Secretary Wright Joins The Charlie Kirk Show – October 7, 2026

Welcome, everybody. It is October 7th. We remember the three-year anniversary of that terrible day in Israel today. So welcome to you all across this fruited plain. Honored to be with you here at the YRefi Studios in Phoenix, Arizona. We're going to get started off with a bang and a complete treat for all of you by welcoming Secretary Chris Wright. She's doing an amazing job. Let's just sum it up like that. Despite all the headwinds, all the stuff that he has to deal with. Secretary, welcome back to the show. You are the perfect man for this hour to talk about gas prices. Obviously, we're headed into the midterms, and that's what a lot of people are talking about. There's a new report yesterday that President Trump's even thinking about reconvening Congress to put a pause temporarily on the federal gas tax. But let's just get into it. Gas prices are a little high. What's causing it, and what are we going to do about it? Yeah, President Trump has been focused on energy prices, as you know, Andrew, since the start of this administration. And, you know, we've grown American oil and gas production. We've allowed refiners just to make some common sense reforms to specifications to increase throughput from American refineries. Fortunately, our refineries are producing the most ever gasoline, the most ever jet fuel and the most ever diesel fuel they ever have. You know, on the flip side, uh ukraine has become wildly successful at attacking the russian refinery complex russia used to export almost as much refined products as they export crude oil and now their refinery complex has been devastated they don't even refine enough for their own domestic consumption so russia is importing diesel and gasoline instead of supplying the world with that china has decided uh not to export refined products either and of course with the conflict in the middle east there's reduced exports out of that region but we're making progress with companies there to get refineries back up at full speed use the u.s navy to escort not just crude oil but refined products diesel gasoline and jet out of the gulf so we got progress going on but there's a lot of winds blowing in our face from events around the world but president trump has been absolutely relentless in saying god yeah sure there's problems but we got to find answers well and you saw the announcement a few days ago about these release from european stores who've been hoarding diesel they are going to start releasing diesel stocks into the marketplace this will help put some downward pressure on diesel so i i want to make sure we don't miss you know we don't bury the lead here let's go ahead and put 146 back up this is from the Wall Street Journal yesterday Middle East crude oil exports back at pre-war levels analysts say so the Gulf has rewired its oil export infrastructure to no longer depend on a single route this is a huge huge development when it comes to Middle East oil exports you see that final bar right there on the right it's back to pre-war levels how did we accomplish this Mr Secretary and when are we going to start seeing that reflected at the pump yeah so this is the American military this is the unbelievable performance and it's all branches of our military that are participating in this so Iran is trying is is firing at all times trying to interrupt the flow of traffic but our military as you saw in that plot has oil flows uh roughly back to where they were now that's relatively recently so those ships don't hit shore you know until another three or four weeks and then they've got to go through refineries our bigger problem today is refineries which makes me think of my greatest pro-energy politician Gavin Newsom who amazingly forced the closure of two large refineries in the last 12 months the world is short even more refining capacity than it's short oil and in California they're still choking industry and i must tell you it's getting tough to hear the Democrats relentlessly talk about how they're for low gasoline prices and low diesel prices were for 17 years their agenda has been stop drilling on federal land stop issuing permits block the Keystone XL pipeline, force refineries to close. In my home state of Colorado, they're desperately trying to close the one refinery in the Denver area that keeps prices low there. They fight every day to reduce energy production and drive prices up. And then they get in front of a camera at election time and say they're for low energy prices. Give me a break. I mean, it's a total hypocritical state. I feel like every Democrat running for office, they should be asked that. They should be saying, do you support building new refineries in the United States? I know we're trying to develop that one in Brownsville. Are there any efforts ongoing from the administration to just expand our refining capacity such that we know we're an oil exporter overall, where we would just never have to worry about a shortage of refined products anywhere else in the world? Absolutely. We are working to expand the capacity of our existing refiners, restart a couple of the recently closed refiners and you mentioned this new project in brownsville where we're working hard to get a new refinery built which would be the first one started in decades but with an energy system as you guys both know well you just want robustness you need some redundancy you need some extra capacity and again from the arrival of president obama the democrat policy has just been to somehow strangle the oil and gas industry and the coal industry and somehow believe that would lead to a magical replacements for these energy sources they just don't exist but that strangulation years of strangulation just meant our buffer for crisis was reduced so much that now we have multiple conflicts in the world today and we're paying the price for that but the republicans again and president trump are leaning in we're growing our energy production we're helping refineries expand like that was at a nuclear power plant in ohio yesterday we're helping that uprate, add 200 megawatts of additional power. We visited a steel plant that makes custom steel just for transformers, key for our electrical grid. That steel plant was almost closed and killed under Democratic rule as well. So look, the Republican agenda has never been more important. Build big things in America, grow supply. That's how you lower prices. Democrats never believe in supply and demand they somehow think they're going to choke supply and that that's going to help prices i mean it's just it's just beyond mr secretary so to this point in california and that is a little told story I've seen that story about Gavin Newsom closing those two refineries in the last 12 months and that they've had others closed I think they've lost they've lost a dozen this is why the West Coast and it affects states like Nevada Arizona California obviously