Post from Truth Social

Post-Level Analysis — Truth Social, 2026-08-14 21:36:50 UTC

1. Situational Frame

The post is a candidate endorsement issued four days before Alaska's August 18 primary, and it is the fourth electoral-endorsement item in the same day's feed (Darline Graham/SC, Saritha Komatireddy/NY-AG, plus two policy-win link-drops). The subject is in high-volume midterm endorsement-production mode. This is a maintenance communication in the narcissistic-dynamics sense — routine supply management and coalition patronage — rather than a response to injury. The trigger classification is therefore low-arousal, and the affective baseline of the post is celebratory rather than wounded.

2. Authorship Attribution

Local time: 21:36 UTC = 17:36 ET. Mid-August 2026 places the subject most plausibly at Bedminster or the White House; either way, Eastern time. Late-afternoon Friday timing is inside the aide-plausible window and carries no late-night authenticity signal.

Structural indicators are mixed, favoring a dictated-then-formatted hybrid:

Aide-consistent: the standard endorsement scaffold (résumé recitation → policy bullet-list → sign-off with "Complete and Total Endorsement" and "President DONALD J. TRUMP"); the accurate biographical detail ("State Attorney General and the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources"); the precise administrative specificity of "11 new Arctic Security Cutter Icebreakers"; the verbatim reproduction of a ballot line in quotation marks; the correctly formatted primary date. Spelling and syntax are clean apart from deliberate stylizations.

Author-consistent: the parenthetical self-referential graft — "(which I won three times by BIG margins in 2016, 2020, and 2024!)" — inserted mid-sentence into a clause about someone else's record; the third-person self-quotation, "No one has done more for Alaska than 'TRUMP'", a highly idiosyncratic tic in which the subject renders his own surname as a scare-quoted brand object; the pejorative coinage "Dumocrats"; the recursive intensifier "our VERY Secure (Record Setting!) Border"; the scare-quoted "trick"/"trickery"; and the semantic drift from Sullivan's merits into the subject's electoral margins and procurement wins, such that roughly a third of the endorsement is about the endorser.

Assessment: score 0.6, medium confidence. The most parsimonious reading is dictated core content (the self-aggrandizing asides, "Dumocrats," the quoted "TRUMP") passed through staff formatting for the ballot-line and biographical precision. Notably, an aide writing solo would not typically insert an unprompted three-election brag into a colleague's endorsement; conversely, the subject alone would be unlikely to render the ballot string with this fidelity.

3. Multi-Level Personality Reading

Level 1 — Dispositional traits. High Extraversion (assertiveness, superlative-saturated positive affect, exclamatory register). Low Agreeableness, dominated by low modesty — this is the salient facet, since the endorsement's rhetorical center of gravity migrates to the endorser. Moderate Conscientiousness (achievement-striving is high; deliberation is low). Moderate Neuroticism, expressed as low-grade angry hostility toward "Crooked, Radical Left Dumocrats" rather than vulnerability. Low Openness — values rigidity, formulaic construction, boilerplate policy list reproduced with near-identical wording across endorsements.

Level 2 — Characteristic adaptations. The dominant motive is power/status expressed through transferable credit: Sullivan's value is defined by proximity ("Dan Sullivan has been with us all the way"), and Alaska's value by the subject's margins there. Communion appears only in coalition-loyalty terms — "with us," "our Great Senator" — a belonging frame that is transactional rather than intimate. The operative self-schema is sole causal agent ("No one has done more for Alaska than 'TRUMP'"); the world-schema is contest and siege ("our always under siege Second Amendment," "trying to 'trick' Alaskans").

Level 3 — Narrative identity. Protagonist role: benefactor-patron and vigilant protector — the figure who both delivers (icebreakers, energy, border) and warns the flock of deception. The contrasting other is the Democratic Party rendered as a trickster force. The narrative sequence is redemption-adjacent: Alaska as a place made better, energy "DOMINANCE" restored, ships bought for the first time in forty years. Identity claims: unmatched deliverer for Alaska; three-time electoral victor there; the authority who certifies which name on a ballot is real.

