President Donald Trump has touted a new initiative to try and address a major economic pain point for midterm voters, but as a new piece from MS NOW argued, it is a “half-hearted” and “flimsy stunt” that perfectly encapsulates the collapse of his presidency.
Earlier this week, Trump took to Truth Social to tout “Freedom Fuel,” a network of 25 gas stations in Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey that would be “lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President.” As reporter James Downie noted in a Sunday piece for MS NOW, the post and an accompanying video were meant to give viewers “the impression that the administration, whether through subsidy or takeover, was directly intervening to lower gas prices.”
It remains unclear at this time who is actually behind the Freedom Fuel locations and how they are managing to lower prices at their pumps. The only information available about its incorporation, per materials from the Delaware Department of State, shows that it was set up on June 23, and nothing else. The situation also drew some criticism that Trump was engaging in precisely the sort of “communist” government intervention policies that he has recently been railing against Democrats for supposedly espousing.
“But whoever is behind Freedom Fuel, Trump’s praise is emblematic of his second year back in the White House: a half-hearted, poorly thought-out stunt,” Downie wrote about the whole affair. “Trump is apparently hoping for copycats. For days, he has complained that gas prices are not as low as they were before he recklessly started a war with Iran. Now he is lobbying for other retailers to do what Freedom Fuel has done. ‘This Retailer is taking the lead,’” he wrote in that social media post praising the mystery retailer. ‘And others should follow.’”
He continued: “Trump, in other words, is asking for volunteers to ease the economic pain that his own policies have caused. Such presidential requests have a checkered history. Herbert Hoover, the president with whom Trump most fears comparisons, declared more than a year into the Great Depression that the ‘local communities through their voluntary agencies have assumed the duty of relieving individual distress and are being generously supported by the public.’ He said, ‘The result of magnificent cooperation throughout the country has been that actual suffering has been kept to a minimum during the past 12 months.’ The suffering was in fact far from minimal, and the economy would find salvation not in private enterprise or individual fortitude, but in government spending and relief.”
Downie called Trump’s Freedom Fuel post a “particularly poor attempt” at his usual tactic of trying to “claim credit” whenever a company lowers prices. The attempt also “reminds drivers how much prices have jumped since Trump launched the Iran war,” as $3.47 is still around $0.50 above what the national average was for gas prices before Trump’s Iran war.