Trump’s Big Interview On Fox News Falls Apart Under Basic Reality Check

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During a recent discussion that was aired on Fox News, former President Donald Trump made a series of false claims related to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is a national stockpile of energy supplies.

For some reason, some Republicans have been very upset about sales from the reserve made under the direction of President Joe Biden. The distributions of oil helped boost supplies, which in turn helped push down gas prices for Americans — something Biden was accused of orchestrating in connection to some kind of anticipated political reward, considering the 2022 midterm elections were coming up at the time. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) even introduced an initially failed initiative that would have drastically cut back the abilities of presidents to make any such sales from the reserve at all. Isn’t lowering gas prices a… good thing?

Biden took those steps amid global upheaval in energy markets centering in part on the Russian invasion of Ukraine that was launched in early 2022. As for Trump, he claimed he made massive purchases to bulk up the nation’s reserves that he never actually made. “Think of it: 75 million barrels, and I bought it for peanuts, and Congress – I had to fight Congress, and the pricing was so crazy and so good,” Trump said, according to CNN. Though Trump did make a roughly similar proposal when he was still in office, it was never fulfilled! The exact opposite outcome was reached, as Congress opposed his efforts — and had success doing so, shutting the proposal down.

Trump also claimed on Fox that he brought the oil in the reserve near its total capacity, which was false, and he characterized the current status of the reserve as nearly if not entirely empty, which was also not accurate. As explained in a comprehensive fact-check published by CNN, Trump also misrepresented the available foundations for making the oil in the reserve available for purchases, as there is actually a substantial recent history of American governments doing so in circumstances that had nothing to do with war. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is one example. Read more from CNN here.