President Biden found a new group to blame for his inflation and supply chain crises in his Baltimore town hall appearance and simultaneously revealed himself to be unaware of basic economics, the panel on "The Five" discussed Friday.
Host Kennedy pointed to a clip of the president claiming part of the problem with the stalled ship traffic at ports is "longshoremen don't always get along with the business folks there" – further predicting that if he tapped into the United States' vast strategic petroleum reserves, the price of gas would only drop 18 cents per gallon at most.
"It's still going to be above $3.00," he remarked, appearing to dismiss the idea of using American petrol instead of continuing to urge OPEC to increase its production.
In response, host Jesse Watters lamented how Biden's statements show a lack of basic economic acumen:
"His answers were ‘I don’t have any answers.' He doesn't understand supply-and-demand, and that's clear because Hunter handles his finances," Watters said.
"He doesn't understand that in a[n economic] recovery, you have to have supply meet demand -- You can’t take away permits and pipelines and leases. So right now we’re begging OPEC to increase supply. OPEC says screw you. We’re going to see it go to $100 a barrel, and we’re going to get rich, and Joe can go scratch."
On the first day of his presidency, Biden executively canceled a new energy pipeline between Alberta, Canada and the Gulf Coast.
More recently on a state level, the planners of the PennEast pipeline canceled the Dallas, Pa.-Ewing, N.J., connection due in part to environmentalists' pressure and a lack of cooperation from the State of New Jersey.
Watters went on to refer to Biden's repeated campaign theme of ending American fossil fuel production – including in a stump speech in Peterborough, N.H., where he agreed with a man concerned about global warming.
"Here’s the real problem. As the inflation goes up, gas prices and oil go up. And a weaker dollar makes gas prices and oil go even further up. So he’s going to have high prices, high inflation, and a weak dollar and sit around and have no answers for this. I don’t think he has a clue what to do and it’s clear," Watters said.
Later, host Dagen McDowell remarked Biden also appeared to continue to promote the idea that Trump supporters are the ones refusing to submit to the coronavirus vaccine.
"He’s clearly trapped in a bubble surrounded by socialists… He’s still sticking to the ‘dirty unwashed Trump voter is the one that is unvaccinated’," she said, recommending that Biden get in contact with Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who cannot attend team activities in New York City because he has chosen not to get the jab.
"One thing that does unite the American people is listening to this person stand up there incoherent, either talking out of his ass about the National Guard helping out truckers – which the White House had to backtrack – or telling the god-awful American truth to the American people: The high gas prices are by design – the higher they go the more economically sensible electric vehicles become."