We’ve all felt the pinch from rising gas prices over the last couple of weeks. 
I filled my car up with unleaded gasoline on Friday, and it cost me $27.00.
My car was already at half a tank. Before President Biden took office, $27.00 was about the max it took me to get a full tank when it was on “empty,” so had my car been out of gas Friday it would have cost me double what it used to fill it up from “E.”
Since I work from home, the gas price hike, though financially painful, doesn’t hit me like it hits people who have to drive to work or whose jobs involve driving for a living. I have family members who have to drive roughly 45 minutes to get to work. And while they aren’t driving gas guzzlers, having to pay over $4 a gallon for gas on average and having to fill up once a week is seriously hurting their pocketbooks.
In states like California, it’s even worse. There are record-high gas prices being seen there, to the tune of $6.29 or more a gallon. That’s just nuts, but it’s where we are now in part thanks to Biden’s failed “leadership.”
But you wouldn’t know that based on how the Biden administration is spinning the issue.
Their preferred talking point in a desperate effort to avoid blame is to label the spike in gas prices and inflation as “Putin’s price hike.”
“[T]oday’s inflation report is a reminder that Americans’ budgets are being stretched by price increases and families are starting to feel the impacts of Putin’s price hike,” Biden stated after the Labor Department “announced that consumer prices rose 7.9% over the 12-month period ending in February — the highest year-ending increase since January 1982,” according to the New York Post.
“Americans are paying a higher price at the pump because of the actions of President Putin,” claimed White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki earlier this month.
“For months Putin has been saber-rattling, and for months gas prices have been going up – up 75 cents since he began his military build-up. This is the #PutinPriceHike in action,” White House comms director Kate Bedingfield tweeted last week.
The big problem with these statements is that they leave out the fact that gas prices began rising way before Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in late February.
It’s not just gas prices. The cost of groceries is way up. Clothing is up. Buying a used car is a lot more expensive.
Gas prices were between $2.00 and $2.30 a gallon when President Trump left office. They got so bad after Biden was sworn in that at one point the Biden administration and some in the mainstream media were cheerleading over one week where the price dropped by two cents.
Have gas prices gotten much worse since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Yes. But would we be feeling the pinch so much if America was energy independent and if Democrats like Biden weren’t so against things like the Keystone pipeline? No.
Then-President Trump repeatedly emphasized the need for America and other countries to be energy independent, especially from Russian oil. He was right.
What Biden has done over the last several weeks after a ban on Russian energy imports is direct his team to confer with Venezuela and seek talks with Saudi Arabia and Iran to soften the gas price blow here in America.
Oh, and his administration has talked up electric vehicles quite a bit, as if people could afford them right now anyway.
Make no mistake about it: Biden can blame Vladimir Putin all day long for what Americans are dealing with at the pump right now, but the receipts tell a different story, and one Biden doesn’t want you to know, especially in a critical midterm election year.
Media analyst Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
