Since Donald Trump first declared in early December that he wants to be a dictator on “day one,” his extralegal to-do list has varied. He’s said he wants to “close the border” and recently added a desire to set loose all the criminals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But one thing has remained on that list. Whether it’s “drill, drill, drill” or “drill, baby, drill,” Trump claims that he’ll somehow rip off all constraints holding back America’s fossil fuel industries.
The idea that President Joe Biden is holding back American energy production and has “destroyed U.S. energy independence” is being spread not just by Trump but also by Republicans in the House and Senate. Claims of a Biden “war on energy” are front and center in Republican campaigns, in claims by the conservative Heritage Foundation, and in Trump’s dictatorial ambitions.
But all of this is just lies, baby, lies.
The latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that the U.S. not only produces sufficient energy to meet its own needs, but also is exporting record levels of energy. And it’s not just oil. Similar trends are happening with natural gas, propane, butane, gasoline … just about every way that energy can be moved long distances.
In fact …
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The U.S. is in the middle of a record oil boom, which is both seeing record levels of exports and has the U.S. exceeding oil production in both Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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Biden has awarded more permits to drill on federal lands than Trump did by this point during his time in the White House.
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The U.S. has been a net exporter of oil and gas for over 26 straight months, with current levels of exports 260% higher than during any month under Trump. (Current levels are for the most recent month of data, December 2023.)
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At the same time, the U.S. experienced a record year for renewable energy and a record year for the installation of new renewable-energy capacity.
The idea that Biden has harmed U.S. energy production is an easily disprovable myth. However, it’s one that Trump and Republicans are wedded to because energy is supposed to be one of their big wins.
Like attacking abortion, energy production has been one of those issues that has belonged to Republicans seemingly as long as there have been Republicans. Not even “drill, baby, drill” originated with Trump. It’s has been a Republican slogan since at least 2008, when the party was making these same claims about the need for more American oil.
As The Washington Post noted in February, “drill, baby, drill” is a nonsensical idea. So is Trump’s claim that inflation began because of Biden’s energy policy. Inflation began because of one of those things Trump doesn’t want to talk about.
Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply chain issues, as companies had reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did contribute to driving up energy prices. Which is something the U.S. might address by making sure that no one, including Russia, launches another illegal, unprovoked, and disruptive invasion. Republicans don’t want to talk about that, either.
But much of the inflation in 2021 and 2022 likely resulted from how Trump bumbled the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Gas prices weren’t low four years ago because of drilling, baby. They were low because much of America was in lockdown, and the economy was in freefall.
Republicans are still pushing the Biden-bad-for-energy myth because they need this. The oil and gas industry is a significant donor to the Republican Party. That’s not because Democratic policies are bad for the energy industry. It’s because Biden keeps calling for immensely profitable corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.
And fossil fuel companies, like other big, profitable companies, don’t want to pay.
It also helps that Republicans are still calling both renewable energy and the climate crisis is a hoax. Fossil fuel companies really like that. Give them lower taxes, lower regulations, cheap public land, and cripple their competition? They’ll take that any day.
So they’re both raking in huge amounts of money and pretending that they need to be rescued from mean old Biden.
The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell joins Kerry to discuss the State of the Union and what President Biden needs to do to soundly defeat Donald Trump in November.
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