In late October, as it appeared increasingly likely that Democrats were going to fare very well in the 2025 elections, Donald Trump made one last effort to scare voters in New Jersey and Virginia. The president focused much of his message on a single issue: energy prices.

“Under President Trump, ME, Gasoline will come down to approximately $2 a Gallon, very soon!” the Republican argued by way of his social media platform. “With the Democrats, you’ll be paying $4, $5, and $6 a Gallon.”

The argument was foolish on its face, in large part because governors have very little control over the price of gas, and it also failed entirely, as Democratic gubernatorial candidates racked up double-digit victories.

But almost five months later, the White House has a related problem: Thanks to the war he started for reasons he has struggled to explain, Trump is the one pushing gas prices toward the same levels he warned about in the fall.

It was against this backdrop that the Republican president rolled out a very different kind of message on Thursday morning. Just 17 weeks after he wrote, “Under President Trump, ME, Gasoline will come down to approximately $2 a Gallon,” Trump tried selling Americans on the opposite message.

“The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” Trump wrote.

Yes, we’ve reached the point at which the president wants consumers to be glad they’re paying more at the pump.

As a substantive matter, the problem with Trump’s claim is that the word “we” was doing a lot of work in his sentence. It’s true that the United States is producing a lot of oil, and it’s also true that higher prices help generate oil industry profits. But since the number of Americans who benefit from oil industry profits is very small, few will likely celebrate the hit to their wallets.

Complicating matters, Trump isn’t alone on this. Kelly Loeffler, head of the Small Business Administration, downplayed the importance of rising gas prices in a podcast interview this week. And on Thursday morning, Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared on Fox News and pushed a line that was eerily similar to the president’s: “Fortunately, the United States, we produce more oil than we can consume; we’re a net oil exporter. So overall for the U.S. economy, this isn’t bad news.”

This is a message that Republicans will continue to embrace in the coming weeks and months if Democrats are extremely lucky.