Level 4 — Clinical indicators. Narcissistic features are present at moderate-to-marked levels — grandiosity, a self-inserted brag inside another's endorsement, the third-person self-designation — but embedded in ego-syntonic, low-arousal, campaign-functional communication. Paranoid features register in the "trickery" attribution: a same-name ballot competitor is construed as a coordinated enemy operation, an intentionality inference beyond what the surface facts support. Antisocial and sadistic indicators are low; there is no humiliation display and no target-identification of an individual.

4. Defense Mechanisms

• Splitting (immature): Sullivan is "GREAT," "very distinguished," "Highly Respected," and "has ALWAYS delivered"; the opposition is "Crooked," "Radical Left," contemptuous of voters. No intermediate evaluative category exists.
• Idealization (immature): the compound honorific stacking around Sullivan is not descriptive but categorical elevation, and it is explicitly conditional on alignment ("with us all the way").
• Projection (immature), tentative: the accusation that Democrats "treat Alaskan Voters with contempt" and engage in "trickery" arrives in the same period in which the subject publicly entertained declaring a national-security emergency to alter election rules by fiat (2026-08-11). The attribution of electoral manipulation to opponents while contemplating unilateral electoral intervention is a projective structure, though the causal inference is offered at low confidence.
• Distortion (pathological, mild): "our VERY Secure (Record Setting!) Border" and gasoline/energy "VERY LOW" are reality-shaping superlatives rather than claims with truth conditions the author expects to be tested.
• Rationalization (neurotic): the ballot-line instruction reframes an ordinary voter-education problem as evidence of adversarial conspiracy, which conveniently converts a logistical risk into a mobilizing grievance.

5. Rhetorical and Propaganda Analysis

The post runs a name-confusion counter-operation — its functional core is a voter-instruction message (vote for the line reading "SULLIVAN, DAN S. — REGISTERED REPUBLICAN/INCUMBENT"), wrapped in a conspiratorial motive attribution. Techniques: superlative hyperbole ("GREAT," "fantastic," "Complete and Total," "DOMINANCE"); the glittering-generality policy chain (Grow the Economy / Lower Taxes / Cut Regulations / Secure the Border / Military-Veterans / Energy / Second Amendment) reproduced as an interchangeable module across endorsements; name-calling ("Dumocrats," "Crooked, Radical Left"); appeal to fear and vigilance ("don't be fooled"); false dichotomy (real Sullivan vs. plant); transfer, in which the endorser's credit is grafted onto the endorsee and back again.

"Dumocrats" warrants a specific note: this is not a cognitive neologism. It is an intentional, previously-attested pejorative blend, orthographically deliberate. Cognitive status in this post is otherwise unremarkable — syntax is complex, subordination is intact, dates and proper nouns are accurate, and the topic thread returns to its origin. The one drift event (the parenthetical margin brag) is characterological rather than aphasic. No deviation from baseline.

Dehumanizing language: absent. Violent imagery: absent. Stochastic-terrorism structure: absent — there is a grievance and a diffuse target ("Dumocrats") but no identified individual and no implied action beyond voting.

6. Reality Distortion and Epistemic Dynamics

The pre-emptive framing "Because of the trickery in the Voting" is the analytically significant clause. It asserts, as settled premise, that voting-process manipulation is occurring — before the primary has been held. Set against the 2026-08-11 report that the subject declined to rule out a national-security emergency to restructure election rules, this constitutes low-grade prospective delegitimization: an advance frame under which an adverse outcome would already have an explanation. This is not gaslighting in the strict sense (no documented event is being denied, and no loyalty test is imposed), and it does not rise to shared-psychosis dynamics. It is, however, a recurring frame worth tracking longitudinally across the midterm cycle.

7. Danger Assessment

None. No eliminationist language, no dehumanization, no mobilization beyond lawful voting, no individual target. The election-integrity framing is flagged for pattern-tracking, not as a violence indicator.

8. Longitudinal Notes

Within-day comparison shows a stable production template: the Graham endorsement uses the identical closing formula ("COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT — SHE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN"), and the Komatireddy endorsement uses the same résumé-then-enemies structure. The Sullivan post is longer and carries more self-referential content, consistent with greater personal dictation. Comparison to 2018 and 2022 endorsement corpora would establish whether the self-insertion ratio (proportion of endorsement text about the endorser) is rising over cycles — a tractable quantitative measure of grandiosity drift that this single post cannot settle.

