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National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby took issue with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s recent claim that the Biden administration is guilty of either “misdirection” or ignorance when it comes to rising inflation.
During a “Fox News Sunday” interview, Kirby rejected this idea and insisted that President Biden has always been upfront with the American people.
“Anybody who knows President Biden knows he’s plainspoken. And he tells you exactly what he’s thinking and in terms that everybody can understand,” Kirby said. “So I think we obviously take great exception at the idea that this is somehow misdirection.”
After Biden tweeted Saturday that those setting the prices at gas stations need to lower them at “a time of war and global peril” to be more in line with their own costs, Bezos retweeted while criticizing the White House.
“Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” the Washington Post owner said. “It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”
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On Sunday, Kirby insisted that it’s “neither” of those. He said that Biden told the American people that supporting democracy in the form of aid to Ukraine “would not be cost-free,” and that president is not just pointing fingers but trying to do what he can as well.
“The American people are facing pain at the pump, clearly. Now we’re, what, at five dollars a gallon? And the president is working very, very hard across many fronts … to try to bring the price down,” Kirby said.
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Those efforts, he said, include trying to work with the G7 to put a price cap on Russian oil, releasing a million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserves and urging Congress to pass a 3-month gas tax holiday.
“If everybody cooperates on this, we can bring the price down at least by about a dollar a gallon,” Kirby said.