President Donald Trump keeps insisting that gas prices aren’t especially high. What many Americans see at the pump tells a different story, and CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has the numbers to prove it.

As recently as Tuesday, Trump claimed that the price of gas is “not very high, relatively speaking. I mean, it’s lower than during the Biden administration.”

Trump was not especially specific, but Dale is.

According to AAA, today’s average gas price is $4.16. That is lower than the peak number during the Biden administration, $5.02, which occurred after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022.

“But the current $4.16 per gallon national average is significantly higher than the national average when Biden left office in January 2025, which was $3.12 per gallon,” Dale explains. “And it’s higher than the national average was on 1,334 of Biden’s 1,460 full days as president, figures provided by AAA show.”

Dale reports that today’s price is higher than the price during 91 percent of the Biden presidency, and higher than any day during his final 29 months.

Today’s price is also “much higher” than it was one year ago: $3.12. It’s higher than on the day Trump launched his attack against Iran: $2.98.

The good news is today’s price is lower than the price from one month ago ($4.53) and lower than last week ($4.29).

Trump has repeatedly promised lower prices once the Iran war ends.

Just last week he told reporters, “when it’s all straightened out, you’re going to have oil prices drop down to maybe even lower than they were.”

During his explosive “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday, Trump claimed that as soon as the Iran war is settled, “gasoline prices are going to drop like a rock.”

In May, he claimed the price of gas was “peanuts.” And in mid-April, Trump declared that the price of gas “hasn’t gone up as much as I thought.”

Just weeks after the Iran war started, in March, Trump said that gas prices “are gonna come tumbling down along with everything else” once the war is over.

Dale also found Trump frequently claims he saw the price of gas in Iowa hit $1.85.

“I was in Iowa, another place I like a lot, and it was just before we started the excursion to Iran. And we passed gas stations; it was $1.85 a gallon. And we’re going to get them down to those numbers again very quickly,” Trump said.

That trip to Iowa was in January, Dale notes, when the average price in the state was $2.57. Only a niche blend that is not for use in all cars hit $1.85.

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President Donald Trump’s performance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” — where he cut the interview short and blasted the moderator as “crooked” — was widely criticized, with many noticing his habit of attacking women reporters.

Among those who noticed was a resident in deep red Trump country: Florida’s The Villages, known as the “largest retirement community in the world,” where nearly seven out of 10 county residents voted for Trump in 2024. One resident recently told BBC News, “we’re as red as red gets.” Indeed, many residents travel in golf carts, often with Trump flags flying behind them.

In a letter to the editor in the Villages News, Edward McGinty wrote that he watched the president on “Meet the Press” and concluded that he is “a total embarrassment to this country.”

McGinty said that “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker is “a very intelligent woman who is very fair,” while “Trump is in the habit of calling people he disagrees with dumb and stupid, especially women reporters.”

McGinty asked: “When will they have the gumption to say back to him, ‘Hey buddy, there is a stupid person in this conversation and I am looking at him right now’?” He lamented that “they are afraid of losing their jobs or being banned from the White House press club.”

“It’s been 10 years since this low-IQ idiot, this con man, came down the golden escalator,” McGinty said of Trump. “That is plenty of time to know—even if you are the most dedicated Republican voter—that this guy is a con man who has no manners and no morals. The whole world is looking at the USA and thinking we have lost our minds, electing the man who tried to overthrow our democracy on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Indeed, as The Daily Beast reported in April, a “Gallup poll conducted in 2025 across more than 130 countries found median approval of U.S. leadership dropped from 39 percent in 2024 to 31 percent in 2025. At the same time, disapproval rose to a record-high 48 percent.” That poll was conducted before Trump’s war in Iran.

It also found that approval of American leadership “declined by 10 points or more in 44 countries between 2024 and 2025, with the steepest declines concentrated among U.S. allies, including many members of NATO,” according to The Daily Beast.

“I have said this many times before,” McGinty concluded. “If Donald had run as a Democrat or Independent, I would still be calling him a filthy pig just like his father. Of course, the MAGA voters will take his side. Why? Because they are exactly like him. People with no morals.”

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Democrats are betting controversial candidate Graham Platner is their best chance to unseat U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who has not lost a race since she first won her seat in 1996. But scandal could sink his campaign even after Tuesday’s primary, handing Collins a clearer path to a sixth term.

Bloomberg opinion columnist Ronald Brownstein writes that the voting will “illuminate the one thin path that could allow” Democrats to “avoid that fate.”

“Polls show that Collins and Trump are both weaker in Maine today than during her last reelection in 2020, which could allow even Platner to beat her,” Brownstein writes. “Yet the oysterman’s many vulnerabilities increase the odds that, as during that 2020 race, Collins could improbably survive in this blue-trending state.”

According to Brownstein, Platner’s scandals may not be his only vulnerability.

He needs to win over Maine voters who disapprove of Trump. “In the 2018 and 2020 elections, the exit polls found that every Democratic Senate incumbent and challenger nationwide won at least 89% of voters who disapproved of Trump — except in Maine, where Sara Gideon, Collins’ 2020 opponent, won only 71% of them.”

A recent poll, taken before his latest scandal, shows Platner only winning 74% of them.

Brownstein explains that if Platner were to decide to drop out of the race by July 13, the Democratic Party would be allowed to replace him on the November election ballot. He notes that currently running for governor are several candidates who likely would meet the expectations of Platner’s coalition.

One of three candidates currently running for governor could replace Platner should he drop out before the July deadline.

“Former State Senate President Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger with deep working-class roots, has been endorsed in the governor’s race by the state AFL and Senator Bernie Sanders and would probably be the easiest replacement for Platner supporters to accept,” says Brownstein. “Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (who has greatly raised her stature since she lost her 2014 Senate race to Collins) and former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree (who might be the strongest statewide candidate of the three) also have many liberal supporters.”

Maine progressive activists in their conversations with Brownstein remain dedicated to Platner. “But each offered only praise for Jackson, Bellows and Pingree.”

The stakes for Democrats are high — and not only for Maine. Collins’ seat is considered must-win if Democrats are to retake control of the Senate.

“If Democrats don’t flip Maine, they will need to capture Senate seats in at least three states that Trump won by double digits in 2024,” says Brownstein. “That’s a daunting task.”

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