Energy Secretary Chris Wrightdidn’t know his boss had been secretly seizing Iranian oil tankers — and a Democratic congresswoman made sure the whole country watched him find out.
Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-OH) spent Wednesday’s House Science, Space, and Technology Committee budget hearing methodically walking Wright into a corner, starting with a simple question about inflation.
“No. Would prefer lower inflation,” Wright said.
Did he know President Donald Trump had just said the opposite? Wright waved it off.
“He’s an entertaining, hyperbolic guy,” Wright shrugged.
Sykes asked Wright if he was aware that the U.S. had been taking millions of barrels of oil from Iran through the Strait of Hormuz?
“We are preventing the flow of Iranian oil,” Wright pushed back.
That wasn’t the question, Sykes said. She asked again.
“Just not sure ‘taking’ is the right word,” Wright replied.
Sykes then rolled a clip of Trump speaking in the Oval Office that same morning: “I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I can say it now, something you didn’t know. Do you know we’ve been taking out —”
Committee chair Brian Babin (R-TX) gaveled twice to stop it but the clip kept playing.
“— barrels of oil. Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran — until right now,” Trump could be heard saying.
“Mr. Secretary, I understand this might be an uncomfortable line of questioning, and you don’t want to do it, but you are not answering my question,” Sykes noted. “So, I’m gonna ask you again and I’m going to hope that you will enter answer it honestly. Did you know that the United States was taking millions of gallons of oil from Iran?”
“I’m unaware,” Wright admitted.
Wright said he didn’t think Trump was lying — the president was speaking “casually” about the war effort.
“Do you think that war is casual?” she demanded. “There are 13 service people who are dead. There are hundreds more that are injured.”
“He speaks 20 hours a day in different styles for different audiences!” Wright fired back.
Trump had announced a covert military operation — live, on camera — while his own energy secretary sat in a congressional hearing room with no idea it was happening.
“I would not be proud if my boss sent me up Schitt’s Creek,” Sykes told him, “and left me here in a committee without adequate information.”
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