Donald Trump’s favorite news network just issued a mortifying on-air correction for not once but twice airing wrong figures about his second stint back at the White House.
Fox displayed the same misleading graphic on Monday’s broadcasts of “America Reports” and Fox Business, comparing gas prices now, a week ago, and a year ago. It correctly listed the current national average at $4.06 a gallon and the price seven days earlier at $4.00. But it completely botched the figure from last August, claiming gas had somehow been even more expensive then, at $4.13 a gallon.
Anchor Ed Lawrence then managed to mangle the network’s sheepish correction the following day.
“Yesterday, we aired a graphic that showed gas prices incorrectly last year were $4.13 a gallon. They were in fact $4.13… $3.13 cents a gallon,” he said. “That’s 90 cents more in the past year.”
By Lawrence’s own count, the difference is actually 93 cents. According to last year’s true figure, $3.14, it’s 92 cents. “The Trump administration says those gas prices will fall quickly once the operation in Iran ends,” he went on. The Daily Beast has contacted the network for further comment.
The administration’s promise of relief at the pump is riding on an end to a war. Trump has repeatedly suggested the conflict, now in its sixth month, would last a “few weeks,” or that it was, at various times, already “over.”
His campaign against the Islamist regime has seen Tehran repeatedly shutter the Strait of Hormuz, a vital naval passage in the Persian Gulf that transports up to a fifth of global oil supply annually. The effect has been devastating, inflicting severe pain at the pump while also driving up the price of anything that suppliers rely on oil to produce, grow, or move.
It could also soon prove one of the most spectacular self-owns in U.S. political history. Voters have consistently ranked economic anxiety, and particularly unaffordability, as a chief concern ahead of midterms. Republicans hold only slim majorities in both the House and Senate, while Democrats have amassed a stonking 8-point lead ahead of those polls.
