Vice President JD Vance attempted to hose down voter fears over soaring gas prices caused by Donald Trump’s war on Iran.
Vance, 41, made an appearance at a manufacturing facility in Auburn Hills, Michigan, on Wednesday. A local reporter asked him what the Trump administration was doing to “help keep gas prices down” as the Iran conflict spirals out of control.
Gas soared to $3.89 a gallon on Wednesday, up from $2.97 on Feb. 28 when Trump launched his military assault against Iran. That’s the highest since September 2023, after a spike caused by production cuts from Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Prices are expected to surge after a strike on an Iranian facility linked to South Pars, the largest natural gas field in the world, on Wednesday, which triggered retaliatory attacks by Iran, including on Qatari LNG facilities.
The latest attacks occurred as oil tankers are still blocked from the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for much of the world’s fuel supply, which has been closed by the threat of Iranian attacks.
Trump, 79, has flip-flopped over whether he does or doesn’t want U.S. allies to help oil tankers safely navigate the crucial shipping lane to the Persian Gulf.
However Vance, who is worth an estimated $12 million, did his best to downplay the global problem of Trump’s creation.
“Look, gas prices are up,” Vance said. “We know they’re up and we know people are hurting because of it. We’re doing everything we can to ensure that they stay lower.”
Vance called the crippling gas prices “a temporary blip” and said, “Frankly, they’re not even as high as they were in certain parts of the Biden administration.”
But the vice president admitted, “We have a problem, and know we have a problem.”
Rising oil prices, feeding into cost pressures on other goods beyond gas, will create political problems for the Republicans ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Vance claimed the U.S. is faring better than allies who “focussed on green energy scams who are hurtin’ a lot more than we are” and insisted his administration “released hundreds of millions of barrels out of all these petroleum reserves so that we could put some downward pressure on prices.”
“We have a rough road ahead of us for the next few weeks but it’s temporary,” he said, before asking for a different question.
The Daily Beast has contacted reps for Vance for comment.
The constriction of supply has seen diesel top $6 a gallon in some states, while a barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark, has surged from roughly $70 per barrel just before the war to as high as $111.45 on Wednesday afternoon, according to FactSet.
Trump weighed into the strike on Iran and Qatar’s shared offshore gas field South Pars with a furious Truth Social post on Wednesday, claiming the U.S. had no prior warning of the attack, which has been questioned.
New reporting by Semaphor also backed the claim the Trump administration knew, while Axios reported senior Israeli and U.S. officials were aware of the strike in advance and “even approved it” to put pressure on Iran.
In his angry post, Trump warned Iran that if it attacked Qatar, America “with or without the help or consent of Israel” would wipe out the entire South Pars operation.
“I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long-term implications that it will have on the future of Iran,” Trump said, “but if Qatar’s LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
