Even Fox News couldn’t help but grill one of President Donald Trump’s top minions as nationwide gas prices surge to new heights.
Fox News’ senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy, 38, put Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the spot Wednesday over the Trump administration’s increasingly shaky promise that gas prices will drop back to $3 a gallon.
Trump’s war in Iran has dragged into its seventh week, with disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz rattling global oil markets.
The narrow waterway handles more than 20 percent of the world’s oil shipments, and the continued instability there has helped push Brent crude oil to $96 a barrel. U.S. gas prices have climbed to a nationwide average of $4.14 a gallon, putting another squeeze on consumers already dealing with soaring inflation rates.
Doocy’s exchange with Bessent, 63, centered on comments from Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who had previously projected that gas could fall back to $3 a gallon by summer.
That optimistic forecast is already faltering. Wright, 61, acknowledged Monday that the timeline now appears “aggressive” as access to the strait remains unstable despite a tentative ceasefire.
That left Doocy to ask the question: “It doesn’t sound like we’re going to have $3 a gallon gas by summertime...So, when are we really gonna get $3 a gallon gas?”
Bessent shifted focus and tied any meaningful drop in prices to the outcome of negotiations, while stressing that shipping through the strait has still not fully resumed.
Since the conflict began, hundreds of ships and roughly 20,000 workers have been blocked from moving through the Gulf, fueling the largest global oil disruption in history.
Even so, Bessent tried to preserve some version of the administration’s optimism. He said he still expects Americans to see gas prices with “a three in front of it sooner rather than later” during the summer.
But when Doocy tried to pin that down—“So not by summer, like Memorial Day, but maybe by Labor Day?”—Bessent again ducked specifics and stretched the timeline to a broad window between June 20 and Sept. 20.
He then shifted the blame elsewhere. Rather than explain why the administration’s own forecast had changed so dramatically, Bessent suggested gas stations had moved too quickly to jack up prices in response to rising crude, saying officials would be “watching the gas stations” to see if they would move at the same accelerated pace to lower prices as crude oil rates drop.
That evasiveness comes as the economic warnings get louder. Annual inflation rate in the U.S. rose to 3.3 percent in March, and the International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that prolonged disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz could trigger a global recession.
Trump, 79, however, is still insisting the pain is worth it.
In a taped interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, 58, the president said he was “very happy” with current oil prices and argued the surge was “certainly worthwhile” if it stops Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Bessent has pushed a similar line before, framing the financial hit to Americans as “a small bit of economic pain” in service of a larger national security goal.
