of gas has virtually nothing to do with Biden’s energy policies — but that the Republican officials leveling it are sowing division at home and giving a rhetorical boost to the enemy at a perilous moment when national unity and sacrifice will be needed to prevail against Russia,” Milbank wrote.
He added: “Blaming Biden for the spike in prices around Russia’s Ukraine invasion isn’t just false — it’s an assist to Putin that damages national security.”
During remarks at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference, Biden cited the New York Times fact check and Washington Post op-ed as evidence that it is Putin who is to blame for rising gas prices, not his own energy policies.
Biden has claimed it is “simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production.”
And while it is true that presidents have limited control over the state of the economy in general and gas prices in particular, the policies Biden has prioritized since taking office are expressly designed to limit U.S. oil and natural-gas production and processing, making the U.S. more vulnerable in the longterm to outside geopolitical shocks like the one caused by the Russian invasion.
As the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote last week, the Department of the Interior has been “slow-rolling oil and gas permits since Mr. Biden took office.”
As NR’s Nate Hochman reports:
Biden’s flurry of executive orders during his first months in office included killing the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Canada to the U.S., and halting new oil and natural-gas drilling on public lands and waters. Last month, the administration indefinitely halted all new drilling permits altogether.
American energy costs were already climbing long before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Hill published a redux of the “Republicans pounce” trope over the weekend: “Republicans seize on rising gas prices amid Ukraine conflict.”
“Biden and Democrats were already contending with record inflation and rising gas prices well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Republicans have used the latest price hike to tie their opponents to what they argue is a lack of energy independence under the Biden administration,” it added.
Yet Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin went one step further and seemed to suggest recently that voters who believe President Biden is to blame for rising gas prices are “stupid.”
“Voters in a (stupid) nutshell: According to ABC News/Ipsos data, 70% disapprove of Biden’s handling of gas prices, though even more respondents — 77% — support his proposal to ban Russian oil, even if it means paying more at the pump,” she wrote in a tweet.
voters in a (stupid) nutshell: According to ABC News/Ipsos data, 70% disapprove of Biden's handling of gas prices, though even more respondents — 77% — support his proposal to ban Russian oil, even if it means paying more at the pump.https://t.co/R4xeDZemIb
— Jen 'now @jenrubin9' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) March 13, 2022
Former senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, blamed Americans’ expectations for how the gas hikes are being perceived and blamed former president Trump for the price increases.
“Can I just say that is an artificially low price you’re starting from and when you do inflation adjustment, this isn’t the highest price we’ve had in the last 20 years. In fact, George Herbert Walker Bush under the Bush administration we had gas prices, inflation-adjusted over $5,” she said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week.
She later added: “Who drove up inflation? We saw the CBO numbers this week. It was the Trump administration that overspent and drove up inflation so if inflation in prices and housing and in gas is because of deficit-spending, that’s Trump’s fault and so the administration has not been nearly aggressive enough to explain what’s actually going on.”
And for those struggling with skyrocketing gas prices, HuffPost senior writer and editor Ann Brenoff has a solution: “Move closer.”
https://twitter.com/AnnBrenoff/status/1501355196307283971?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Headline Fail of the Week
Washington Post columnist Jen Rubin foretold of a “GOP nightmare: Biden’s handlings of war, Ukraine and democracy are popular” last week. But the poll she cited showed that 49 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Just 43 percent of respondents to the survey – conducted by Navigator, which calls itself a “trusted resource for developing and distributing winning progressive messages and polling” – said they approved.
Media Misses
–Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz said seeing unmasked crowds of people at South by Southwest — better known as SXSW — in Austin, Texas makes her “sad” despite a recent shift in CDC guidance that now suggests most American communities do not need to mask up due to low infection and hospitalization rates.
https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1503064326688497665?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
–The View co-host Ana Navarro suggested the Department of Justice should investigate “people who are Russian propagandists and shilling for Putin,” like Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard the same way the DOJ has set up a taskforce to investigate Russian oligarchs.
.@ananavarro calls on the DOJ to investigate "Russian propagandists" like Fox News' Tucker Carlson and former Rep. @TulsiGabbard for "shilling for Putin." pic.twitter.com/qWPRPIa4A3
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 14, 2022