Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at Tuesday’s press briefing if President Joe Biden bears responsibility for a rise in gas prices.
Doocy asked the press secretary if the president is responsible for the past week’s uptick in gas prices after Biden took a victory lap when gas prices fell in recent months. According to the American Automobile Association, the national average price per gallon of regular gasoline rose from $3.75 on Sept. 27 to $3.81 on Oct. 4 after falling from a peak of more than $5 per gallon in June.
In response to Doocy’s question, Jean-Pierre immediately reverted to the old White House policy of blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for pain at the pump.
“Is the president responsible for gas prices going up?” Doocy asked.
“So, it’s a lot more nuanced than that, right Peter? You know this,” Jean-Pierre said. “There have been global challenges that we have all dealt with, ‘all’ meaning other countries as well have since the pandemic. There’s been a pandemic and there has been Putin’s war, and Putin’s war has increased prices at the pump. We have seen that over the past several months, and we saw what the president was able to do. He took some historic steps at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and making sure that we were able to do everything that we can to bring that cost down for American families, give them a little more of a breathing room. And we saw that.”
She touted the administration’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act, which Jean-Pierre said would decrease prices and help tackle inflation. She also said the president successfully brought down gas prices over the summer and will continue that work.
Doocy then pointed to the recent rise in gas prices that pushed the price of a gallon of regular to $6.38 in California, $5.51 in Nevada and $5.46 in Oregon.
“Who can afford it?” Doocy asked.
“And we understand that, and that’s why the president worked so hard the past several months to make sure that he did everything we can to bring gas prices down,” Jean-Pierre responded. “We have seen — I know you’re pulling out a couple of areas across the country, and I get that, and we understand that there’s more work to do. I’ve never said we were done here. We’ve always been very clear that there’s more work to do — but we have seen, the reality is, we have seen the fastest decline in gasoline prices in over a decade. That’s because of what this president has done.” (RELATED: Doocy And Jean-Pierre Debate Gas Prices In Frosty Exchange)
Prices dropped at the pump over the summer after the high cost of gasoline allowed supply to better align with demand, CNBC reported. In July, the national average dropped below $4 per gallon for the first time since March.