Tuesday, FNC host Tucker Carlson weighed in on the Biden administration’s reaction to the increases in prices throughout the economy, which included a gas panic due to a disruption in the Colonial Pipeline.
Carlson speculated much of it had to do with economic policy and the flooding of the American economy with federal money. He likened the status quo to a “grimmer version of the 1970s.”
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: A lot of unprecedented things happening, but honestly, not all of them are shocking. For example, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that once they got their hands on real power, the same lunatics who don’t believe in Human Biology immediately made a serious mess of our economy, it took them less than six months to do it.
First, they acted like the U.S. dollar had no value. They spent money like they just printed it for the occasion, which needless to say they had. And predictably, we wound up with frightening levels of inflation, which for the record, they still deny exists.
But inflation does exist as you know, well, if you live here. Corn prices to name just one example of a staple commodity that is now out of control have risen by 50 percent just since January.
But that wasn’t bad enough, the lunatics then decided to make it even worse than that. So they paid millions of Americans more than they make at work just to stay home and do nothing. To justify doing this, they used the word COVID quite a bit, but it had nothing to do with the pandemic, they just wanted to break the system and so they did.
And the rest of us immediately wound up with a bewildering combination of rising unemployment in the middle of a severe labor shortage. So at the very same time we found ourselves with too many workers and also too few workers. That doesn’t even make sense. But thanks to their policies, that’s now exactly what we have.
And then finally, in case 2021 didn’t remind you enough of a grimmer version of the 1970s, we now have serious gas shortages in a country that was recently energy independent.
All along the East Coast of the country today, people couldn’t fill up their cars. Take a look at the footage. It looks like Venezuela.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Gas shortage is now being reported in at least six states and expected to grow, stretching down the highways as customers wait at the pumps.
The Governor of North Carolina has declared a state of emergency. The station there running out of fuel.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): As pumps run dry and officials urge drivers not to panic buy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are completely out of diesel and gas.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): But already, long lines and low fuel gauges.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): The shutdown to the pipelines also putting major airports in Baltimore, Charlotte and others on the East Coast at risk of low supply.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: An emergency? No. If they ran out of weed, that would be an emergency. Don’t worry, says “The New York Times.” None of this is real. It’s a conspiracy theory. Your eyes are lying to you. You’re hysterical.
In a piece today, “The New York Times” reported that, quote: “Since the pipeline shutdown, there have been no long lines at gas stations.” Then apparently someone in “The New York Times” newsroom found a working television and the paper deleted that line from the article a few hours later, without ever acknowledging it had included the line in the first place. That was the paper, but for their readers on social media who presumably will believe absolutely anything, “The New York Times” did not even bother to change the lie. That tweet is still up, quote: “Since the shutdown there have been no long lines or major price hikes for gasoline.” Right? Not at all.
Except in the State of Georgia, where as of 3:00 p.m. this afternoon, almost six percent of all gas stations had no gasoline. In Virginia, that number was almost eight percent of all gas stations. In North Carolina, it was eight and a half percent. In Metro Atlanta, the biggest city in the south, more than 20 percent of all gas stations, more than a fifth had no gasoline to sell. That is an energy crisis.
Why is it happening? Well, the official explanation is that some mysterious gang of cybercriminals hacked the software at a major American fuel supplier called Colonial Pipeline. Colonial Pipeline handles more than two million barrels a day. That’s roughly half the East Coast’s entire supply of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel.
And that’s not a small problem in a country like every country on Earth that still relies almost entirely on fossil fuels to survive. But don’t worry, says your new Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, formerly the incompetent Governor of Michigan, quote: “It’s not that we have a gasoline shortage, it’s that we have the supply crunch.” Oh, it’s a supply crunch and that’s very different from a shortage at least in some theoretical way that’s important to Jennifer Granholm.
So what is the White House doing about this supply crunch that is not a shortage? Well, here’s the answer from Anne Neuberger, who is the confirmed non-genius who somehow serves as the Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNE NEUBERGER, DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER FOR CYBER AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES: So first, we recognize that victims of cyberattacks often face a very difficult situation and they have to just balance off in the cost-benefit when they have no choice with regard to paying a ransom.
