Let’s rewind the clock a few weeks and revisit the State of the Union speech, because one particular passage strikes me in hindsight as delectably delicious. Here it is:
“Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states. And in some places, $1.99 a gallon. And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline.”
If we ignore the pathological liar’s most blatant lie - that he “saw” an Iowa station pump a gallon for a buck 85 - we can rightly conclude that this guy was nervous about the issue of affordability. He has long boasted that his ‘24 win was greased in part by voters’ concerns about inflation, and indeed he has long used gas prices as a metric for the health (or ill health) of the American economy. His fictions in the SOTU speech — “$2.30 a gallon in most states”?! — was designed to quell public anxiety.
That’s been his MO for many months; last November he crowed to reporters, “Every price is down. The biggest price is energy. We’re at almost $2 for gasoline.” In February he said, “Slashing energy costs is among the most important actions we can take to bring down prices for American consumers. Because when you cut the cost of energy, you really cut - you just cut the cost of everything.”
Yet here he is today - having blundered into a Middle East war via his toxic trifecta of impulsiveness, incompetence, and ignorance - presiding over a national pandemic of pain at the pump, with prices spiking an average of 74 cents a gallon in the last two weeks (roughly 27 percent). That translates to $3.72 for unleaded. And it’s clear he has no clue what to do about it. This guy is so far over his head, he’d drown in a kiddie pool.
But what I’d most love to know is what the voters in this dysfunctional country are going to do about it.
It has long been axiomatic in American politics that the incumbent party typically takes a hit when gas prices go north. If that’s still true, swing-voting independents and non-MAGA Republicans might take their revenge on Trump and his congressional lickspittles in the November midterm elections.
Heck, even the most MAGA-fied motorists should be in high dudgeon about the war tax being levied on their wallets. It should be easy to connect dot A (the warlord’s impetuous actions) to dot B (the economic consequences). Even a macho Trump dude should be able to understand that the guy who promised No More Wars is directly responsible for what the dude is shelling out to fill his Ram 4x4.
But I have no faith that the cultists in the electorate will ever wake up. The good news is that we may not need them anyway. Trump’s new war is reportedly the most unpopular foreign adventure in the history of polling, thanks to a massive thumbs-down verdict from independents - with a key assist from many non-MAGA Republicans. The cost to consumers is already emblazoned on every gas sign at every highway exit and suburban street corner; there’s no choice but to pay up.
Maybe most Americans will finally come to realize ( nearly a decade too late) that a guy who bankrupted cash-cow casinos was ill-skilled to run foreign policy. Gosh, if only someone had told Trump that warring with Iran would likely prompt that country to close the critical Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil is transported. Or maybe one of his sycophants gave it a try and got stonewalled. Maybe Trump had no idea what or where the Strait of Hormuz was and cared not a whit to find out. Maybe someone should’ve given him a coloring book that showed Iran’s juxtaposition to the Strait and titled it “Because Geography.”
The cornered rat is trapped by dint of his own disordered mind. Thanks to him, the closure of the Strait has triggered “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” That’s according to the International Energy Agency, which represents 32 member nations and reports basic facts without kissing Trump’s rump. No wonder he has been desperately pleading for help to reopen the Strait, begging all the nations that he has been relentlessly dissing; naturally they’ve told him to buzz off. He even claims that he has sought advice from a former president, but spokespeople for all four living alums say he hasn’t called them, which means that he’s lying yet again or that he’s talking to White House portraits a la Nixon in 1974.
And the clock is ticking, because if this war becomes open-ended, spiking oil prices will inflate prices across a broad range of consumer goods. Oil is the key ingredient in the industrial processes that churn out the stuff we buy - like food and medicine.
But for now it’s all about the gas, the warflation at the pump, and what’s truly priceless are the rationalizations being offered by Trump’s hapless toadies on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the 27 percent price hike is just a “blip.” Florida congressman Aaron Bean says the price hike is like “street repair. There comes a day when they release the cones and whatnot, and it’s smooth and easy and widened and safer, and that’s what’s happening.” Senator Roger Wicker said, “The public understands the necessity of what we’re doing,” a claim that flunks reality.
(Republicans sang a different tune 14 years ago when gas prices rose, albeit briefly. They said that President Obama was “fully responsible.” They said that Obama was intentionally going “to great lengths to make gas more expensive.” They blamed it on “the Obama economy” and his “radical agenda.” We know this drill by now: Everything was Obama’s fault. Nothing is Trump’s fault, not even an impetuous war of choice.)
Nobody, least of all Trump, knows what will happen to warflation in the months ahead - indeed, whether the basic necessity of driving to work will become more financially burdensome, particularly for downscale Americans who can least afford the tab. But unless Trump can find a way to rig the midterm congressional elections in his favor, it’s safe to predict that voters outside the MAGA cult will give him a beatdown and drive the Republicans from power in one or both chambers.
We’ve been whacked at the gas pump, but, more importantly, our consciences have been stirred. Two night ago at the Oscars, the best acceptance speech was delivered by a documentary filmmaker, David Borenstein. While referencing his winning entry about Russian tyranny, he said this:
“What we saw when working with this footage - it’s that you lose (your country) through countless small little acts of complicity. When we act complicit, when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we could produce it and consume it, we all face a moral choice.”
Our choice, by now, should be obvious.
