CLAY: Hopefully, youâre all smarter than Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Buck, I saw this and I just thought to myself, âThis is so inexcusably bad.â Everybody out there knows that gas prices have skyrocketed. Theyâre up some 50% from last year as a part of the overall 6.2% inflation rise, and energy prices have gotten so bad that Joe Biden has decided to release some of the Strategic Oil Reserve. Itâs totally a political ploy. It makes no real significant impact here.
But heâs trying to get a little bit of attention in a positive way for trying to combat rising oil prices. His energy secretary trotted out and she was asked a pretty basic question: âHow many barrels of oil does the United States actually consume in a day?â This is something that if you were in charge of the energy sector in this country, probably you should know it. Itâs not going to surprise you that Granholm had no idea. Listen.
ED OâKEEFE: How many barrels of oil does the U.S. consume per day?
GRANHOLM: I donât have that right in front of me.
ED OâKEEFE: So some suggest itâs about 18 million, which would suggest youâre releasing less than three daysâ worth of supply from the Petroleum Reserve.
BUCK: Itâs not just âsome suggest.â Thatâs the number from 2020. She didnât know because⌠I told you this, Clay, I sat on a panel with Jennifer Granholm when she was the former governor of Michigan.
CLAY: Sheâs Canadian. Sheâs not eligible to be president. Sheâs not born in the States.
BUCK: Not anything that anyone is going to be losing sleep over. Weâre trying to talk about the border, and Bill was having one of his more honest moments. Theyâre just scanning the border. Theyâre just running through the asylum process. Granholm looked at me and started screaming, âKids in cages! Kids in cages!â like a toddler. I was like, âThis woman? This is the person youâre making the energy secretary?â Sheâs on a TV show with millions of viewers and thatâs how she acts? Itâs kind of amazing to me. But, yes, sheâs not well versed. But look at Pete Buttigieg. This is a guy who canât even get the potholes fixed as the mayor of South Bend, and now heâs the Transportation Secretary? Give me a break.
CLAY: Thatâs when he actually shows up, Buck. He also spent two months on paternity leave. Iâm still fired up. I had a big conversation about this with my wife, too. If you are the dad and your job allows you to take two months off, I donât care what your job is, you arenât that significant in the job that you have. Buck, Iâve already had my kids, but my job doesnât matter in the grand scheme of things.
I did sports talk radio show when I had my kids. I donât think I missed a day, and I was doing sports talk radio. If youâre the head of the transportation department, and we have once-in-a generation-level collapse in supply chains, and you take multiple months off? If youâre the mom and you have the baby, you deserve all the time off that you can possibly get. Your body is physically recovering. Your obligations, especially if youâre breastfeeding, are massive.
BUCK: If you had open-heart surgery, people would expect that youâre going to have a recovery time. Itâs the same same kind of idea. If youâre the first cousin of somebody who just had successful open-heart surgery, the expectation wouldnât be that you have like a bystander trauma from the surgery and so you need weeks off from work, too.
CLAY: Itâs not even his partner who had the baby, Buck. They had a surrogate. Neither one of them actually went through childbirth. So itâs not as if Mayor Pete is having to help his wife who had a baby. In fact, to my knowledge, we donât even know who had the baby and actually did the work of carrying that child for nine months and delivering it. And this is part and parcel the larger example of what is going on with the Biden administration. Youâve got a lot of cosmetic diversity and an awful lot of incompetence in this administration because they donât care about talent. They care about checking boxes.
BUCK: The great diversity and inclusion reality check moment for this administration will be, if itâs pretty clear they decide to surpass the first female minority vice president with somebody else. I think weâre probably⌠Look, itâs a ways off. Weâll talking about this a lot. I think weâre headed towards something like that.