JD Vance has said Americans should comfort themselves with the fact that allies are “suffering more than we are” from soaring gas and oil prices.
The US’s illegal war in Iran has sparked global concerns about oil prices and energy supplies as the Strait of Hormuz becomes effectively blocked by Iran.
And on Thursday morning, gas prices rocketed after an Iranian attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan energy complex, in retaliation to an Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field.
But instead of looking to de-escalate the conflict and avert – or more likely, simply stop exacerbating a global energy crisis – Trump’s administration seems to be gloating about how its Western allies will suffer more than they will.
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Speaking to crowds on Wednesday, vice president JD Vance said US allies are “suffering from this, frankly, more than we are.”
He claimed this was because they had “focused on a lot of green energy scams and they’re hurting a lot more than we are.”
Vance continued: “As much as we’ve got to focus on getting these gas prices down, the reality is overseas they’re feeling it far worse than we did because we’ve taken the steps to protect our energy economy.”
With friends like these, who needs enemies.
Of course, Vance is off the mark with his claims of “green energy scams.”
Just this week, research from the University of Oxford ound that if the UK was powered entirely by clean energy, households could save as much as £441 annually on their energy bills.
Conversely, maximising oil and gas extraction from the North Sea would only save between £16 and £82 annually per household.
This was perfectly explained by energy secretary Ed Miliband over the weekend on Laura Kuenssberg’s show, where he outlined why crowing from Reform and the Tories about drilling in the North Sea was way off the mark.