00:20oil prices are crashing crude is at its lowest level since March the Strait of
00:27Hormuz is slowly reopening. The war premium that pushed energy costs through the roof is fading
00:34fast. So why are you still paying $3.85 a gallon at the pump? That is exactly the question Donald
00:43Trump is now demanding answers to and he is not asking nicely. In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday
00:52Trump came out swinging directly at America's biggest oil companies. His words were blunt,
00:59unambiguous and very deliberate. He wrote the big oil companies are not dropping their price at the
01:05pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for oil. Those prices are dropping
01:12like a rock. In other words customers are being gouged. Gouged. That is a sitting U.S. president
01:21accusing an entire industry of ripping off its own customers. And then he went further. He said he has
01:29personally instructed the Department of Justice to immediately start looking into this and ended with
01:35a warning that gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what he is seeing. Now here's
01:43where it gets interesting because the data tells a complicated story. Gas prices have actually fallen
01:51six weeks in a row down 14 cents a gallon just in the past week alone down 22 cents in
01:58Arizona 21 cents in
02:00Ohio. The national average is now $3.85. That's 15 percent below the May peak. So prices are moving just
02:11not
02:12fast enough for Trump and honestly not fast enough for millions of American families still feeling the
02:19squeeze every time they fill up. Meanwhile on the crude side the drop has been dramatic. Brent crude fell
02:27to $76.30 a barrel on Wednesday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate dropped to $72.43. Both benchmarks sitting at
02:37their lowest points since early March. The reason? The war premium is unwinding. Tankers are cautiously
02:45moving through the Strait of Hormuz again. Global supply fears that sent oil surging earlier this year
02:52are starting to ease. But here's the uncomfortable truth that oil companies will use in their defense.
03:00There's always a lag between what refiners pay for crude and what you pay at the pump.
03:06Refining costs, transportation, taxes, fuel inventories bought at higher prices months ago, they all create a gap. A real gap.
03:16A gap that takes weeks to close even under normal circumstances. The question Trump is raising and the DOJ will
03:24now have to answer is whether that gap is being closed at all or whether it is being used as
03:31cover. And the timing of this probe
03:33matters enormously. Because just as prices start to ease, new risks are piling up on the other side. A lightning
03:42strike
03:42knocked out Total Energy's 238,000 barrel per day refinery in Port Arthur, Texas last week. A fire broke out
03:52at
03:52Marathon Petroleum's massive Galveston Bay refinery just days later. And the Atlantic hurricane season is approaching,
04:00which historically has a nasty habit of disrupting fuel supply across the Gulf Coast. Any one of those
04:08events could send prices spiking again almost overnight. So Trump is fighting a political battle on two
04:15fronts. Pushing prices down fast enough to give Republicans relief heading into the November midterms,
04:22while trying to hold back a supply situation that could blow up in his face at any moment.
04:29The probe may be political. The anger may be real. But for American drivers watching crude oil fall and
04:37barely feeling it at the pump, the question Trump is asking tonight is the same one they've been asking for
04:43weeks.
04:44Where is my relief? And who is keeping it from me?
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