Trump caused oil prices to rise, blamed Biden

In his first big post-federal indictment speech, Donald Trump made some very odd points before a Georgia audience. Speaking in a convention center with barely the capacity of a high school gymnasium, Trump spent much of his time in the way that many expected: Calling special counsel Jack Smith “deranged,” attacking the Department of Justice as a “sick nest of people who need to be cleaned out,” and blaming his indictment on President Joe Biden. As with most such events, Trump devoted the bulk of his appearance to his favorite subject: the hardships of being billionaire cult leader Donald Trump.

Trump got into other topics, like threatening the audience with World War III. But the most bizarre pitch of the evening may have been when he talked about how he got onto a “three-way call” with Vladimir Putin and “the king of Saudi Arabia” (it was actually the bone-saw-wielding usurper Mohammed bin Salman), to talk about oil production. Because Trump outright said that he didn’t do this to get the Russian dictator or the Saudi monarch to raise production and keep prices low. He called on them to cut production and drive up oil prices.

“I had to save the oil companies,” said Trump in his Georgia speech. “They were all going to go bust.” So Trump got his authoritarian super team together to squash global production of oil—and absolutely guaranteed that Americans would be paying at the pump. Then Trump and Republicans followed up with their next act—blaming Biden for high gas prices.

But at his speech in Georgia, Trump blamed Biden for something else. He blamed him for bringing gas prices down.