14 SEP 2026 · The numbers say something more complicated than that.
On Sunday the president was asked about fuel prices and answered by talking about Ukraine: "Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia… Don't hit diesel fuel, because that's hurting, that's hurting the world." His Treasury Secretary and Energy Secretary had made the same argument in the two weeks before. Meanwhile the other side has spent six months saying the Iran war explains all of it.
In this episode we check both. The President's claim turns out to be partly right, and nowhere near the whole story. The people saying Ukraine has nothing to do with it are wrong too.
Along the way: why six-dollar diesel is a record in dollars but not in real terms, why crude oil is cheaper today than it was at the last diesel record, what a refining margin is and why it matters more than the price of a barrel, the inventory shortage the government forecast eleven months before the first missile, the honest problem with the $800-per-household figure in every headline this week, and the pipeline Saudi Arabia built forty years ago for exactly this situation — which was shut down by drones on Friday.
Some questions have a clear answer. Some do not. We say which is which.