March 10, 2026 08:37 PM UTC

Chris Wright Roils Energy Markets While Gabe Evans Blames The Wrong War

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul reports, Energy Secretary Chris Wright paid a visit to Colorado yesterday on a pre-planned visit to America’s Most Vulnerable Incumbent™ Rep. Gabe Evans’ district on Monday, ostensibly to help Evans make the case to skeptical voters that he’s doing something to make their lives better and not measurably worse.

Instead, once again the reality of Trump’s chaos presidency intervened to make the discussion much less positive:

Energy Secretary Chris Wright indicated Monday in Colorado that a sharp increase in gasoline and diesel prices could last weeks even as the Trump administration is doing “everything we can” to alleviate the hikes caused by the war in Iran.

“The single biggest thing we can do is completely dismantle Iran’s ability to project hostile force against its neighbors in the Middle Eastern energy system,” Wright said during a visit to a power plant in Weld County. “We are getting there. But in these intervening weeks, we will do everything we can … to mitigate this price crunch.”

Wright said the U.S. will insure oil tankers traveling through the Strait of Hormuz and will even use the military to escort ships. [Pols emphasis] He said the Trump administration is also considering releases from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve to limit price hikes.

Although Secretary Wright’s comments about escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which he repeated again today, were meant to calm rattled nerves as gas prices skyrocket, Politico reports that Wright was talking out of his backside–a mistake that sent oil prices soaring again once it was known and Wright deleted a Tweet claiming it had already happened:

Trump administration officials denied a claim from Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a now-deleted social media post Tuesday that the U.S. Navy escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz…

A U.S. official told POLITICO before Leavitt’s press briefing that Wright’s post was “not true.” Crude prices tumbled below $80 a barrel on Wright’s announcement before jumping again after it was deleted.

As CBS4’s Dillon Thomas reported from Wright and Evans’ joint event in Weld County on Monday, Gabe Evans sidestepped the elimination of every penny of gas pump savings Trump had delivered in a week of war in Iran by blaming Colorado Democrats for starting a “war” of their own:

Recently, gas prices around the nation have spiked on average by more than 50 cents per gallon, a result of the Trump administration’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran.

CBS News Colorado asked Wright and Evans if Weld County’s status as a major energy exporter could be leveraged to lower gas prices for local residents.

“Good question. The issue in Colorado is the state of Colorado has declared war on oil, gas and coal,” Evans said. [Pols emphasis] “So, the biggest barrier to bringing prices down and actually being able to generate affordable, available, reliable electricity and other forms of power is all of the different mandates that is coming from the state of Colorado.”

This is the same Gabe Evans who as readers know was crowing just a few short weeks ago about Colorado having the second-lowest gas prices in the nation. What changed between then and now is Trump’s war on Iran, not the fictitious Colorado Democratic “war on oil” that somehow doesn’t prevent our state from being the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the nation–tied with the People’s Republic of Alaska.

At least Chris Wright had the courtesy to lie about the right war. Gabe Evans’ refusal to acknowledge what everyone knows about gas prices is almost as bad as Wright making up military operations.