There's a story going around social media that claims, loosely, that the Donald Trump White House just launched a string of government-affiliated, possibly even government-subsidized gas stations to sell Americans case at the low, low meme price of $3.47 a gallonâbelow the national average, now that the Trump-launched war against Iran has sent oil prices skyrocketing into the skyrocketosphere. How generous of Donald Trump, apparently. How positively, um, communist of him.
The story stems from this profoundly misreported USA Today piece, which hopefully will have been edited into something not so ostentatiously gullible by the time you click that link. Or maybe it won't be, God knows we're not their editors.
The White House launched 25 Freedom Fuel gas stations, all selling fuel at $3.47 a gallon.
The White House announced the initiative on July 7 on X with a video of customers thanking President Donald Trump for lowering gas prices. The gas stations are located in the greater Philadelphia area, the White House told USA TODAY in an email on Tuesday, July 7.
In the video, one customer claimed the gas station saved him money. "I thought gas was more expensive, but it's not," the man, who was not identified, said. "Thanks, Trump, for saving me some money."
Oh my God no. No, no, no, this is not even a vague approximation of what actually happened here. This is a misreporting of real-world facts roughly on the order of "moon visits astronauts" or "drunken revelers instigate World Cup match." It's nonsensical.
The premise being boosted comes from a White House social media post over on Elon's Nazi-boosting hellsite. The administration's post indeeds tries to insinuate that there's some government involvement hereâbut to the extent there is, it's purely aspirational. Or possibly crooked. Or, since it's President The Antichrist we're talking about here, probably both.
CBS News' version reports the caveat that undermines the whole thing, though that may last only until news division head Bari Weiss hears about it. This is a Trump administration-boosted corporate publicity stunt.
A White House spokesperson told CBS News on Wednesday that the company behind the Freedom Fuel Network is private and owns 25 filling stations across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The spokesperson said the Trump administration is not involved with the company and is not subsidizing the gas stations, adding that the stations can offer lower prices by reducing their profit margins.
Oh, okay then. So it turns out that a private chain of jingoistic-ass gas stations in a couple of states is hyping up a promotional gas price meant to be a "nod" to President Antichrist, and through some circumstance that may or may not have included the chain's private owner lobbing greasy kisses towards His Pumpkinness during a Mar-a-Lago visit, possibly even somewhere nearby the draped-off "secure corner of a dining room" Trump uses to monitor his various campaigns of undeclared war, the White House learned of this gas station promotion and tried to sell it as an official federal government initiative that they ought to be getting credit for.
No, seriously, it's got an official whitehouse.gov web page. It's got an official fking federal government-owned federal government-built fking web page. For a gas station publicity stunt.
Trump is obsessed with taking credit for things, after all. Nothing in the world happens except in reaction to him Doing Things, as he tells it. He is responsible for the Kennedy Centerâso responsible, in fact, that his name ought to appear above Kennedy's own on the side of the building and in all Kennedy Center promotional materials. He is responsible for forever solving the problem of algae growing in the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool, an effort that would have been successful except that, and this is what Little Lord Golfleroy actually insisted had happened, his enemies loaded their pockets up with algae(?) and secretly(?) dumped(?) it into the pool to make him look bad.
None of this is new. It's not nearly new enough to be reported on with such profound gullibility, that's for sure. If anything, the only unusual part about this case is that the Fking President of the United States is trying to claim credit for a fking chain gas station promotion.
And that is so pathetic, so miserably pathetically cringe, that we may all risk dying of secondhand embarrassment.
No! Really! The man put a gas station price promotion onto the official White House web site! A gas station! Marketing gimmick! Could it get any more pathetic? What's he going to do next, hang framed pictures of beat-up trucks with Trump 2024 bumper stickers in the West Colonnade?
Now, you may be wondering how exactly this private chain of gas stations can afford to sell gas at what USA Today proudly points out is thirty cents cheaper than the national average, all for the sake of humping Donald Trump's leg. The answer is that $3.79 per gallon is the national average, that thing I just said right there, and regional gas prices vary substantially from that average. (We here in California would kill for sub-$4 gas, for example.)
The Trump Humpers Here's A Bald Eagle Fk Yeah Fuel Network, however, operates in the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and in that area the supposedly dirt-cheap promotional price of $3.47 is well in line with, if not above, other local prices.
So, as it turns out, this whole White House-boosted accomplishment might leave any fans who participate not much better off than when they invested in his crypto-memecoins or got scammed into purchasing a supposed "Trump" watch or smartphone.
At the very least, the company isn't going to go broke offering gas at this price. And the government isn't subsidizing this price, and the Trump administration has no involvement with this marketing gimmick at all other than pointing at it and insinuating that maybe Dear Leader made it happen with the powers of his mind. Or whatever.
In summary: Everyone involved with this story should be embarrassed, from the White House to the gullible reporters writing it up to their editors to the fake-patriotic stunting company involved. Everyone involved with this is terrible and should feel bad.
But I really can't get over the core news of this story:
⢠The Office of the President of the United States
⢠is promoting, on an official United States government site
⢠hang on, I really want to emphasize this again
⢠a fking gas station sales gimmick???
When gas stations used to give out novelty glassware with Looney Tunes characters printed on them, did sitting presidents take credit for that? When your local gas station blasts your eyeballs with a poster for Buy One Mega Burp, Get A Free Hot Dog, did you ever see Barack Obama's executive branch piping up with a "Hell yeah, America, we did this one, this is all us?"
No. It's absolutely humiliating. No president wants to give the impression that they're responsible for the local Slurp'n'Save's latest soup coupons because it's the damn presidency, United States presidents are not supposed to have enough time on their hands to manage gas station marketing stunts.
For fk's sake, we're supposedly at not-war here. That's the whole reason a nearly $4 per gallon gas price sounds like a previously unattainable state of nirvanaâbecause of all that stuff going on that the nation's "president" ought to be focused on, whether it be in the Oval Office or in the fakest draped-off "secure" corner of his private for-profit club for tax cheats.
Instead we've got this guy personally ordering the re-gilding of creepy lion statues, ordering comically large and suspiciously toxic fireworks displays, looking at paint chips to pick the color of the spray-on truck bed liner that he'll be spraying into a monumental pool he doesn't own, and putting out full-on Glorious We Love Dear Leader videos when a chain of gas stations holds a sale in his supposed honor.
That's just ... sad. And a few other things.
Ohâwhile we're reading the news: Apparently the Iran War is back on again, if you didn't hear. Who knew? It's probably not important, right? What can it possibly have to do with gas stations, after all.
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