MSNBC corrects misleading and outdated right-wing talking point about energy
Written by Ilana Berger
Published
In a March 13 segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Senior Capitol Hill correspondent Garrett Haake explained how Trump’s use of the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill” points to a nonexistent problem pushed by right-wing media, namely that the U.S. is not producing enough energy.
In the segment, Haake points out, “The United States is producing more oil and gas right now than any other country has in the history of the world. We are producing more. We are importing less.”
On March 11, Trump posted to his Truth Social account, “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”
This isn’t the first time Trump has listed oil and gas development as a top priority. As reported by The Washington Post, in February, Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, “There are two things I’m going to do. Number one is drill, baby drill.”
But as Haake pointed out, Trump would not actually be inheriting an energy crisis, despite the messaging that both his party and right-wing media have espoused. Fox News personalities have falsely claimed throughout the Biden administration that President Joe Biden’s policies are making the U.S. “energy dependent” on foreign countries — particularly when it comes to oil — and that the administration is cutting production of energy.
“I think it's an attempt to kind of connect the inflation issue to something that, you know, voters — Republican voters, base voters — have known for a long time, this desire to increase energy production going back to 2008, 2009, 2010,” Haake said of Trump’s fixation on “drill, baby, drill.”
The slogan originated in 2008, prior to the shale boom, and was used by Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Sixteen years later, the energy landscape looks very different. The U.S. has been exporting more energy than it imports since 2019, though it still does, and likely always will, import some energy from abroad.
Scientists have said that in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, countries would have to start phasing out fossil fuels immediately. With current energy policies in place, global average temperatures are predicted to cross that threshold within the next decade.