The national gas average crossed $4 a gallon on Monday — AAA's number, war with Iran, tankers stuck outside the Strait of Hormuz. So we did the obvious thing: we went to see how Fox, the network that spent years treating the price board at your local Shell as a presidential report card, was taking the news. * First, a trip to the archive. August 2022, gas prices were falling — falling — through the $4 mark, and Fox Business ran this actual headline: "Gas prices dip below $4 a gallon, here's why it still could be bad news for Biden." Prices going down. Still bad news for the president. That's not a report card, that's a teacher who's already decided your grade. * The logic inside was a small masterpiece: prices were only falling because inflation had made "a weaker consumer" who wasn't "planning big trips." So high gas was Biden's fault, and cheaper gas was also Biden's fault, because it meant people were too broke to drive. Heads he loses, tails he also loses, somehow. * Now it's July 2026, the war has gas back at $4 and climbing, and Fox Business's big recent pump story goes like this: "White House presses gas stations for consumer price relief." Read that again. The villain of the $4 gallon is now... your local gas station. A White House energy official gets the floor to explain that stations have "used the Iran war as a way to grow that margin," and the piece notes, sweetly, that Trump "personally watches the national price of gas very closely." * Same pump. Same $4 on the sign. Completely different grammar. In 2022, the price of gas was something a president causes. In 2026, the price of gas is something a president watches — closely! with concern! — like a neighbor peering over the fence at a fire he definitely didn't start. The war disrupting the Strait of Hormuz belongs to somebody, and it's not the guy who owns the Chevron on Route 9. * To be fair — and we checked — a Fox Business piece back in March did admit rising fuel costs were a "political challenge for President Donald Trump" ahead of the midterms. It's in there. In the body text. Paragraph-land. But headline-land is where actual humans live, and in headline-land the president only shows up at the pump when he's a Democrat. * Meanwhile CNN's Monday piece said it in plain daylight: $4 gas is "a headache for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party ahead of midterm elections in November." No margin detectives, no finger-pointing at the cashier. Just the price, the war, and the man whose war it is — in the same sentence. Turns out that's allowed.