Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has conjured up a mind-blowing villain for skyrocketing gas prices in America in an interview on Fox News.
“Thank Gavin Newsom for that,” he snapped Friday when asked by host Aishah Hasnie about the public’s growing fury over mounting gas prices.
Those prices, with a national average still well above $4, are universally believed to be the result of Trump’s ongoing war with Iran, and have never previously been blamed on California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Hasnie cited an article in The Washington Post to Burgum that quoted industry experts as warning that gas prices “are about to soar as the commercial and government inventories that have mitigated price rises so far are rapidly depleting.” It could be just “weeks” away, she noted.
That possibility appeared more likely as yet another Trump promise that Iran and the U.S. were close to a deal to end the war and reopen the oil-critical Strait of Hormuz appeared to be dissolving.
If the deal Trump has touted doesn’t happen and the U.S. continues to burn through its strategic petroleum reserve, Hasnie asked Burgum: “Is there a backup plan? Is there something that you guys have up your sleeve to get through the summer months?”
Burgum responded by noting that a Fox News map of rising gas prices made him “smile.”
“It’s about like if a weather reporter said, ‘Here’s the temperature in America tomorrow. It’s gonna be 46 degrees.’ I mean… the price of gasoline varies across our whole country, largely right now by state policy and state taxes, not by the underlying fundamentals,” he said.
Burgum argued that “about half” of the states with the highest gas prices “over-rotated” in a push toward alternative energy, though he didn’t go into details.
“We’re going to move from affordable, reliable, secure American energy and [instead] we’re going to rely on intermittent, highly subsidized, weather-dependent sources of energy,” he said, apparently referring to “weather-dependent” wind and solar power, which do not fuel cars.
Burgum insisted that “we’re going to see prices continue to drop across the country,” but not in states like California. Burgum then claimed higher gas prices are linked to California policies, and have “nothing to do with the Strait of Hormuz.“
Burgum vowed that a pact with Iran is close and that the president will not make a “bad deal.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Burgum for clarification on whether or not the Strait of Hormuz plays a role in mounting gas prices, or if it has “nothing to do” with price increases.
