with regular gaslighting.

Mike Lawler is really struggling through this shutdown and Mike Johnson’s mandated House work stoppage. There just isn’t enough going on to generate the social media fizz and Fox fruit that keeps Mike juiced. He’s getting bored with the same old talking points about the Far Left Radical Democrat shutdown, and how old and schmucky Chuck Schumer is, and how Marxist and antisemitic Zohran Mamdani is. His hallway hijinks with Hakeem Jeffries are but a distant non-memory.

So Mike has turned to an old favorite. Look at them gas prices! And where did he get his cue? The White House, of course, which pumped out the headline yesterday: “Gas Prices Hit Four-Year Low Under President Trump.” Since the government no longer collects or publishes data, the White House used Gas Buddy as its primary source of information.

This is the email we lucky Lawler constituents received tonight:

Hmmm, not sure? You can be sure you won’t learn more from Mike if you check that last box.

As much as Mike would like to attribute lower gas prices to the GOP energy policies which he says have “unleashed domestic production,” the experts at Gas Buddy emphasize:

“OPEC+ deserves much of the credit for this trend, having steadily raised oil production for much of 2025.”

Help yourself to actual data if you must:

It’s pretty clear that OPEC+ (the orange and yellow bars) is the one that has been unleashed, while the blue bars representing U.S. supply growth were generally higher before Trump took over. The oil industry is mostly concerned about oversupply at this point. As of mid-October, there are 37 fewer oil rigs in the U.S. than the same period last year.

Another thing Lawler fails to mention in his gassy economic analysis is demand. Economics 101. Prices are about supply and demand. Do you see anything about demand in Mike’s email? I think not. But you would if you clicked the link he provides, where the authoritative iHeartRadio reports:

The drop in gas prices is attributed to several factors, including a decrease in demand and an increase in gasoline inventories. The Energy Information Administration reports that demand for gasoline has fallen to a four-month low, contributing to the continued decline in pump prices. 

That doesn’t fit Mike’s narrative, though. Honestly, I’m not sure his staff got far beyond the article released by the White House and somebody’s AAA newsletter.

One thing you can be sure of. When Mike Lawler is running on empty, he’ll pull into whitehouse.gov, where there’s always a healthy supply of crude.