Clinical significance: low. This is baseline-consistent, functionally instrumental political communication with characteristic but non-escalated narcissistic features. Summary omitted on significance grounds is not warranted here only because the "trickery in the Voting" clause merits a short record entry.

Fact Verification

Who he actually is: Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., 68, of Petersburg, a small southeast Alaska fishing town. Retired elementary/middle school teacher, former U.S. Forest Service employee, in Alaska since 1980. He is not Daniel A. Sullivan, the former Anchorage mayor (2009-2015), who is not running for anything in 2026. He filed May 29, 2026, three days before deadline.

His party history is the opposite of the claim. He was registered with the Alaskan Independence Party for roughly 45 years, from 1980 until that party's board dissolved it on December 7, 2025 (its ~19,000 members were converted to 'undeclared'). He then registered Republican, saying he was raised in a Republican household and wanted to honor his father and grandfather. He calls himself a 'Pragmatic Republican Centrist,' and his stated positions are Trump-critical: tariffs work only 'if you use them precisely,' and on DOGE, 'We lost a lot of people. We lost a lot of programs. We lost a lot of money.' On the ballot he appears as 'Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.' with no party designation printed at all. Trump's quoted line for the incumbent — 'Sullivan, Dan S.' with '(Registered Republican) Incumbent' — is accurate, but the ballot he is quoting does not present the challenger as a Democrat.

Two courts rejected the voter-confusion theory. Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher disqualified him June 15-16 for filing 'with a purpose to confuse or mislead.' On June 26, Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews voided that order in a 32-page decision, writing that 'the Director's assertion that Mr. Sullivan seeks to confuse or misguide voters is not supported by a preponderance of evidence,' and that the division 'accepted at face-value the assertions of the complaint, and disregarded Mr. Sullivan's assertions.' He found the disqualification rested on 'a new, previously unstated, good-faith criteria' with no statutory basis. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed on June 29, three hours after argument; Chief Justice Susan Carney called removal 'the most extreme remedy possible.' Beecher testified nearly two hours before Alaska House committees on July 22 and produced no coordination evidence.

Every named Democratic entity denies involvement. Alaska Democratic Party executive director Jenny-Marie Stryker said the party 'is in no way affiliated with either Dan Sullivan.' The Peltola campaign and the DSCC denied it. Sullivan himself: 'It's just a simple no. I have not been in contact with her or her campaign,' calling the allegation 'entirely false.'

The Republican case is circumstantial and about consultants, not the party: PDF metadata showing progressive consultant Amber Lee authored his announcement (he does not dispute hiring her, saying acquaintances recommended her and he liked that she writes novels for the age group he taught); Lee's prior employment at Lottsfeldt Strategies, whose principal is treasurer of a pro-Peltola PAC that paid the firm $23,000 in February 2025; his son Noah's internship with Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins; roughly $650 in donations to Democrats between 2010 and 2025, including $100 to Peltola in 2022 and $30 in 2024; and logo resemblance. Alaska's News Source concluded 'the evidence they cite doesn't seem to show a direct link from Peltola or her campaign.' The NRSC's own July 10 release names consultants and PAC payments but no document tying the party, the DSCC, or the Peltola campaign to recruitment.

The money test cuts hardest against the claim. ADN reported August 13 that roughly $2 million in super PAC money is flooding Alaska's fringe Senate candidates to game the top-four primary — about $800,000 from Fair Deal Alaska elevating a Green and a Democrat while attacking Peltola (helping Senator Sullivan), over $1 million from Right For Alaska boosting a hard-right Republican and an Alaskan Party candidate, and $240,000-plus from American Democracy Project on Democrat David Leslie. ADN specifically noted that Dan J. Sullivan of Petersburg is the one fringe candidate not benefiting from significant PAC funding. He initially did not intend to file FEC paperwork at all and only did so because litigation left him with legal fees, calling it 'excruciating.' If Democrats installed him as a spoiler, he is the only vote-splitting vehicle in this race nobody is paying for.

Investigations are open but have produced nothing. Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom opened a state inquiry June 8; the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's office in Alaska, and the Alaska attorney general are reportedly examining whether two or more people conspired to launch the campaign. As of August 14, 2026, there are no charges, no named target, and no findings. An open investigation is not a finding.

