‘God Help Us All’: Bernie Sanders Can’t Believe Trump Adviser’s Spin on Rising Energy Costs

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) could help but scratch his head and crack up over President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett’s positive spin on rising energy prices.

Sanders joined MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on All In on Tuesday, where Hayes played a clip of Hassett on CNBC earlier that day talking about how inflation could drop “if” energy prices suddenly go down. Gas prices have seen a significant increase across the country since the war with Iran began. According to AAA, the national gas price average is just over $4 a gallon. The average before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran was under $3.

Hassett told CNBC:

Imagine if oil prices start going back down because the situation resolves itself somehow, then you could be looking at inflation close to zero. So that’s something that the Fed needs to pay attention to, because remember, energy prices going down would feed through just as, you know, CPI, top-line CPI has said that energy price is going up right now.

“I mean, I guess the idea is that if energy prices go down, it will be better, but energy prices are going up right now,” Hayes noted after the clip, making both himself and Sanders crack up.

“This is [Trump’s] economic adviser, God help us all,” Sanders said.

The senator continued:

Look, the reality is Netanyahu’s wars in Gaza, West Bank, Iran, Lebanon have not only been grossly immoral and destructive, but they are also impacting billions of people throughout the world. Here in the United States, you know, we’re having 60 percent of our people living paycheck-to-paycheck. And now what they’re having to deal with is gas in Vermont, I think it’s over four bucks a gallon, parts of the country, it’s higher than that. And that means less money for food, less money to be able to pay the rent.

So, what you are seeing is all across this country, you’ve got Republicans who said, gee, this guy promised us that we would not get involved in never-ending wars, we would not be involved in the Middle East, this guy who said he was going to bring down prices, control inflation, and what do we got now? You got an endless war, which, by the way, may end up costing us a trillion dollars.

And Trump’s thought is that when we spend that money, we can cut back on healthcare and child care to pay for the war. Pretty crazy stuff. And, you know, now we have an affordability crisis magnified because of the war. So that is why I think you’re seeing people all over this country are saying, hey, what world is President Trump living in?

Watch above via MS NOW.

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