Fox News host Bill Hemmer stopped Donald Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett in his tracks after he tried to blame former President Joe Biden for the country’s rising gas prices.
On Friday, during the network’s “America’s Newsroom,” Hemmer discussed how gas prices had reached an average of $4.09 a gallon, increasing by nearly a dollar since last week. Hemmer asked Hassett where he thinks the cost of fuel could go.
While Hassett mentioned that Trump sees the current gas prices as a “temporary thing,” adding that the administration has taken “every possible measure” to reduce inflation — including releasing the strategic reserve, the “second-largest release of the strategic reserve on record” — he then tried to shade Biden.
“Joe Biden — he’s the one who had the biggest release of the strategic reserve, and there was no supply disruption at the time,” Hassett said. “He was just trying to offset all those terrible energy prices and get gas prices down ahead of the election. And so–”
At that, Hemmer cut in, saying, “OK, but that was then, and this is now.”
“What’s now is West Texas crude, which is what we produce here in the U.S. We’re a net exporter of oil. On Feb. 27, it was $67 a barrel; now we’re at $111 for West Texas crude … What can our economy tolerate? How high can it go?”
Hassett responded: “Oh, well you can see that right now our economy has so much momentum that it’s humming along.”
“Don’t forget that our economy is much different than the 1970s economy where we didn’t really produce the oil,” he added. “I think the energy-dominant strategy of President Trump has been a real godsend right now this time. But again, these higher prices are a temporary phenomenon and it’s going to end very soon.”