Context: Alaska's top-four nonpartisan primary and ranked-choice general remain in effect for 2026 (the 2024 repeal failed by 664 votes; a new repeal sits on the November 2026 ballot but does not affect the August 18 primary). Sixteen candidates are on the Senate primary ballot; Peltola is the leading Democrat, and polling is a dead heat. In 2014 there was genuine Dan Sullivan ballot confusion — Mayor Dan A. Sullivan ran for lieutenant governor the same year Dan S. Sullivan won the Senate seat, both Republicans — which was coincidence, not a plant.

Bottom line: a second Dan Sullivan is genuinely on the ballot and a federal investigation is live, so this is not wholly false. But the flat assertion that Democrats 'put up' him is unproven and undercut by his 45-year Alaskan Independence Party registration, his current Republican registration, the absence of any party label on the ballot, denials from the Alaska Democratic Party, Peltola and the DSCC, two judicial findings that the confusion theory lacks evidentiary support, and his conspicuous absence from the very PAC money flowing to every other fringe candidate. | | "The administration just secured 11 new Arctic Security Cutter icebreakers, the first such ships bought in more than 40 years." | Half True | An Arctic Security Cutter program with a multi-vessel buy was advanced under this administration, tied to expanded US icebreaker capacity and Finnish shipbuilding partnerships. The '40 years' framing is the weak element: the Coast Guard's heavy icebreaker Polar Star entered service in 1976, but the medium icebreaker Healy was ordered in the 1990s and commissioned in 1999, and the Polar Security Cutter program was under contract before 2025. The claim is defensible only if narrowed to a specific hull class and to delivered-versus-ordered vessels. | | "The border is 'VERY Secure (Record Setting!)'." | Mostly True | The substantive half is solidly supported; the parenthetical superlative is specifically and checkably wrong.

Primary data, pulled from CBP's Nationwide Encounters dashboard (page last modified August 14, 2026). FY2026 southwest-border Border Patrol apprehensions by month: Oct-25 7,988; Nov-25 7,353; Dec-25 6,476; Jan-26 6,076; Feb-26 6,599; Mar-26 8,269; Apr-26 8,964; May-26 10,007; Jun-26 9,855; Jul-26 9,295. That is 80,882 through July, averaging 8,088/month (99,158 nationwide). FY2025 totaled exactly 237,538.

The levels genuinely are historically low. Pew Research Center (February 2, 2026) found FY2025's 237,538 was 'the lowest total in any fiscal year since 1970,' down from 1,530,523 in FY2024, 2,045,838 in FY2023, and the record 2,206,436 in FY2022. Migration Policy Institute's January 2026 assessment said unauthorized arrivals 'plummeted to the lowest levels since the 1970s.' WOLA's Adam Isacson writes FY2026 is 'on track to make 2026 the lowest year for migrant apprehensions since 1967.' At current pace FY2026 lands near 99,000-101,000 southwest-border apprehensions, between FY1967 (94,778) and FY1968 (123,519) in CBP's own historical table.

The companion '94% drop' verifies to the decimal. DHS's August 13, 2026 release — the day before the post — states July was '94% lower than the monthly average of the Biden administration; 96% below the peak of the Biden administration (December 2023).' Using DHS's stated Biden baseline of 5,110 apprehensions/day (about 155,429/month), 9,295 is 94.0% lower. Against the December 2023 peak of ~249,741 it is 96.3% lower.

Where 'Record Setting!' breaks down: the record was 13 months ago and the trend has reversed. DHS itself declared July 2025 (4,592 southwest-border apprehensions) 'the lowest monthly total in CBP history,' including a 116-apprehension single day on July 20, 2025. July 2026's 9,295 is 102% higher — more than double that record — and the sixth consecutive month above the January 2026 trough of 6,076. Isacson documented the direction: April 2026 was 'more Border Patrol apprehensions than any month since the Trump administration began,' May exceeded it, June was 'the second-largest monthly apprehension count of the Trump administration so far.' Rio Grande Valley sector hit 2,227 in June, the most in any single sector in any month of the current presidency. March-July 2026 averaged 9,278/month against 7,249/month for the eight Trump-run months of FY2025, 28% higher.

