Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum slammed White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein amid soaring inflation rates and skyrocketing gas prices.
The Biden administration has been celebrating gas prices dropping to 80 cents from their historic high of almost $6 during these past few months. Even with the price drop, however, the national average for a gallon of gas is still $4.14.
This graphic from the Biden admin is an insult to the intelligence of the American people so I fixed it.
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) August 2, 2022
Biden is now bragging about gas at $4.18 per gallon. At his inauguration, gas was just $2.38. That's a difference of $1.80.
Biden is bragging about a 75% increase in price. https://t.co/YPFYLJvhHs pic.twitter.com/esV5vpGTGX
During an interview on Thursday, MacCallum put Bernstein in the hot seat for the insignificant drop in price.
“I do think though that there’s a couple of fact checks I want to do. Someone said that they thought the gas price had couple down a couple cents. That’s just factually incorrect. It’s down 83 cents off of its peak since mid-June,” Bernstein said.
“Jared, is that true for diesel fuel? That’s not true for diesel fuel. How much has diesel fuel come down?” MacCallum asked.
“Diesel fuel has also come down a lot. I don’t have the number in my head,” Bernstein admitted.
According to the AAA, the current average price of diesel is $5.25.
“Well she deals with it every single day, she fills up her tow trucks. I’m going with her on that,” MacCallum said.
“Hold on, Martha. Wait a second. To say that diesel fuel has come down a couple of cents is absolutely incorrect. I will get you the number of cents. It’s not a couple of cents,” Bernstein said.
This comes weeks after the Department of Energy announced that it will be sending more barrels of oil to China in an apparent effort to lower gas prices.
“This Notice of Sale is part of President Biden’s announcement on March 31, 2022 authorizing the sale of crude oil from the SPR to address the significant market supply disruption caused by Putin’s war on Ukraine and help lower energy costs for American families,” the department said in a statement.
About one million barrels per day is being released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) through October. The flow is draining the reserve, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986. However, U.S. officials claim that oil prices could be higher if the SPR had not been tapped.
