Liberty-loving patriots who got themselves amped up about president Trump’s new gas stations are in for a rude surprise.
When the White House announced the “Freedom Fuel” network last week, it bragged that the price at the pump would be just $3.47 per gallon — in honor, of course, of “our 47th president.”
But using data on the gas price tracking platform GasBuddy, The Hill found that the locations had prices that were at least $3.57 per gallon, with multiple videos on social media reflecting the same.
Unless Trump is planning to be president again four decades from now, we’d say this attempt to glorify himself has missed the mark.
Though some Freedom Fuel prices are lower than the national average — which is hovering around $3.80, according to the AAA — they’re still fluctuating as much as what you’d see at a typical gas station. One location in New Jersey climbed past the national average to $3.89 on Wednesday, before falling again to $3.57. Some had prices as high as $4.49.
A White House representative acknowledged that Freedom Fuel wasn’t immune to the routine fluctuations of a volatile market, not to mention local pricing.
“The prices at the gas stations will fluctuate — possibly coming down even further — depending on the market and the location,” the representative told CBS News.
Experts have needled the stunt, convinced that it won’t work out in the long-term.
“Stations selling at this price, it’s not sustainable,” GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week, noting rising crude oil prices after Trump rekindled aggressions with Iran. “Generally, when losses happen, somebody’s got to pay for it.”
How Freedom Fuel is subsidizing the cost of its cheap gas is unclear. What company is running the locations is equally opaque. Some customers said that the Freedom Fuel stations were simply existing gas stations that were rebranded.
If nothing else, it speaks to the chintziness of Trump’s self-aggrandizing projects during his second term in office. In his first year, he heavily promoted a meme coin owned by his family, the value of which immediately plummeted. He also tried to hype the launch his own “Trump Mobile” network by teasing a new purportedly made-in-the-US smartphone, which turned out to be a repackaged Chinese device.
More on finance: Trump Fans Confused by How Their Investments in His Crypto and Stock Are Now Worth a Tiny Fraction While He’s Getting Richer
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