When gas prices increased over the winter months, the Media Research Center did what it usually does — blame President Biden as the sole cause, despite not offering any actual evidence that this is the case. Joseph Vazquez wrote up that schtick (while accusing others of a similar “schtick”) in a March 13 post:
CNN is back to its old schtick of desperately spinning higher gas prices to look like no big deal for Americans, even though they’re currently hovering at four-month highs.
CNN addressed gas prices hitting $3.40 a gallon on Friday, after bottoming out at $3.07 in January. Instead of just reporting the straight news, CNN reporter Matt Egan begged readers in his headline: “Gas prices have surged to four-month highs. Don’t panic.” Egan has become a comedic figure at CNN for persistently doing the facts tango for President Joe Biden to deceive Americans struggling to pay at the pump, so it’s not surprising he’s back to his old tricks again.
Egan warned in his latest spin, “The speedy price increase threatens to unwind progress on inflation and add to the financial pressure some Americans are feeling.” But not to fear though, Egan pleaded, “experts say there is no reason to panic about gas prices, at least not yet. Gas prices always rise at this time of the year.” But it’s not “always” the case that U.S. oil refineries are simultaneously struggling significantly to stay afloat due to increasingly daunting maintenance costs and regulations, inconvenient little factoids that undercut Egan’s entire premise.
Vazquez called on an oil industry lobbyist to reinforce his narrative:
American Energy Alliance President Tom Pyle ripped Egan’s spin apart in an exclusive interview with MRC Business, saying, “CNN has it completely wrong with respect to the health of U.S. refineries, which are under constant assault from liberal blue state governors and the Biden administration.” Pyle critiqued that Biden and company, given their apathy towards fossil fuels, “have no incentive to increase our overall refining capacity.”
According to Pyle, U.S. oil refining is currently “under pressure by federal and state policies that are prioritizing biofuels and renewable diesel over petroleum refining.”. The American Emergency Alliance president warned that many smaller refineries are “shifting to making smaller amounts of food energy at refineries that used to process oil.” Pyle concluded that the federal policies are basically “driving US refining to mirror California’s, where they have lost 11% of refining capacity over the past decade.”
Even now, footnoted Pyle, the Biden administration is weaponizing the Environmental Protection Agency through its “Risk Management Program” to target the use of catalysts for making alkylate “an important component of modern, clean-burning gasoline.” In effect, warned Pyle, it will become even “harder to make gasoline in the U.S,” at a time when China just surpassed the U.S. “for the first time” ever in oil refining capacity in 2022. Does that sound “healthy” to you, Egan?
Pyle offered no evidence that Biden was the sole cause of refinery issues. Vazquez further quoted a “petrochemical market intelligence website” claiming to offer “a rebuttal to the kind of spin leftist media talking heads like Egan employ whenever they’re reporting bad economic news in Biden’s world.”
This narrative was echoed in a March 12 post by Tom Olohan, who claimed that “Americans have faced higher mortgage rates, declining real wages and higher gas prices since Biden took power” without offering any evidence that Biden is the sole cause. Olohan similarly hyped rising gas prices in an April 10 post. Olohan played the same blame game in an April 16 post:
ABC News Live and CBS Mornings absurdly ignored the impact of President Joe Biden’s anti-energy policies. At the same time, they blamed turmoil in the Middle East for present and even future energy prices.
The hosts of the April 15 editions of ABC News Live and CBS Mornings tiptoed around the elephant in the room, pointing to the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war and the recent Iranian attack on Israel as the alleged culprit for current and future gas prices. Yet, these shows entirely failed to mention Biden’s major role in the fueling of such a major increase.
ABC News Correspondent Alexis Christoforous cited a source claiming that gas prices have been rising just at the chance of turmoil in the Middle East. “Analysts say the risk of escalating warfare in the Middle East has already been factored into this year’s roughly 20% rise in crude oil prices,” she claimed. ABC News went on to tie future gas prices to a potential Israeli response to Iran’s recent attack. Christoforous said, “Now, what happens next with oil and the stock market largely on Israel’s response to the attack.”
On CBS Mornings, CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger blamed not only high gas prices but also inflation generally on conflicts in the Middle East.
Again, Olohan offered no evidence that Biden is the sole cause of higher gas prices, instead complaining about “Biden’s Jan. 26 ‘pause’ on liquified natural gas projects,” which has nothing to to with gasoline. Nevertheless, he went on to rant about Biden’s supposedly “destructive policies that discourage investment and harm American energy production.”
Alex Christy complained in an April 18 post:
With gas prices on the rise, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle did what comes naturally to her: defending President Joe Biden. On Wednesday’s The 11th Hour Ruhle not only claimed that Biden has nothing to do with high gas prices, but he is being undermined by the Russians and the Saudis who are trying to get Donald Trump elected.
[…]Even if one grants Ruhle’s premise that Russia and Saudi Arabia are trying to get Trump elected (as opposed to Moscow cutting production to raise the price of oil to fund its war machine), Biden has not done anything to respond. In fact, he has done the opposite. It is now more expensive to get a drilling lease on federal lands thanks to last week’s new regulations that changed the royalty rate for the first time in a century.
Christy didn’t explain why the government shouldn’t raise century-old fees when it could certainly use the money and it the oil companies can easily afford it. Instead, he went onto whine that “Ruhle’s claim that the Russians and the Saudis are trying to get Trump elected with their oil policies is not even original. In October 2022, Ruhle’s colleague Ali Velshi theorized that Moscow and Riyadh conspired to raise gas prices to help Republicans in that year’s midterms.” Christy omitted the fact that in 2020, Trump did in fact call for Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut oil production, which dramatically increased oil prices, which then spread to the pump.
Meanwhile, gas prices have dropped 19 cents a gallon in the past months and 9 cents in the past week alone. The MRC has no post on this development, though by its own narrative Biden must be credited for it.