Now in its eighth week, President Donald Trump is increasingly responding to pressure to wrap up his “little excursion” in Iran, with the clearest sign that he’s feeling that urgency being his own insistence that he is “under no pressure whatsoever.” But as the world grapples with the stark economic consequences of the war, including skyrocketing gas prices, Republicans are coming to terms with the “inconvenient truth” that there’s little they can do to avoid the electoral fallout at the November midterms.
While Trump and his allies have scrambled for ways to manipulate gas prices or at least distract from the increase, repeatedly suggesting that the cost hike is only temporary, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has let it slip that it “could be next year” before numbers creep back down at the pump. He and even Trump have now admitted that prices could climb “a little bit higher” before November, and Republicans are starting to face the fact that they’re going to pay for it at the polls.
Trump has attempted to shift the blame, to little effect. Polling shows that 65 percent of Americans fault the president for spiking gas prices, including a whopping 73 percent of independents.
“The rhetoric around this stuff matters way less than the reality,” a White House source told Politico. “It either will be or it won’t be. If we don’t see the $3 gallon of gas, we’re gonna get killed.”
Currently holding slim majorities in both houses of Congress, the GOP has much to lose in the midterms. It's already projected that they will lose their majority in the House, but as backlash against the war, economy, and Trump's unpopular policies grows, it is also looking increasingly possible that the Democrats will take back the Senate as well.
