'The arsonist putting out fires': Former Rubio staffer tears apart Trump lies

On Thursday, the White House X account posted a boast that fell flat with respondents and drew a particularly scalding burn from a prominent conservative. “Oil is flowing and gas prices have begun tumbling down,” posted the White House. “Now below $4 per gallon nationally.”“From the arsonist putting out fires files,” replied Gregg Nunziata, a former staffer for the likes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Executive Director for the conservative Society for the Rule of Law. Nunziata is referring to the fact that gas prices had only surged in the first place because of President Donald Trump’s decision to launch war with Iran, peaking at a national average of around $5 per gallon — the highest in four years. And while the Trump administration is bragging that prices have begun to creep down, experts warn that the high prices could persist for months before the country sees a significant and lasting reduction at the pumps. “Even as gas prices start to decline, it is anticipated to take weeks or months for oil to start flowing through the Strait of Hormuz again,” explains PBS. “Before the war, the strait carried a fifth of the world's crude oil. Now, it will take time for hundreds of ships trapped in the Persian Gulf to exit through the narrow strait. And Gulf oil producers that throttled back production will need time to get the oil moving again. Analysts also say ship captains may take their time to decide if passage is safe and that the threat of attack from Iran has truly receded. In addition, refineries typically pay for crude oil a month or more in advance, so even after oil prices drop, they won't immediately be processing cheaper products.”What’s more, as the New York Times notes, there may also be domestic pressures that keep gas prices elevated. “Energy analysts refer to the swing of prices as ‘up like a rocket, down like a feather’ — a phenomenon that means gasoline costs quickly rise alongside the price of crude oil but are slow to follow its descent,” explains the Times. “One of the main reasons is that gas station owners tend to lose money or make only small profits when prices are shooting up because they are not able to raise prices fast enough to make up for soaring costs. So when wholesale prices start to go down, station owners are slow to bring retail prices down to make up for their poor financial performance on the way up.”In the meantime, the response to the White House’s post suggests that, like Nunziata, many Americans see through the administration’s attempt to spin the situation as a win. “All it cost us tax cattle was $29 billion in military expenses, $100 billion in negative impacts to consumers, and 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Oil Reserves,” noted one respondent. “All just to end up with the same situation as we had before. Great work everyone.”“And all we had to do was sign a surrender agreement and create a $300 billion reparations fund,” noted Huffpost correspondent S.V. Date. “Alternatively he could have stayed in the JCPOA, which Iran was abiding by.”“The collective cringe to this attempted spin is overwhelming,” asserted Jim Stewartson, who writes about the impacts of psychological war on democracy.