but they have been choking supply with the refineries is there is there a way that the federal government could sort of declare an energy emergency and force those to reopen is there any option there or does he control that we have had a constant dialogue about that uh Andrew you're right on we've we've talked to operators could we could we acquire those idled refineries and restart them of course they still are subject to these crazy California regulations um they closed for a reason because the regulations made it impossible to refine oil and gas at a profit. You know, he wants them to lose money refining in California and store huge volumes. So when prices go high, they'll artificially drive prices lower. So in any case, that is a big challenge. Doing any business in California is tricky. We've not given up, but it is tricky. And I also point the Democrats in average in Democrat controlled states gasoline's 50 cents a gallon more expensive it is than Republican controlled states in California it's almost two dollars more expensive than it is Republican controlled states so that you know the Democrat it's not just words their actual policies drive up energy prices that's been their objective that's been the main focus of their energy climate policy for 17 years and they're just reinventing themselves in this midterm election season, well exactly and it's all political theater, it's a it's complete hypocrisy they've been forcing this and they're blaming Iran for everything, well guess what guys, now we've got Iran oil flows and energy flows through through that region back to pre-war levels, it's going to take a little time to get those ships in into port, get them, get those that the the supplies refined, we hear you on that Mr. Secretary but let's another thing that i think is getting missed in the dialogue, and it's so important, is the impact that the Russo-Ukraine war is now having on refinery capacity. It's the fact that our side is winning. If you ask anybody on the street, they'll say, I'll ask them, why is diesel high? And they'll just say, Iran, Iran, Iran. And that's not true anymore. I mean, it's part of the driver. There's multiple drivers. But now, increasingly, I just want you to explain this to our audience. How is that actually impacting diesel prices because now we're looking at Iowa, we're looking at Kansas Ohio, these races, we might lose certain races because of diesel, like let's just brass tacks it but people need to understand some of these things are outside of our control, Joe Biden funded hundreds of billions of dollars behind this this war, you know, didn't didn't take the peace deals the off ramps and now guess what, Ukraine is being extremely effective at hitting some of those refineries deeper into Russia, please explain that sir, yes so refinery Russia obviously one of the huge oil producers of the world, there's three giant producers the United States has the biggest and then Saudi Arabia and Russia as second and third but Russia has a huge refining complex so inside Russia they take half of their oil they would export and they refine it mostly into gas mostly into diesel and jet fuel some into gasoline as well and then they export those products to the world Russia was after the U.S. you know the second largest exporter of diesel fuel on planet Earth and now the Ukrainian attacks have been so successful Russia not only is not is not exporting any diesel they've actually become a small importer of diesel fuel from other countries and a meaningful importer of gasoline think about that Russia is gasoline from other countries diesel from other countries so they don't export any anymore that took so much diesel off the marketplace it's probably the single biggest driver of the tight refining capacity and why diesel prices in particular are so high um and it has been tough um president Trump you saw took action a couple days ago to allow the use of off-road diesel that we use people and not climate politics well mr secretary i think you've done a great job explaining the the headwinds and also the solutions that are coming online two things i'll leave you with i would love love love to see the federal government commandeer those refineries in California whatever you got to do uh just make it happen i i bless you we will have your back whatever hard decisions need to be made to push that through secondly uh you and mr uh you and the president mr secretary uh this this federal gas tax pause i mean that would be another huge political win i think people would would love that force the democrats to vote no reconvene congress it's more powerful to get those congressmen back in Washington to do something powerful like that than any campaign stop or town hall they can do they want to see people doing things to get them to say no so i know you you could have uh you could help grease the skids there sir but we have your back and i cannot imagine i cannot imagine mr secretary having a democrat in office right now with these headwinds having somebody not like yourself that was anti-energy anti-fossil fuels uh in your post right now because we would be in probably brag about it they would talk about oh gasoline use is down we're leading america's energy transition final word to you sir anything else you want to leave our audience with uh i know i know your time is tight yeah i had an overseas leader i'll leave unidentified uh who said if uh kamala harris or joe biden was president oil would be 300 dollars a barrel today so the energy policies of the trump administration the leadership of the trump administration matters he's going to deliver for the american people both in iran without nuclear weapons that is a massive threat to the planet and lower energy prices we will see dramatic improvement of energy prices gradual improvement in the coming weeks dramatic improvement in the next you know six to 24 months we'll be back original first year of trump presidency energy prices oh perfect supply matters america matters uh thank you for what you guys do it's a great show well mr secretary one last question i'm so sorry i know you you're tight on time but the venezuela supply is that is that coming along as planned venezuelan imports uh exports of oil are up more than 50%. We believe total Venezuelan country oil production will more than double in the first 24 months after our intervention. That's helpful, too, for American refiners. A lot of that crude that our refineries were built to refine is flowing into the United States. And just more crude flowing in general, of course, is just downward pressure on oil prices. So, yeah, things are going well in Venezuela. Thanks for asking, Ian. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for your time. I know you had a busy day. God bless you. We have your back and we know you're on the case. So not a better man in the country for it than you, sir. God bless you guys. Thank you so much. All right. Take care.