Mike Flood

Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) on Sunday agreed prices are too high, adding that it’s an issue constituents raise with him, but he emphasized it as “the hand you’re dealt” when it comes to the Trump administration’s war with Iran.

During the congressman’s “The Hill Sunday” appearance, host Chris Stirewalt reiterated comments made by President Trump during a speech in Garden City, N.Y., on Friday. Trump told Americans that prices will remain high but insisted it’s in service of defeating Iran and preventing them from having nuclear weapons.

“The president’s saying that paying high gas prices may just be part of a patriotic duty to help protect the world,” Stirewalt said. “Please explain.”

“Well, prices are too high,” Flood replied. “I don’t want to dismiss that. It’s important. It’s something that every single person talks about in my district and across the country. … We’ve done a good job on housing affordability. Obviously, I was the architect of that bill to … increase supply and bring down prices. As it relates to gas prices, you’ve gotta, you know … play the hand you’re dealt.”

Flood said Trump is acting to prevent the Iranian regime from supporting its proxies in the Middle East and to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He acknowledged that “it can’t end soon enough for us.”

“We will get there,” the congressman continued. “Hopefully we can bring those gas prices down and do whatever we need to do. Had we been working on energy independence under President Obama and President Biden, we might not find ourselves in these situations. But we still are dependent on the Strait of Hormuz. We’re going to get it fixed.”

Stirewalt noted that it was what Democrats said they would do during the inflation spike following the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Stirewalt then asked if there was any “reverse sympathy” for Democrats who made the same argument while they faced Republican opposition.

“Right now, ironically, Republicans are united, and Democrats are busy trying to defund the police, close prisons, and [cancel] Thanksgiving because it’s a colonist holiday, have government grocery stores,” Flood said.

Trump said at the rally in Garden City that paying “a tiny little bit more for your gasoline” is worth the cost of preventing “a very evil country” from having a nuclear weapon. He also said in the same speech that he would declare the Strait of Hormuz — the shipping route where roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas exports originate, which has been shut down by Iran — a U.S. territory.

Former President George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove on Friday dismissed Trump’s remark to reporters earlier in the day about the economy, saying he should stop “gaslighting” Americans about the state of the economy.

“The president made a mistake, in my opinion, last week in saying we’ve got the greatest economy in the history of the world and prices for groceries and gasoline and everything are coming down rapidly,” Rove said on Fox News. “That’s not the experience of the American people.”

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