Over the past year or so, the Media Research Center has labored hard to blame President Biden for higher gas prices — despite never being able to name any specific Biden policy that directly corresponded to a specific price increase. But now that gas prices have been falling from early-summer peaks, the MRC now wants you to believe that Biden has no control at all over it. Emma Schultz complained in a July 19 post:
With the steady increase in gas prices over the past few months, the Biden Administration and the liberal media routinely stated that the prices were not the President’s fault and he could not do anything to change them. But on Monday’s CNN Newsroom with Ana Cabrera, a different story is painted as declining gas prices were suddenly the result of Biden rolling up his sleeves. Never the villain, always the hero.
Amos Hochstein, a Biden energy advisor, joined Cabrera on Monday afternoon as they discussed these decreases in prices and Biden’s role in it all.
[…]This time, he also added in what the President had been doing for months to reduce the price at the pump. That Biden had “released a million barrels a day from the strategic petroleum reserve,” stating that “that’s the most anyone has ever done.”
In addition, Hochstein suggested their tough talk was winning the day, saying, “we’re holding the industry accountable… we’ve told them we want them to bring down the prices. And I think, so far that’s working.”
According to Hochstein, analysts that were reporting on prices rising were “trying to scare the American public,” as he so cheerfully encouraged Cabrera to “focus on the achievements that>This encapsulates the narrative. Rising prices weren’t because of Biden’s runaway spending and cutting of domestic production, but he’s suddenly the hero by nibbling at the margins.
[…]This encapsulates the narrative. Rising prices weren’t because of Biden’s runaway spending and cutting of domestic production, but he’s suddenly the hero by nibbling at the margins.
For Schultz, the narrative is just the opposite: Biden is always the villain, never the hero. She never identified any of this “runaway spending” that she says directly caused higher gas prices, not did she prove that Biden engaged in “cutting of domestic production.”
Kathleen Krumhansl howled in an Aug. 10 post that a Univision reporter “crowed, in his zest to fulfill the role of regime media propagandist, that the current gas prices of under $4 per gallon, ‘delight the soul’, as he allegedly saw from people’s ‘happy faces’ goign to huff that “No one is fooled by Univision’s theatrics, designed to make us all believe that all is beautiful and that our souls are delighted with $4 a gallon gas.”
Krumnahsl returned for an Aug. 17 post to rant that Spanish-language TV channels noted the drop in gas prices, declaring that reporting on this fact was “blatant pro-Biden propaganda” and “delusional talking points repeated by the Hispanic corporate media to an economically challenged viewership, one that has repeatedly appeared on air to confirm their struggle to put food on the table and gasoline in their tanks.”
Sounds like Krumhansl is an aspiring right-wing regime propagandist.
Jeffrey Clark tried to dismiss the price declline as “small” and “minor” in an Aug. 19 post — despite the numbers he cites showing a 20 percent decline, which is, in fact, not “minor.” He then hyped how MRC fave Ted Cruz claim that “gas prices are UP nearly 65% since Biden took office” which conveniently ignores how gas prices were unusually low due to the pandemic.
Joseph Vazquez spent a Sept. 20 post complaining that PolitiFact blew up the right-wing argument that Biden is solely to blame for rising gas prices — but he cited only his fellow right-wing hacks in response:
PolitiFact had the audacity to argue like President Joe Biden’s eco-extremist policies didn’t really have anything to do with America’s energy inflation crisis, continuing to prove why its worthless so-called “fact-checks” belong in the trash bin.
The Facebook fact-checker seethed at Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) for daring to tweet in August: “Democrats’ radical green energy policies caused record gas prices. They want to fundamentally transform our economy.”
PolitiFact rebuked Johnson for his wrongthink and falsely stated: “Green energy policies didn’t cause record prices at gasoline pumps” and suggested Johnson said this, of course, simply because he was “locked in a tight re-election battle.”
JunkScience.com founder Steve Milloy repudiated the so-called fact-checker in exclusive comments to MRC Business: “The notion that anyone but Biden is responsible for high gas prices has no basis in fact.”
Climate Depot founder and “The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown” author Marc Morano gave a blunt assessment of PolitiFact’s gaslighting: “It’s time to rename these ‘Fact Checks’ for what they truly are, agenda-driven ‘opinion checks’ and nothing more.’”
Neither Milloy or Morano have any special expertise on the oil price market — their main job is being climate deniers, making it puzzling why Vazquez devoted an “exclusive” piece on activists ranting about something they’re not experts on. And as usual, Vazquez did not quote his reliable right-wingers identifying any specific Biden policy to a specific rise in gas prices. Vazquez also complained that “PolitiFact also adopted the ‘Putin’s Price Hike’ fallacy,” but at no point did he prove what, exactly, the “fallacy” is.
Kevin Tober tried to keep the right-wing narrative alive in an Oct. 10 post:
On Monday night’s edition of NBC Nightly News, correspondent Andrea Mitchell did all she could to make excuses and cover for President Biden’s outright lies and excuses for the skyrocketing price of gasoline. Going as far as to let Biden claim he brought gas prices down $1.60 before the “Russians and the Saudis” let it move back up. This of course is a flat-out lie. But Mitchell is always happy to cover for the Biden regime and Democrats in Congress.
Helping Biden entirely skirt blame for rising gas prices, Mitchell led off her report by parroting her party’s talking points. “The Saudi announcement, a blow to American consumers and a gut punch to President Biden,” Mitchell bemoaned.
Tober went on to whine: “Then there’s the fact that when prices were skyrocketing earlier this year, White House talking points became the media’s refrain saying there was nothing Biden could do about the price of gas. But suddenly now he dropped it by $1.60?” Tober didn’t explain how, in his biased worldview, Biden can only be blamed for increasing gas prices but never credited for lowering them.
Tober then huffed: “Continuing to sing from the Democrat Party [sic] sheet music, Mitchell listed a number of solutions Biden could pick from that would allegedly lower the cost of gas. Notably missing was allowing oil companies to freely drill for oi.” But he didn’t explain how, exactly, Biden was keeping that from happening, given that oil companies already have thousands of leases on federal land they could be drilling on but aren’t.
Demonstrating how well he sings from right-wing sheet music, Tober concluded by ranting: “The media doesn’t care about middle-class Americans struggling to afford to fill their cars so they can go to and from work. Their only concern is for the well-being of the Democrat Party [sic]. The middle-class can go bankrupt for all they care.” But Tober has shown that he only cares about partisanship, not facts.