The President flies to Kentucky and Ohio to defend the gas-price spike.

OK. Pull up a stool. Friday afternoon. The President of the United States, having spent two weeks at war with Iran, having watched the Strait of Hormuz close, having watched gas prices go from a national average of three twenty-four a gallon to four eighty-one in a fortnight, gets on Air Force One and flies to Kentucky.

In Kentucky, hon, in front of a cheering crowd, at a small business roundtable at a steel fabricator in Owensboro, the President of the United States said the gas prices are a small price to pay. That was the quote. A small price to pay. He said it again in Ohio the same afternoon. A small price to pay.

Hon. A small price to pay. In Kentucky. In Ohio. The two states, hon, where the F-150 is the single best-selling vehicle and where the commute is forty-five minutes one way in a seven-thousand-pound truck. The price of gasoline is not, in those states, in any home I have ever set foot in, a small price to pay. The price of gasoline is the single largest line item on the kitchen-table budget of millions of households.

The math, hon, on a fifteen-gallon tank, at four eighty-one versus three twenty-four, is twenty-three dollars more per fill-up. On two fill-ups a week, on fifty weeks a year, that is twenty-three hundred dollars per year. That is not a small price to pay, hon. That is most of a mortgage payment in Owensboro. That is most of a car payment in Mansfield, Ohio. That is most of the family’s school-supply budget for the year. And the President of the United States, on Friday, in Kentucky, said it was a small price to pay.

He then, hon, pivoted. You know the pivot. The pivot is the thing the speechwriter writes when the first part of the speech is bad on the polling. The pivot was drug prices. The President said drug prices are coming down. He said insulin is down. He said Medicare drugs are down. He said prescription costs are the lowest in history.

The Medicare drug cost line, hon, is technically true on some categories. It is not true on most categories. On the most prescribed drugs in the country, hon, the price changes over the past year are small, mixed, and largely from policies passed in 2022 under the previous administration, which the current President spent eighteen months trying to rescind. The line about drug prices, hon, is the standard pivot. The pivot is the thing you say when the gas price is the bad number.

You ever notice how the people who say the gas price is a small price to pay are the same people with the motorcade that gets the gas paid by the taxpayer?

Pentagon investigation, hon. Same Friday. The Defense Secretary says the U.S. probably did hit the Iranian school and the probable death toll is over a hundred and seventy-five children, teachers, and staff. He says it from a podium on the same day the President is in Kentucky saying small price to pay. The small price, in this telling, is gasoline. The real price is kids.

Funny how that works.