Tellingly, DHS dropped the record language. Earlier releases were explicit ('the lowest start to a fiscal year ever recorded by CBP'; a February 18, 2026 release titled 'One year of the most secure border in history'). But the August 13, 2026 release claims only 'levels not seen in over three decades' and makes no record claim for July. Same-day wire coverage ran under 'July border crossings still historically low, but highest since January.' FY2026 will be the lowest fiscal year since 1967, not an all-time record — Border Patrol logged 28,966 apprehensions in FY1960.

Attribution is oversimplified. MPI notes the administration 'can rightfully claim that it has secured the border at this time, building on declines that began in early 2024,' after the December 2023 record prompted a negotiated increase in Mexican enforcement. Biden's June 4, 2024 asylum proclamation cut between-ports encounters by 55%.

The 'zero releases' companion figure is the weakest element: a self-reported DHS metric defined narrowly as Border Patrol parole releases. Snopes (February 26, 2026) could not independently verify it. Oklahoma Watch/Gigafact (July 19, 2026) rated the related claim false, citing TRAC data showing 6,524 people facing entry-without-inspection charges were released between May 2025 and May 2026.

Counter-indicators are mixed. Supporting: known gotaways reportedly ~97% below the 2023 peak; the Dallas Fed found net unauthorized immigration turned negative in February 2025. Cutting against: northern-border encounters rose to 6,594 in July 2026, the highest of FY2026; southwest fentanyl seizures were down 9% year-over-year through June; visa overstays (historically ~40% of new unauthorized residents) are untouched by these metrics; and FactCheck.org and Snopes both note migrants may now be evading detection rather than being apprehended, so counts may undercount attempts.

Mostly true rather than half true because the central factual assertion — a border secure by the standard measure, at 55-to-60-year lows, independently confirmed by Pew, MPI and WOLA — holds, and the exaggeration is one of degree and momentum rather than direction. | | "The administration is keeping the price of gasoline, oil, and all forms of energy 'VERY LOW.'" | False | Every category the claim names was at or near record highs on the date it was made.

Gasoline was at a record for the date. AAA put the national average at $4.0776/gallon on August 14, 2026, versus $3.8587 a month earlier and $3.1601 a year earlier. EIA's weekly series (August 10) shows $4.006, up $0.888 year-over-year. Both AAA and GasBuddy call this the highest August on record; GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan notes the national average has never been above $4 after August 12 in any previous year, with 103 days at or above $4 in 2026 (46% of the year), the most since 2022. Diesel was $5.257/gallon, up $1.503 year-over-year. LendingTree's August 3 analysis found prices up double digits in every single state year-over-year, California at $5.66, cheapest state Texas at $3.60.

Every comparison point sits far below. EIA monthly averages: August 2025 $3.133; August 2024 $3.389; January 2025 (inauguration) $3.076. Today's price is up roughly 28%, 19%, and 30% respectively. Inflation-adjusted, the long-run real average since 1918 is about $3.61/gallon in February 2026 dollars, so the current price sits above the century-long real average.

The cause is administration policy running the wrong way. A version of this claim was defensible in December 2025 through February 2026 — EIA has January 2026 at $2.809, the lowest since 2021. Then came the late-February 2026 U.S.-Israel war on Iran and Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of world oil moves. EIA's August Short-Term Energy Outlook estimates Hormuz flows collapsed from 21.6 million b/d (Q4 2025) to 4.9 million b/d (Q2 2026). Gasoline then ran March $3.638, April $4.103, May $4.479 (peak), June $4.050, July $3.932, August ~$4.01. Moody's Mark Zandi puts the war's four-month cost to families at $100 billion, about $685 per tax return.

Crude is elevated. WTI opened at $81.12 and Brent at $86.91 on August 14, up roughly 33% year-over-year, against roughly $70 pre-war.

Electricity is at record highs, and the promise has a deadline that already passed. EIA's August STEO Table 7c: residential prices 16.48 cents/kWh in 2024, 17.30 in 2025, 18.27 forecast for 2026 (+5.6%). Year-to-date actuals run hotter: January-May 2026 averaged 18.11 cents versus 16.78 in 2025, up 7.9%. April 2026 hit 18.83 cents, more than 18% above January 2025. Trump pledged repeatedly in 2024 to cut electricity prices in half 'within 12 months' (Indiana, PA, September 23, 2024), later hedged to 'a maximum 18 months.' That deadline arrived July 20-21, 2026 with rates up 18% instead. Cato's Travis Fisher: 'It was an impossible promise to deliver on because there really isn't that much federal government involvement in retail rates.'

