Blame Game
Reason · RC · trust 34/100
(Illustration: Adani Samat/Midjourney/Heather Craig/Dreamstime.com) How stupid does he think voters are? President Donald Trump is touring the West Coast, selling Republicans' midterm pitch to voters. As part of this, he's trying to answer for high gas prices—which just hit a national average of $4.09 a gallon—but doing so in the most characteristically Trump way possible: deflecting blame for the war in Iran and focusing instead on how big businesses have erred.
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"Mike Wirth, Chairman and CEO of Chevron, just gave, in an interview with the fabulous Maria Bartiromo, all of the reasons that his company is doing so well," he wrote on Truth Social yesterday. "The only thing he conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD! As an example, they threw Mike and Chevron out of Venezuela, but now they're back, far bigger and stronger than ever before, expecting to make a fortune! That goes for other Oil Companies as well...and get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!"
This is wildly twisted logic: The oil industry would be dead without the Trump administration? They're making a fortune (compared to normal times)? Trump can just order prices downward, other economic conditions be damned?
Yesterday, he chastised "the major oil companies for 'making too much money' off global oil shortages as a result of the war," reports Politico. "'They better cut the retail price, the consumer price,' Trump said. 'I'll say it loud and clear. I'm not happy about it.'" But Trump is running out of time to scapegoat.
"Labor Day is the point where gas prices are baked into the election," Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Politico . "That last summer trip determines how voters evaluate their cost of living."
"We got to wrap it up," Speaker Mike Johnson said last month about the war. Not wrong.
Scenes from New York: "I'd been hearing that NYC wine stores were having a hard time," writes Ginia Bellafonte in the comments of her recent New York Times piece. "People are drinking less across the board—unquestionably a good thing for health—and weight-loss drugs are adding to the slump. But in terms of retail culture, there's something to mourn. Thanks to state laws limiting owners to a single shop, wine stores are among the city's last true mom-and-pops. Then I heard about Louisville, the center of the bourbon industry, and the effect declining sales were having on its cultural life, and I got busy."
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