During my absence from writing for the last few months, I have attempted to determine how the left gets away with saying things that are so wildly inaccurate that a simple google search can prove them to be lying trash, yet they face no consequences.  Lately, with the Biden Economy proving to be exactly what we all predicted it to be, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself), continue to spread outright lies as to the direction of the economy.

The latest offender of this was MSNBC’s own Chris Hayes, as he replied to a tweet from Chuck Grassley, in which Grassley blames the Biden Administration for current fuel prices due to the Administration’s actions on domestic oil production.

President Biden has declared War on American Energy thru his failed policies: no XL pipeline no leasing on fed lands stopped offshore drilling etc Now ga$ price$ are thru the roof We need leaders who are for AMERICAN ENERGY INDPENDENCE Pres Biden get on board

— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) June 14, 2022

Hayes was quick to repeat the propaganda spread by the Biden Administration, saying that domestic oil production is up.

They will keep hammering this but it’s just complete nonsense on the merits. Domestic production declined during Trump for market not policy reasons. It has increased (gulp!) under Biden. https://t.co/aygIkS01Vg

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 14, 2022

The problem with most of the modern-left, is they never fact-check their own.  There is always an immediate moratorium on questioning the narrative. Inexplicably (or just a clinic of bias), the media defends points like Hayes all the time stating how the statement could be true if viewed through a certain lens.  Fortunately for us, the internet exists and can challenge the veracity of statements made by Hayes.

To make this fact check as fair as we possibly can, we have to give Hayes the benefit of the doubt.  Hayes can either be referring to the totality of the time that that person is in office, or he can refer to any reduction month-to-month or year-to-year as a reduction. Cherry-picking a month-to-month reduction for Trump and then comparing that to the totality of Biden’s tenure is not a fair comparison.  Either Hayes has engaged in a disingenuous comparison of different times, to achieve a dishonest result (shocking, I know!) or his statement is false. There isn’t another alternative.

Of course the sources I use to engage in this fact check will be called into question. I have chosen to use the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which appears to be yet another government agency I had no idea existed, to provide the statistics on US Domestic Oil Production.

2016, the last year of the Obama Administration, ended with an annual domestic oil production of 3.23 billion barrels a year.  We will grant Obama the full month of January 2017, but note that Obama left office on the 20th of January 2017. Production that month was 275 million barrels of oil. Trump’s first month started with 255 million barrels, and his first year ended with 3.41 billion barrels of production, an increase over Obama’s previous year, but lower than Obama’s highest year of 3.44 billion barrels a year (2015). Trump completed his final year in office with an annual 4.12 billion barrels, and the production of 342 million barrels for the month of January 2021.  Trump’s production did decline at times, due to lower prices, not government bans on exploration, production, and transport.

Biden’s first month in office reduced domestic production to 273 million barrels for the month, and 2021 closed with 4.08 billion barrels of oil.  March of 2022, the last month the data is provided, shows domestic production at 361 million barrels, up slightly from Trump’s 342 million barrels in January 2021, but below Trump’s highest of 400 million barrels in December 2020. For comparison, the average cost of a gallon of gas in the US in December 2020 was $2.19.  The average cost for a gallon of gas in March of 2022 was $4.42, more than double the per-gallon cost during Trump’s highest month of production.

Hayes’s statement, if comparing two similar data points (that is, either their entire time in office or a month-to-month comparison), is totally and completely false.  Trump did have reductions in production, but the same can be said for Biden.  Production from January 2022 to February 2022 declined by 36 million barrels a month after the price of gas had already increased over a dollar on average nationally, or a 10 percent reduction in production right when the US needed it the most.  Trump saw a much higher increase in domestic production during his first two years in office than has Biden, all while having per-gallon gas prices less than half of current Biden Administration prices.

Hayes’s statements also ignore that domestic production could be even higher had Biden not taken the action he has against domestic oil production. Had more leases been awarded and more means of exploration, production, and transport been approved, domestic production would certainly be much higher, and therefore prices lower.  Sources I have in the industry also say that supply chain issues have prevented the importing of a sufficient amount of pipe to extract oil.  Much of our current pipe is the resale of used pipe.

Overall, nothing about Hayes’s statement could be interpreted as accurate considering the context in which he placed his comments. While Trump did see reductions in production, so has Biden, and both Biden and Trump have increased domestic oil production over the day they took office. Biden’s annual domestic production is down below that which he inherited when he took office. To suggest that Trump’s domestic production was somehow below that of Biden is disingenuous hogwash.