Steve Hilton served as director of strategy for the British Prime Minister David Cameron and hosts the podcast California Rebel Base. 

During the 2020 presidential election campaign, Joe Biden left no-one in any 

'Two years ago, Saudi operatives, reportedly acting at the direction of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, murdered and dismembered Saudi dissident, journalist, and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi… Under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.'

He couldn't have been clearer, could he?

Well, what a difference a couple of years and a totally disastrous, intellectually incoherent, self-sabotaging energy agenda makes.

The promised reassessment of 'our relationship with the Kingdom' has produced an unexpected - and for Biden's activist base - extremely unwelcome outcome.

After candidate Biden said in a 2019 Democratic Party debate that he would insist the Saudis 'pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are', President Biden is now preparing to fly, empty oil barrel in hand, to meet the 'pariah' face to face in July.

It looks as if, far from 'making them pay', it will be Biden paying whatever price is necessary to get the Saudis to save his political prospects by boosting production of the fossil fuel he recently promised to eliminate.

We've gone from the Saudi secret police cleaning up Jamaal Khashoggi's body parts to the Saudi Crown Prince cleaning up the mess of Joe Biden's energy policy.

Why?

Because, White House officials are

Oh. They're depressed, are they?

Biden is frustrated.

What about the rest of us?

It's not just the direct impact of the average price of a gallon of gas rising over $5 for the first time in history (something which would be considered a bargain, by the way, in my home state of California which has been an early adopter of the Democrats' extremist 'climate' zealotry now wreaking havoc nationwide).

It's that everything else is hit by rising fuel prices too, since energy is such a significant component of industry's costs.

The inflation that is making food, clothing and household goods so painfully expensive is in part caused by more expensive energy.

Of course, the Biden administration wants you to think this is all because of Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.

But when it comes to energy, the war began long before Russia's invasion on February 24th.

During another 2019 campaign stop, Biden assured a climate activist in the New Hampshire crowd, 'I want you to look in my eyes. I guarantee you, I guarantee you - we are going to end fossil fuel and I am not going to cooperate with them, OK?'

The Biden administration has been waging war on American energy from day one: starting with the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline and then extending into every conceivable aspect of government regulation, from environmental reviews to the rules on biofuels.

Now, just like his pledge to hold Saudi Arabia responsible for the murder of Khashoggi, Biden's pledge to destroy the American fossil fuel industry, has run headlong into reality.

In its latest, somewhat desperate, bid to do something - anything! - about the impact of high gas prices, the White House wrote to the bosses of America's top oil and gas companies urging them to boost production.

Biden even asked them for 'concrete ideas' to address 'immediate' problems.

So much for refusing to 'cooperate with them.'

Too bad it's too little too late.

There is only so much American producers can do - in a short time frame - to significantly impact the price of oil that is traded on a world market.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the cartel's de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, control about 35 percent of global oil production.

Hence: Operation Saudi Savior.

If we can just get those 'pariahs' in the Middle East to pump more oil, maybe the world price will go down and U.S. consumers will feel some relief before deciding to clean Biden's clock in the midterms.

In another nauseating moment, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was pressed on Wednesday to respond to Khashoggi's fiancée, who appealed to Biden to at least ask the Crown Prince, www.solitaryisle.site 'Where is Jamal's body? Doesn't he deserve a proper burial? And what happened to his killers?'

'I can assure you, I can assure you, that when it comes to human rights this is something that is a priority for this president,' said Jean-Pierre.

Where have I heard something like that before?

Oh yes: 'I guarantee you, I guarantee you -- we are going to end fossil fuel.'

How does all this fit with Biden's 2020 pledge that under his leadership America wouldn't 'check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil'?

Well of course it doesn't, and the vast gulf between the high-minded words of two years ago and today's grubby reality illustrates what in many ways is the defining defect of this calamitous Biden regime.

Biden himself has always been a weak, unprincipled machine politician, pushed around by whoever holds the power in his party.

Right now, that means the Democrats' far left activist base, and on a succession of issues - from climate and energy, to policing, to foreign policy, the Biden administration has lurched to the left only to discover that the real-life consequences of 'progressive' policies are catastrophically harmful, especially to the working Americans of all races that Democrats have long taken for granted.