Biden owns the loss as party leader, not for any single reason. Responding to a clip arguing Biden is why Trump is president, he agrees the refusal to step aside after the midterms and allow a robust primary played a huge role, but says the whole four years cost the election.
Biden's team avoided blaming Trump, fearing the look of weaponization. In his reading, with Trump under investigation and indictment, they never tied inflation or energy prices to him, never raised the 2020 OPEC deal, and instead blamed oil companies for price gouging; he cites studies attributing roughly half of inflation, or 2ā3 points of a 7% rise, to energy in late 2022 and 2023.
Poor messaging, not poor results, sank the administration. He credits Biden with real accomplishments but says they were badly sold, the climate-policy attack on fossil fuels hurt electorally, and Trump campaign claims were left unanswered, such as the belief that a pipeline set global oil prices.
Losing the White House erased the accomplishments. He likens it to leading a football game and losing on a last-second field goal, arguing Trump is now systematically undoing everything Biden achieved.
The power shortage driving electric bills is already here. He plays the AT&T CEO warning that power bills will become an electoral issue like $5-a-gallon gasoline within two years, and answers that it is happening today; he compares it to Democrats raising the 2020 OPEC deal only after Trump took office, years after he did.
Electricity is now a recovery operation, not a rescue. He says it cannot be fixed for years, and that the administration is making it worse by scrapping renewable projects in favor of nuclear, which he puts at five years minimum for one small modular reactor and 15ā20 more to add the capacity renewables could add in a year.
Expect worse bills this winter with no consumer protection. If the weather resembles last year, he predicts higher bills, with a cold snap costing around $1,000; he cites a viewer's $1,300 bill for a two-bedroom apartment and advises banking any stimulus check to pay DecemberāJanuary bills.
He rebuts a claim that oil isn't a fossil fuel by pointing to biomarkers. Responding to someone arguing oil is a "naturally occurring hydrocarbon" rather than a fossil fuel because it lacks DNA, he says oil contains biomarkers ā DNA being one example ā which is the same type of evidence used to establish that water is water.
He argues oil itself is the fossil, countering a claim that no fossils exist below 16,000 feet. He says a fossil is the remnant of any former living thing regardless of shape, and that fossils found at that depth reflect the Earth's surface roughly 250 million years ago, before features like the Rockies or Everest existed; he cites hydrocarbons' hydrogen-carbon chemistry as the supporting evidence.