Vice President JD Vance went looking for a villain to explain $4 gas, and his critics decided he had found one much closer to home.
Vance delivered the line Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, at a Republican midterm rally in Belgrade, Mont., where he stumped for the party’s candidates for federal office ahead of the Nov. 3 elections.
Speaking to what he called the undecided voters in the room, Vance said he understood the complaint that gas costs too much and that more work remained on inflation, which he blamed on former President Joe Biden. Inflation is rising, though, and is higher now than it was in Biden’s final months in office, HuffPost noted. Then he turned to history, walking the crowd through price spikes in 1979, 2001, 2007 and 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“They skyrocket every time some tin-pot dictator decides to throw a tantrum. And we’ve got to remember that,” Vance told the crowd.
The Democratic answer to energy costs, he said, is to whine and build a few windmills. More domestic energy production, he argued, would protect American families from global disruptions.
The Conflict Left Off the List
One crisis never made the roll call. President Donald Trump launched the war with Iran in February, choking off global oil flows and pushing pump prices higher, and Vance never directly mentioned that war during his Belgrade speech. Trump initially said the fighting would be over in a matter of weeks; it is now an eight-month conflict with no sign of ending. Diesel hit a record high in September.
The numbers behind the grievance are stark. The AAA national average for regular gasoline has stayed above $4 a gallon through October 2026, the first October on record above that line. Regular gas averaged $4.12 a gallon on Oct. 19, up 40.6 percent from $2.93 a year earlier. Prices have swung wildly this year, from $2.67 in January to $4.35 in May, and the 2026 average so far is $3.71 a gallon, compared with $2.98 in 2025.
Critics Hand the Label to Trump
Within hours, the “tin-pot dictator” line was doing work its author never intended. Social media users seized on the gap in Vance’s timeline and pointed it straight at the president. “Is the tinpot dictator Donald Trump?” one user asked.
Others warned that insulting the man who signs your checks is a strange way to open a presidential campaign still two years off, or called it a reckless thing to say about Trump days before the midterms. Several revived Vance’s own criticisms of Trump from before he joined the ticket. A few noted the mismatch between Vance blaming windmills and the president’s boasts about oil company profits.
The Two Races Vance Came For
The rally itself ran two hours, with Vance taking the stage for the final 30 minutes before about 1,500 people at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport. The event filled a private hangar decorated with two F-5 fighter jets belonging to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, part of his private “Ghost Squadron” aerobatic fleet — planes that some observers wrongly claimed online were government property. The north-facing hangar doors stood open. It was 35 degrees when the rally began.
Vance spent much of his time selling the administration’s record: tax cuts for working people, no taxes on tips, overtime or Social Security, and cheaper prescription drugs.
He came for two candidates who need the lift. Aaron Flint, the Republican running in Montana’s Western U.S. House District, is in a statistical tie with Democrat Sam Forstag. Kurt Alme, the Republican seeking the seat of retiring Sen. Steve Daines, leads a four-way race but has yet to crack 50 percent in polling. Republicans are fighting to hold Congress on Nov. 3, and with the national average still above $4 a gallon, the vice president’s explanation for how it got there is now the part voters are repeating.