In Friday's briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki struggled to find answers to reporters' questions about the rising cost of gas that's hit a fever pitch since Russia's invasion of Ukraine but has been rising steadily since President Biden took office last January.
"The reason why the price of gas is going up is not because of steps the President has taken," Psaki claimed. "They are because President Putin is invading Ukraine and that is creating a great a deal of instability in the global marketplace."
Psaki continued by saying the White House and Biden administration "are very focused on minimizing the impact to families" caused by rising gas prices. "If you reduce supply in the global marketplace, you are going to raise gas prices, you are going to raise the price of oil," Psaki then added, saying such supply reductions and subsequent cost increases are "something the president is very mindful of and focused on."
A great followup question for Psaki to the latter of her claims would have been: "If President Biden is so mindful and focused on the impact reducing oil supply has on gas prices, why did he kill the Keystone XL pipeline project on his first day in office? Did he not care about 'minimizing the impact to families' then?"
Back to Psaki's first claim — that rising gas prices are apparently solely to blame on Putin's invasion of Ukraine — one that is equally defied by reality and her proclaimed understanding of how basic economic principles of supply and demand impact goods.
To claim that gas price increases are not because of anything Biden has done but due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, again, ignores reality. From the time President Biden took office until the day before Putin rolled into Ukraine, the nationwide average price for a gallon of gas rose more than $1.
According to Psaki, gas prices only rise when there's global instability caused by something like a Russian invasion of a sovereign nation and nothing Biden did caused gas prices to rise across the country and hit all-time highs in California. And again, Psaki's other comments on the way reduced supply drives up prices contradict her statement that Biden bears no blame for more expensive fill-ups.
After all, Psaki just admitted that reducing supply increases costs. And yet President Biden took an energy-independent America and turned it into a nation dependent on foreign oil and therefore subject to the whims of foreign nations. The Biden administration knew what would happen when they cut American energy projects — and the pain it would cause Americans — and they did it anyway.
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