Trump official sweats when pressed on skyrocketing gas prices: 'I'm avoiding predictions'

The average cost for a gallon of gas in the United States hit $4.56 on Saturday amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing war against Iran, and when pressed on the possibility of gas soon reaching $5, a top Trump official scrambled to dodge the question during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Citing a new report from Bloomberg, NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright whether Americans should prepare for “the possibility of paying $5 a gallon for gas,” a question that Wright avoided answering entirely.

“I can’t predict the price of energy in the short term or even the medium term, but what we’re doing is ending a 47-year conflict,” Wright said, pivoting to the Trump administration’s stated case for its wildly unpopular war against Iran.

“Iran has [chanted] ‘death to the United States’ for 47 years, ‘death to Israel,’ and as we saw when the conflict broke out, they attacked all of their neighbors in the Middle East that had no involvement in the conflict whatsoever. If you have a hostile, unstable power like that, you simply cannot allow them to have nuclear weapons.”

Iran has launched attacks against several Gulf states, but despite Wright’s claim, the Gulf states in question were intimately involved in the conflict, with the United Arab Emirates hosting major U.S. military facilities used to support the United States’ attacks on Iran, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had reportedly lifted restrictions on U.S. military access to aid the United States in its attacks.

Despite Wright’s pivot, Welker pressed him again on the issue of rising gas prices.

“I know you’re saying you can’t predict how high gas prices will go, but I don’t hear you ruling out the possibility that they could in fact go to $5 a gallon,” Welker said.

“Well, I’m just avoiding price predictions,” Wright said.