The Political Insider

On Sunday, former Democratic North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp said criticism of her party and President Joe Biden over rising gas prices was unfair.

To the surprise of no one, she also blamed Trump.

She even got a little push back from the media, during her interview on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

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Heitkamp: ‘Who drove up inflation? We saw the CBO numbers this week, it was the Trump administration that overspent and drove up inflation’

In a segment that featured ABC’s Jon Karl and commentator George Will, Heitkamp said, “You always blame the party in power, and the administration isn’t aggressive enough in my opinion of pushing back on the red herrings.”

“The red herrings like ‘it’s because you didn’t build the Keystone XL Pipeline’ and I remind them the first things Donald Trump did was give the permit and in four years the pipeline didn’t get built because it wasn’t economical to build that pipeline in those price points,” she said.

Her argument, as was probably inevitable, went to blaming Trump.

The Democrat continued, “They argue that this is because of runaway inflation. Who drove up inflation? We saw the CBO numbers this week, it was the Trump administration that overspent and drove up inflation, so if inflation in prices, in housing, and in gas is because of deficit spending, that’s Trump’s fault. And so the administration has not been nearly aggressive enough to explain what’s actually going on.”

Admittedly, Democrats blaming Republicans for overspending is a novel approach.

Surprisingly, ABC’s Jon Karl pushed back on that notion.

“Although if you look at the numbers, inflation started to rise almost exactly when Biden came in the White House,” Karl pointed out. 

“Look at this chart on gas prices just since February… It is a shocking increase…” Karl said before being interrupted. 

The graphic Karl pointed out showed that the average price jumped from $3.46 on February 10 t0 $4.35 as of March 12.

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“That is an artificially low price that you’re starting from,” Heitkamp explained. “And when you do inflation adjustment, this isn’t the highest price we’ve had in the last 20 years… we’re shocked because we got used to $2 gas and that’s the problem.”

It’s unclear what the “problem” is with affordable, abundant energy. 

Regardless, Heitkamp is right that people blame the people who are in charge for problems that occur under their watch. 

A new ABC poll shows that 70% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the soaring cost of gas.

Watch the segment here: