JOE NO!

Trump’s Gas Promise Implodes as Grim Milestone Hits Home

The president just trumped his Democratic predecessor’s record—and not in a good way.

Donald Trump is doing consistently worse on fuel costs than Joe Biden despite the Republican president’s campaign pledge to bring back bargain-basement gas prices.

The average nationwide price per gallon of gasoline since Trump’s 2025 inauguration has overtaken the average recorded over his Democratic predecessor’s entire presidency, according to a CNN analysis.

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Trump has not surpassed Biden’s worst single-day price, when gasoline reached $5.02 per gallon in June 2022 following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

But costs have remained high enough for long enough since Trump, 80, went to war with Iran that he is now, on balance, inflicting more pain at the pump than his former opponent.

Voters have ranked that conflict, as well as its effect on gas prices and general unaffordability, among their chief anxieties ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, helping Democrats gain a 9-point lead in the race for control of the House and Senate.

“It’s pretty astonishing,” Patrick De Haan, a top analyst at fuel-savings platform Gas Buddy, told CNN. “I don’t think anyone would have predicted this 10 months ago.”

Trump campaigned in 2024 on a pledge to bring gas prices below $2 per gallon—a level not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns brought fuel demand crashing down.

He began his second term with a considerable head start, with motorists generally paying less than $3 per gallon at the beginning of this year.

That all changed when he declared war on Iran. Tehran has repeatedly shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for shipments from Gulf oil producers, sending prices through the roof.

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Gasoline peaked higher during Biden’s presidency, but it also fell faster, and this year has already delivered more days of nationwide prices above $4 than any individual year of his administration.

While tankers are now moving through the strait again, the logistics remain ruinously expensive. Chartering a vessel for a single day reportedly cost just $65,000 in 2025, according to CNN. Earlier in October, that figure reached a staggering $1.6 million, with much of the cost passed on to consumers, the network reports.

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“Thanks to the incredible work of the United States military, more oil is coming out of the Persian Gulf now than before the Iran conflict began,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told the Daily Beast.

“As the president has said many times, today’s high prices reflect preexisting issues: years of Democrat policies that shuttered U.S. refineries, compounded by the destruction of refineries in the Russia-Ukraine war—a conflict he inherited.”

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