The $5.02
ghost: Trump’s team faces a symbolic blow to one of its favorite economic
talking points
Trump
officials are "absolutely, totally freaked" about the political
symbolism of breaking Biden's high gas price record.
By Scott
Waldman, Alex Gangitano and Megan Messerly
05/21/2026
05:17 PM EDT
President
Donald Trump’s war threatens to push gas prices past the record high under
former President Joe Biden. They aren’t the only numbers the White House staff
is sweating.
While
record high prices at the pump are a persistent concern, the bond market’s
spike over the last several days also has aides and allies fretting, worried
that borrowing costs will pummel a nation that runs on credit and make it
harder for the Federal Reserve to cut rates.
The two
moving in tandem are a double whammy for a White House working to assuage
voters’ cost-of-living concerns ahead of an expected difficult midterm
election.
“The
White House staff is absolutely, totally freaked about bond yields and gas
prices,” said a person close to the White House, who, like others in this
story, was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Five
people familiar with the West Wing’s thinking, including three of Trump’s
former energy advisers, all granted anonymity to discuss the internal
conversations, said the record $5.02 gas price, hit in 2022, is a symbolic
milestone, sure to set off a wave of negative news coverage that the Trump
administration is looking to avoid.
And
Biden’s high mark is one that Trump and leading administration officials have
used as a yardstick to show the prior administration was worse for Americans.
But with
the Iran war in its third month, and no end in sight, there is little the
administration can do except watch the figures tick up day after day.
“There is
a lot of anxiety that they have not been able to close a deal,” said one of the
former Trump energy advisers.
White
House spokesperson Taylor Rogers disputed the premise, insisting the
administration was not taken by surprise.
“This is
false,” she said in an emailed statement. “As usual, Politico is relying on
anonymous sources to push fake news. President Trump and his energy team
anticipated short-term market disruptions, communicated them openly to the
American people, and implemented an aggressive plan to mitigate any impacts.
President Trump will never allow Iran to possess a nuclear weapon, and he will
continue to advance America’s core national security interests. When the
President forces this conflict to a successful end, gas prices will drop back
to multi-year lows and global energy markets will be much more stable in the
long term.”
The
average price of gas ticked up again Thursday to $4.56, up about 50 cents from
one month ago and more than $1.50 since the war began. Summer driving season,
which kicks off this weekend with Memorial Day, is expected to send prices even
higher.
If the
Strait of Hormuz is closed through June, U.S. gas prices will likely hit a new
record high by July 4, said Patrick de Haan, petroleum analyst at GasBuddy. He
said the booming U.S. exports of fuel will also cause domestic prices at the
pump to rise. Already, U.S. gasoline inventories hit the lowest level for May
in 12 years, he said.
“If we
get into the heart of the summer driving season and the strait is closed,
there’s going to be a lot more pressure,” he said. “There’s more consumption,
not just in the U.S., but abroad as well.”
That
possibility portends poorly heading into election season.
“There is
definitely a concern of just not gas, but everything — all these benchmark
costs being more under Trump than under Biden,” said one of the former Trump
administration officials. “Inflation is higher today than when Biden handed off
the administration to Trump, that’s what they’re concerned about. … They’re
freaking out about meat prices that they’re literally threatening Justice
Department investigations into price fixing. I think they look at every
benchmark and have concerns.”
Now, as
it appears the gas price record may fall, the second former Trump energy
adviser called the mood inside the White House a “freak out,” noting there are
few policy levers that could be pulled to avoid hitting that target.
Similarly,
a third former Trump energy adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said,
“Obviously everyone’s stressed about gas prices and looking for levers to
pull.”
“And
sometimes there’s just not a lever that you can pull in Congress,” the person
said.
On
Wednesday, Trump told reporters that he is in no rush to negotiate a deal with
the Iranian regime until Tehran opens the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20
percent of the world’s oil and gas supplies travel. Its closure is a primary
driver of high gas prices.
“I’m in
no hurry,” he said. “You know, everyone thinks, ‘Oh the midterms, I’m in a
hurry.’ I’m in no hurry.”
Trump,
last week, emphasized to Fox News host Brett Baier that gas prices were still
below Biden’s peak.
“Well,
lower than Biden,” Trump said. “Excuse me, lower than Biden, and much lower
than people thought they’d be.”
While gas
prices are an in-your-face reminder of high costs for the average voter, some
Trump allies believe the bigger threat to the GOP’s midterm prospects is the
yield on the 10-year Treasury, which is at its highest point since 2023. The
yield on the 30-year hasn’t been this high since before the 2008 financial
crisis.
When
yields rise, borrowing costs follow — on mortgages, car loans and credit cards
— hitting consumers in new, and more painful, ways.
And that
comes amid a surge in beef prices, anxious GOP donors worried about the
midterms and young conservatives fleeing MAGA over disillusionment with the war
in Iran and housing costs.
White
House officials maintain that Americans trust the president and understand the
necessity of the Iran war.
“I think
voters trust the president on energy prices and gas prices,” said a senior
White House official. “People trust him on that, like he said, short-term pain
for long-term gain. That’s really the messaging. We know it’s not the best
right now, but we’re working on it, and obviously taking out Iran is better in
the long term, right?”
But as
energy prices have ticked up, Trump’s approval rating has cratered, including
among Republican and the white, rural voters who make up a key part of his
base.
And while
the president is pushing forward priorities he thinks will help Republicans in
the midterms — like passing the elections-focused “SAVE America Act,” which the
White House and some of its allies see as a key tool to mobilize the MAGA base
— other Republicans aren’t convinced voters care about anything other than high
prices.
“The
reality is, no voter is talking about the SAVE Act,” said Doug Heye, a
Republican strategist. “They know what the cost of lettuce is. They know what
the cost of gasoline is. And any minute that Trump spends not talking about
that, he’s not helping Republicans, and he’s not helping his own case.”
For
weeks, administration officials have pointed to the fact that gas prices under
this administration have yet to reach their 2022 levels in an attempt to stave
off criticism of the war.
“Gasoline
prices look like they peaked about a week or so ago, $1 a gallon cheaper than
they peaked during the Biden administration,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright
told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last month in a hearing.
A second
senior White House official denied that the White House was deeply concerned
about breaking the Biden gas price record. The official said that Trump’s
“drill baby drill” agenda was keeping prices lower and that using tools such as
the Defense Production Act as well as waivers for domestic shipping
requirements and summer gasoline blends was keeping prices lower.
“This is
something we’ve been working on the whole time, even even before the war,” the
White House official said. “The president has been very vocal about wanting the
price of gas as low as possible, so it’s a big part of our mandate from the day
we took office.”
Oil
prices in recent weeks have been kept in check by a combination of factors,
including China scaling back imports, the U.S. tapping its strategic petroleum
reserves and global inventories. That has prevented gas prices from rising
about the average $4.50 range. But each one of those factors has an expiration
date that will soon be reached. China can only cut back on imports for so long,
the strategic petroleum reserve drawdown can only sustain its current drawdown
level for a limited period of time and global crude inventories are running
low.
The
possibility of a $5 gallon of gas in the U.S. “can no longer be dismissed,” JP
Morgan analysts wrote in a note earlier this month.
Myah Ward
and Diana Nerozzi contributed to this report.
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