On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump was in the mood to thank someone, and as you well know, Trump only thanks people who benefit him personally — almost as though his favorite phrase “America First” actually means “Donald Trump First.” But you also know what that means: He’s about to thank the wrong people.
In fact, the very last people that anyone should be thanking right now are the Saudis, although Trump has been on a bit of a roll showing love for the royal family, even calling his own top intelligence agency liars as he continues to excuse the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Virginia-based journalist for the Washington Post who was brutally executed by a team sent by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump knows that people are rightly confused by his worship of a Middle Eastern nation — after all, his detractors know he’s simply in debt to them and his supporters all thought that everyone from the Middle East was a terrorist. So he does what he thinks he can do best: Try and bring people around to his point of view. That’s usually a winning strategy for the non-college-educated white people who put him in office. But his latest attempt almost requires that you flunked out of middle school, as well.
Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018
That’s the President of the United States using the Thanksgiving holiday to attribute the current low price of oil — although most Americans only look at the price of gas — to Saudi Arabia. The problem is, they have almost nothing to do with it. In fact, Saudi Arabia has been driving up the price of oil.
In January of 2017, the price of oil was a dollar cheaper than he just tweeted about, at $53 a barrel. Russia and Saudi Arabia drove the price up to $82. The price hasn’t even come back down to what it was when Trump started this gig.
It’s another country, one that Trump resents for their kindness, their healthcare, and their impossibly good-looking leader, that has been bringing it down:
Donald Trump has just tweeted a thank you to Saudi Arabia for current low oil prices, which he likens to ‘a big Tax Cut for America and the World!’ In fact, Canada is the US’s biggest supplier of imported oil at 40%, compared to only 11% from Saudi Arabia.
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) November 21, 2018
AHEM. Are you listening, Donald? This is simple math. Forty is bigger than eleven. And there’s more:
Also, Saudi Arabia has sought to boost oil prices by promising to pump fewer barrels in December. A week ago, it backed a proposal for OPEC nations to cut production by one million barrels per day.
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) November 21, 2018
And just in case Trump is not the history buff that his MAGA fanatics think he is, we’d like to point out that every time OPEC has cut production in order to drive up the price of oil — because that is the only cause and the only effect of doing so — it has been at the urging of Saudi Arabia.
Featured image via screen capture
