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Think Of Biden Every Time You Fill Up Your Gas Tank

Taking a road trip this weekend? How much did it cost you at the pump? How much did it cost you 3 years ago? Yup. Deroy Murdock fills us in.

Murdock: As Americans start the summer driving season this Memorial Day weekend, they face gasoline prices that are memorable — for all the wrong reasons.

A national-average gallon of regular gas cost $2.37 at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. This metric hit an all-time-high $4.60 on Thursday, AAA reports — up 94 percent.

Biden does not feel Americans’ pain. Indeed, the Sadist-in-Chief gleefully inflicts this torture. Saying the quiet part aloud, he expects thanks for this punishment.

Visiting Tokyo Monday, Biden told journalists: “When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger, and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.” Incredible!

“It sounds to me like the president is saying ‘Take your medicine. Prices are going to stay high because I’m going to get rid of fossil fuel,’” Senator John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto on Tuesday. “The president is completely out of touch with the pain that the American people are suffering.”

Biden desperately wants Americans to abandon gasoline-powered cars and adopt electric vehicles (EVs). Of course, as a weekly communicant in the Church of the Green New Deal, Biden forgets that 80 percent of an EV’s volts stem from disgusting natural gas (38.3 percent), nasty coal (21.8 percent), and glow-in-the dark nuclear (18.9 percent). Only 20 percent flows from beautiful windmills (9.2 percent), gorgeous solar panels (2.8 percent), renewable-but-fish-spooking hydropower (6.3 percent), and other “green” sources.

Biden could not care less that inflation-depleted consumers will struggle to buy these largely fossil-fueled EVs. According to Kelley Blue Book, average transaction prices for new EVs ran $65,977 in March versus $45,927 across the auto industry — (43.6 percent higher) and $26,052 for compact cars (253.2 percent more).

Inconvenient truth: Magic wands do not manufacture EVs. Building them requires natural resources, many too rare to square with Biden’s fantasy production expectations.

Lithium is scarce. This key EV component’s prices rocketed 438 percent year-on-year in April to what Tesla CEO Elon Musk called “insane levels.”

Joe Lowry, AKA “Mr. Lithium,” the head of Global Lithium and host of “The Global Lithium Podcast,” warns that there is no quick fix here. “You can build a battery factory in two years, but it takes up to a decade to bring on a lithium project,” Lowry told Bloomberg. “In a 2050 scenario, there’s time for everything to happen that needs to happen. But in 2030, it just isn’t going to happen. Just look at the mess we’re in from a lithium supply standpoint with less than 10 percent EV penetration.”

Traditional cars use 18 to 49 pounds of copper, according to Copper.org. EVs need 183 pounds. Nickel is another key EV ingredient. So, naturally, Biden is encouraging copper and nickel production.

Wrong! Biden’s Interior Department last January canceled Chilean-based Antofagasta’s planned Twin Metals copper and nickel mine in Minnesota. Last fall, the White House slapped a 20-year mining ban on that state’s Boundary Waters region, scotching another proposed Antofagasta copper mine. Biden’s Left hand does not know what his Far-Left hand is doing.