Colonial is a private company and we will defer information regarding their decision on paying a ransom to them.
QUESTION: Would the administration offer any advice on whether or not to pay a ransom?
NEUBERGER: So typically, that is a private sector decision and the administration has not offered further advice at this time. Given the rise in ransomware; that is one area we’re definitely looking at now to say what should be the government’s approach to ransomware actors and to ransoms overall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That’s the person protecting you from the cybercriminals. Colonial Pipeline, Anne Neuberger would like to remind you is a quote, “private company.” And as a matter of principle, the White House does not get involved in the affairs of private companies, not unless private companies were to use the wrong pronoun in a sentence, in which case the FBI would arrive with a SWAT team and make televised arrests.
But in cases where the mere fuel supply of the entire eastern seaboard is at stake, Anne Neuberger and her friends at the White House strongly prefer a hands-off approach. They are situationally libertarian that way.
What is this about? Well, you know. On some level, let’s be honest about it, the White House approves of this disaster. Yes, some gas stations are closed tonight, but soon enough, the lunatics plan to close all of them, close every gas station in the entire United States, shuttered forever, to make way for some new as yet not quite defined means of transportation that will magically replace the gasoline engines that we have used for more than a hundred years.
This is a Green Revolution. So, who cares about some old pipeline?
Remember that on his first day in office, Joe Biden shut down a pipeline. That’s the first thing he did. It was the massive Keystone XL pipeline. Joe Biden didn’t wait for mysterious hackers to shut it down. He shut it down himself, and more than 11,000 people lost their jobs.
And by the way, gas prices went up. In case you haven’t noticed, gas prices have never gone down.
In the State of California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is over four bucks. A year ago, it was $2.70. In Illinois, gas is $3.20 a gallon; last year, it was $2.10. It’s not just two big liberal states, it’s the entire country.
In Texas, gas prices are averaging $2.70 a gallon; last year, it was $1.50.
In the State of Maine, the average price of gas is almost $3.00. A year ago, it was under two, and so on.
Nationally, Americans are paying about $45 billion more for gasoline overall than they were last year. Why? This is the result of policy decisions made by the new administration. This is the Green New Deal. We’ve got it already.
And if you love gas shortages and electricity blackouts, no air conditioning, $80.00 plywood, this is the program for you.
Tomorrow, the administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the new official numbers on inflation in America. You should know that a key part of that statistic is called the Consumer Price Index, and the Consumer Price Index measures the prices of a carefully curated selection of goods and services.
And if tomorrow’s Consumer Price Index number is flat, rest assured the people on TV will tell you it is proof that inflation isn’t real. Should you believe them?
Well, before you take their word, take note of what is not included in the official Consumer Price Index, lumber for example, because no one in America buys building materials. So you should definitely ignore this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): In a recent study by fortune.com, the average price of lumber is now 280 percent higher than what it was pre-pandemic, which is causing the cost of construction to also increase 30 to 40 percent.
In a statement from the Division President for Homes by Towne, Jeff Pemstein, he says for a typical 1,500 square foot home, just rough lumber used for framing has increased from $14,000.00 per home to $29,280.00.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Two hundred and eighty percent. Wow, Marge, that’s a lot. What’s going on here?
Well, typically in the material world where the laws of nature apply when the price of something jumps that quickly and that high, you’ve got a supply problem because it’s supply and demand. There isn’t enough of that thing to go around. More people want it and we don’t have enough of it.
Does that apply to lumber? Are there fewer spruce trees out there than there were a year ago? Are those trees growing more slowly than they once did? Have we seen a 280 percent increase in new houses being built? The answer is no, no and no.
The real answer, as you may have guessed, is that bad federal policies are distorting the price of everything in this country from two by fours to diesel fuel to corndogs. None of this is an accident just as it wasn’t an accident when the power went out in Texas over the winter. It wasn’t a cold snap that did it. It was a federal policy that encouraged the state to rely on windmills which don’t actually work.
So it’s not a natural cycle. Somebody did this to us on purpose.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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