Trump blames Ukraine for diesel prices, then the war, as his own paper says it's his Iran war

…(cont) September 14th.

September 14th.

That's every date I've got written down for this one, and it took me longer than it should have to notice that three of them are the same day.

I'm at the corner store this afternoon, pump three, waiting on the fella ahead of me to remember his PIN, and I'm looking at the number on the sign the way you look at it these days — not like a price, like a mood. Diesel. It just sits there and tells you what it's going to cost you to get anywhere.

So I wrote some things down.

First thing — September 14th, CBS is my source on this one — the President is asking Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries. Says the strikes are what's pushing diesel up. I read that twice, just to get the chain right. Ukraine hits refineries in Russia; diesel goes up here. That's the shape of it, from him, that day, in that outlet.

Second thing. Same date. Same network, different reporter. Now the diesel price is, in his words near enough, "mostly due to" the Russia-Ukraine war — and not Iran. I went back through the notebook looking for where Iran came up first, in case I'd missed a page. I didn't find one. Just the ruling-out, sitting there by itself, first mention and last mention in the same breath.

Third thing. Same date, different paper — the Times, his own paper of record, on this one. Their analysts, people whose job is apparently to sit with the numbers longer than a pump receipt lets the rest of us: two wars are behind the diesel spike, and the Iran war looks like the bigger piece of it. Not the refinery strikes he opened the day with.

So here's what's in the notebook, side by side, all filed under one date. Refineries — one explanation. The war generally, and specifically not Iran — a second explanation, same date. And his own paper of record, same date, naming Iran the bigger driver anyway.

I've got three explanations for one number, all under one calendar date. I don't have a word for that. I've just got the notebook.

My car's needed a new fan belt since July. It complains the same way every time I turn the key — same pitch, same story, doesn't shop around for a different one depending on the weather. I can't say that about the diesel number. That number's given me three stories since I got up this morning, and only one of them can be the whole of it, and they don't even agree on who to send the bill to.

The guy at pump three isn't filling up on refinery diplomacy. He's filling up on whatever the sign says today, and the sign doesn't come with a byline attached, and it doesn't care which paper he trusts on a given Tuesday.

Two weeks before any of this — August 30th — there was a strike on a warehouse west of Kyiv. The count came in at 38. That's a different kind of number than the one on the pump sign. It sits in the same stack of paper I've got here, and nobody's given me three different explanations for it. It just is what it is, once, and stays that way.

Oh — one more thing, before you go. The story where he clears Iran and points at the war instead, and the story where his own newsroom says Iran's the bigger piece of this — those two ran the same date, about the same tank of diesel, in outlets that share a name over the door. Same date. Different defendant. I don't have the page that squares that for me.

Pump three's open, if you want to go look at the sign yourself. Same diesel.