Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
“As you mentioned, he makes light of the affordability question. And we do have an affordability problem. And I think – you know, I think a better way for him to frame it, we had 9% inflation under Joe Biden. Of course, it went down towards the end of his presidency. But the Americans have never recovered from that.”
That’s Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) talking to Ed O’Keefe on CBS News’ Face the Nation August 16.
“He,” of course, is President Donald Trump.
Bacon was reacting to a piece of tape recorded on August 14.
Trump said: “For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you're doing it so that a very evil country cannot have – a country, really, it's the number one state sponsor of terror in the world.
“We don't want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So, remember that when you have to pay a little bit more. You're at $4. It's OK.”
Now let’s look at Trump’s comments. A “tiny bit more” for your gasoline?
Isn’t that a “tiny bit more” than condescending?
Since he started the war Americans have paid, on average, 30% more for gasoline.
That’s money that’s gone.
He already told us after Operation Midnight Hammer that Iran couldn’t have a nuclear weapon.
He’s repeated that there is “nuclear dust” remaining.
Was he lying then?
“So, remember that when you have to pay. . .more.”
And who says its “OK”? The man who claimed that there would be so much energy generated in the US that we’d have nothing to worry about — clearly not understanding how the oil industry works. Private corporations acquire the oil and sell it where there is the best market for them to do so.
While Trump seems to have no problem making socialist moves by inserting government into private enterprise — Intel and U.S. Steel, for example — so far, he hasn’t done the same to the oil companies.
When approximately 20% of the oil is not getting to the market because of the war — which he has claimed nearly 40 times was coming to a close — the market acts accordingly.
But here’s something that he said immediately after “It’s OK”: “I mean, it's – I'm not – I'm not – I will never apologize. I did the right thing.”
“I will never apologize.”
There you have it. He doesn’t think he has done anything wrong here, nor, apparently, anywhere else.
He doesn’t care about the American people if it means that he has to accept fault for something.
But, of course, there are his enablers like Don Bacon: “I think a better way for him to frame it, we had 9% inflation under Joe Biden. Of course, it went down towards the end of his presidency. But the Americans have never recovered from that.”
Biden!
What never gets said by the Republicans who are busy looking in the rearview mirror is something that should be large in that mirror: COVID.
Yes, the pandemic, which wreaked havoc on the US during Trump’s last year of the presidency, led to. . .yes, inflation when Biden took the position.
Arguably, had Trump been more responsive to dealing with the virus and not making absurd claims about it suddenly disappearing, the supply chain wouldn’t have been as broken and inflation wouldn’t have been as high.
Inflation was caused during that period in part as a result of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Biden signed in March 2021. . .as well the $3.1 trillion that Trump spent for pandemic relief during 2020. Somehow that part never gets attention.
Will Republicans ever acknowledge the fact that Trump isn’t the business genius they seem to believe he is? And will the American people realize that he only has their back when it works to his advantage?
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, where he writes primarily for the right column.