Strangely, we were blessed with two straightforward and sensible takes from prominent Republican leaders on Monday. First, President Donald Trump made a full-throated defense of data centers. Next, Sen.
Page F5From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 September 2026
Trump and Rick Scott offer up economic sense; gas prices creep back up in August.
As it ran on the front
The op-ed is titled, plainly, 'economic sense,' and it runs under two bylines. Running that against the same month's fuel data produces a second filing, also plain: the monthly average gas price crept back up in August compared to July. Neither document disputes the other. They are simply both true, filed the same season, and worth setting side by side.
Reconcile the framing first. 'Offer up economic sense' is the header on one column. 'Crept back up' is the verb on the other, and 'crept' is doing real work there — not spiked, not surged, crept, the kind of increase that shows up a little at a time, on receipts, easy to miss any single week and hard to miss by the fourth fill-up.…
…(cont) There is no dollar figure attached to 'economic sense' in the receipts. There is a dollar figure attached to the August average, and it is higher than July's. That is the entire reconciliation: one column has no number, the other has a number, and the number went the wrong direction the same month the no-number column ran.
None of this requires assigning blame for global oil markets, tanker traffic, or refinery timing, all of which sit elsewhere in this week's filings and none of which appear in the op-ed under discussion. It requires only noting that 'economic sense,' as a header, was published into a month where the thing households actually measure sense by — the number at the pump — moved against them. The gap between the claim and the reading is not large in percentage terms. It is large enough to notice at the register, hon, which is the only place most households actually audit economic sense.
The op-ed does not mention the August average. The August average does not mention the op-ed. Reconciled side by side, the ledger shows a column making a claim and a column making a payment, filed the same month, under different names.
“They put out the op-ed about having all the economic sense in the room, and the same month the number that actually shows up on your dashboard ticks the wrong way. Sense doesn't fill the tank, receipts do, and the receipt says August cost more than July. Read the column, then read the pump.”
“The monthly gas average is a noisy indicator, it moves around, that's not a referendum on anyone's economic sense. And the op-ed lays out a clear, coherent framework for growth — look, I'm not saying the two are connected, I'm saying they're not connected, which is why I brought them up in the same paragraph, that's — let me restart that thought.”
The receipts
The average price of gasoline in the United States ticked higher in August compared with July, as the war in Iran crossed the six-month mark and renewed fighting threatens to keep pressure on global energy markets. The average price for all grades of gasoline rose to $4.192 per gallon in August, up from $4.064 in […]
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.