House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on New York television Monday morning to hammer President Trump over gas prices, and walked straight into a fact-check he clearly did not expect.
Appearing on "Good Day New York," the Brooklyn Democrat called Trump's approach to Iran "a reckless war of choice" and blamed the president for "skyrocketing gas prices in an environment where the cost of living was already too high." Co-host Rosanna Scotto let him finish, then asked the question Jeffries apparently hoped nobody would raise.
"Gas prices were up under Obama too. And Biden, right?" Scotto said. "Didn't we have gas prices over $5?"
Jeffries fumbled for an answer. "Well, there were gas prices in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic situation..." he offered, trailing off without completing the thought. Scotto wasn't done. "And I remember eggs were like $12 a dozen," she added, before mercifully pivoting to the New York Knicks' NBA championship win. Fox News Digital reported on the exchange and noted it reached out to Jeffries' office for comment but did not receive a response.
The facts that tripped up the House minority leader are not obscure. Gas prices reached their highest recorded national average at $5.02 per gallon under Joe Biden in June 2022. That was not some rounding error or regional spike. It was the all-time record, set on a Democratic president's watch.
At the time, Democrats had a ready-made excuse. Party members largely blamed the surge on the aftermath of the COVID pandemic and the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, branding it "Putin's price hike." The framing was politically convenient. It also required voters to forget that energy policy decisions, from restricting domestic drilling permits to canceling pipeline projects, had already tightened supply before Vladimir Putin's tanks rolled into Ukraine.
Now Jeffries wants to run the same playbook against Trump, substituting Iran for Russia. The problem is that the comparison cuts against him.
Gas prices under President Trump peaked last month at over $4.50 per gallon, high by any measure, and a legitimate concern for working families. But that peak came amid months of war and hostilities involving Iran, and prices have steadily declined over the last few weeks as the Trump administration negotiates a peace deal with Tehran.
In other words, the current trajectory is downward. Under Biden, the trajectory in mid-2022 was upward, and it took months before prices retreated from that $5.02 record. Jeffries chose to ignore the direction of the trend entirely, preferring to freeze the frame at the worst moment and pin it on the sitting president.
That is exactly what Democrats accused Republicans of doing during the Biden years. The irony is apparently lost on the House minority leader.
Jeffries' stumble matters less as a single television moment and more as a window into a broader Democratic messaging strategy that depends on voters having short memories. The party's top House leader went on camera and accused Trump of imposing unbearable gas prices on the American people. When a local morning-show host, not a cable-news interrogator, not a congressional opponent, simply reminded him that Biden's gas prices were higher, Jeffries had no coherent rebuttal.
He did not dispute the $5.02 figure. He did not argue that Biden's policies eventually brought prices down. He did not offer a single number of his own. He gestured vaguely at "the pandemic situation" and stopped talking.
That is not a policy argument. It is a talking point that collapsed on contact with basic arithmetic.
The episode also highlights how former Vice President Kamala Harris adopted the same line. A linked Fox News headline captured her claim: "This is a direct result of Donald Trump's war of choice." The phrase "war of choice" appeared in both Harris's statement and Jeffries' remarks on "Good Day New York," suggesting coordinated party language designed for repetition rather than accuracy.
Democratic leaders have spent years insisting that presidents deserve blame for high consumer prices, but only when the president is a Republican. When Biden presided over the highest recorded gas prices in American history, the explanation was global forces beyond any president's control. When Trump presides over prices that are lower than Biden's peak and falling, the explanation is presidential recklessness.
Both claims cannot be true at the same time. Jeffries was unable to reconcile them on live television because they are irreconcilable.
Meanwhile, FOX Business' David Asman and Lauren Simonetti noted that a potential deal with Iran could further impact oil and gas prices, a development that could push costs lower still. If that happens, Democrats will face an even harder time sustaining the "skyrocketing prices" narrative they have invested in.
Scotto's gentle pushback also underscored something voters already sense: the cost-of-living crisis did not begin in January 2025. Eggs, gas, groceries, and rent all surged under the previous administration. Americans who lived through $5 gas and double-digit egg prices do not need a fact-checker to remind them. They remember their receipts.
Fox News Digital reached out to Jeffries' office for comment after the segment aired. As of publication, the office had not responded. The silence is telling. When a politician's team cannot defend a claim their boss made on camera that same morning, the claim was never built to withstand scrutiny. It was built for a clip, and Scotto denied him even that.
Jeffries remains the top Democrat in the House. He sets the party's messaging tone. If the best he can offer on the economy is a talking point that a morning-show host dismantled in two sentences, voters are entitled to wonder what else the party's leadership is getting wrong.
The American public doesn't need a lecture on gas prices from the people who presided over the record.