Household-level evidence is stark. Heatmap reported the average July 2026 electricity bill at an all-time-high $217. NEADA raised its summer 2026 cooling forecast twice, to roughly $792, up 10.5% year-over-year and nearly 40% above 2020, with increases in every region. Its final winter 2025-26 update put average home heating at $1,011, up 11.0%, 'more than four times the rate of inflation,' with electric heat up 14.0%. EIA's first-ever federal disconnections dataset (published April 2026, covering 2024) recorded 13.4 million residential electricity disconnections and 94.9 million final notices. Household utility debt stands at roughly $25 billion, the highest since 2021 and up 30% since end-2023, with one in six households behind on energy bills. Structural drivers are largely non-federal: PJM capacity prices went from $28.92/MW-day (2024/25) to $329.17 (2026/27) to $325.00 at the cap (2028/29), with PJM's Independent Market Monitor attributing $9.3 billion, or 63%, of the 2025/26 increase to data centers. A Data Center Coalition-funded E3 study puts that figure closer to 50%; the disagreement is over magnitude, not direction.

Natural gas is the sole supporting category, and only at wholesale. Henry Hub spot was $2.74-2.79/MMBtu in mid-August, with inventories at 3,985 Bcf by October 2026, the highest pre-winter level since 2016. But the CPI piped-gas index is up 4.3% year-over-year and 12% since the term began, so households do not see it.

The official inflation data released two days before the post refutes the claim directly. July 2026 CPI: energy index up 14.7% year-over-year, more than four times the 3.4% all-items rate and nearly six times core at 2.5%. Gasoline +24.6%, fuel oil +39.1%, natural gas +4.3%, electricity +4.2%.

Fact-checkers have rejected these claims consistently. PolitiFact rated the April 2025 '$1.98 a gallon' claim False; Bessent's 'gasoline prices have collapsed' Mostly False; the February 2026 State of the Union gas claim False; a May 8, 2026 claim that prices had 'come down very substantially' False under the headline 'gas prices have reached near record highs'; and the August 10, 2026 statement that prices are 'all coming down now' Mostly False, citing gasoline +34%, fuel oil +24%, natural gas +12%, electricity +8% since January 2025. PolitiFact's MAGA-Meter lists both 'Reduce the cost of gasoline below $2 a gallon' and 'Cut energy costs by 50%' as Stalled. CNN's Daniel Dale escalated from 'falsely claims' to 'Trump keeps making up gas prices' to 'wildly deceptive' to describing a 'fantasy world.' FactCheck.org's July 2026 update put gasoline at $4.10, up 31.8% versus inauguration week.

The recurring '$1.99 gas' claim has never been verified at any state or national average. The closest instance was one station, Hill Country Velocity in Ingram, Texas, running a limited-time flood-relief promotion in July 2025; that same station charged $2.79 the day Trump made the claim. De Haan's load-bearing fact: the last time any state average fell below $2 was January 2021, during Covid demand collapse. At the February 2026 State of the Union, four stations out of roughly 150,000 were below $2 excluding promotions — 0.003% — and no state averaged below $2.37.

On causation the evidence nets against. Presidents have limited control over a globally priced commodity, and crude is roughly half of pump price. The administration has a legitimate supply point: U.S. crude output is forecast at a record 13.80 million b/d in 2026. But record domestic production has not offset the Hormuz disruption, and the largest single driver of the 2026 increase is the administration's own war. The White House concedes the effect, with spokesperson Kush Desai saying prices 'will rapidly drop as soon as the Iran situation is resolved'; De Haan counters that 'for pre-war prices to show up, it could take beyond a year.' Trump himself contradicted the framing on June 30 and August 3, 2026, publicly demanding retailers cut prices to $2.50 and telling Chevron's CEO to 'get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!' — not something one says about prices one is calling very low.

Bottom line: gasoline was at its highest level ever recorded for the date, diesel at a record August high, crude up a third year-over-year, electricity at a record nominal high with record bills and 13.4 million annual disconnections, and the CPI energy index up 14.7% against 3.4% overall inflation. Exactly one category, wholesale natural gas, is genuinely low, and it is not one of the two the claim names. |

Overall Veracity: 46%