There’s spin, and then there’s … this. With average gas prices now projected to go as high a $6.20 a gallon by the end of the summer, Joe Biden now wants everyone to grasp what a great adventure this will be for all of us. At yesterday’s joint presser with Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida, a reporter asked Biden whether Americans should gird their loins for a recession this year.

Biden answered “no,” scored American GDP growth on a curve, tossed in a “Putin’s tax” reference for good measure, and then dismissed skyrocketing gas prices as nothing more than a great opportunity for Biden’s green-energy dreams:

Joe Biden: "When it comes to the gas prices, we're going through an INCREDIBLE transition" pic.twitter.com/8TGnc7vFa8

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 23, 2022

Here’s the reply in more context:

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, you’re talking about the significant progress we’ve made in making sure we don’t have supply chain backups — about the 8,000 jobs that Hyundai is going to be bringing to Georgia; 3,000 jobs to Texas from Samsung, $17 billion investment; Toyota, 1,700 jobs in North Carolina on battery technology; the situation where we — at — we’ve created over 8 million new jobs, where unemployment is down to 3.6 percent, and so on and so forth — as if they’re a problem. Imagine where we’d be with Putin’s tax and the war in Ukraine had we not made that enormous progress.

Our GDP is going to grow faster than China’s for the first time in 40 years. Now, does that mean we don’t have problems? We do. We have problems that the rest of the world has, but less consequential than the rest of the world has because of our internal growth and strength.

Here’s the situation. And when it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.

You see what Europe is doing relative to the importation of Russian gas. You see what — anyway, I won’t go through it all, but —

And what I’ve been able to do to keep it from getting even worse — and it’s bad. The price of gas at the pump is something that I told you — you heard me say before — it would be a matter of great discussion at my kitchen table when I was a kid growing up. It’s affecting a lot of families.

But we have released over two hundred and, I think, fifty-seven thousand — million barrels of oil, I should say. Us and the rest of the world we convinced to get involved. It’s helped, but it’s not been enough.

If the US has released 250 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that would comprise about a third of its capacity. That means that we will have to replace that oil for strategic purposes, which will require massive purchases at a price that’s certain to be higher than what the price when that oil got released. What impact has that had on gas-pump prices? Er …

Biden’s policies forced higher gas prices from the beginning of his presidency, despite his continued buck-passing of the phenomenon as “Putin’s tax.” Furthermore, in this answer Biden strongly suggests that he always knew that his policies would create higher prices. In fact, the whole point of his policies is to force those pump prices to rise so high that it would discourage consumption, and also to allow Biden’s preferred alternatives to compete against fossil-fuel energy sources — even though they don’t produce scalable output.

By the end of summer, therefore, Biden should be tickled pink:

Though the current $4.59 a gallon is a record dollar amount, adjusted for inflation it’s still below the 2008 peak of $4.14. But experts don’t believe we’ve seen the end of rising prices at the pump.

“This supply/demand dynamic, combined with volatile crude prices, will likely continue to keep upward pressure on pump prices,” AAA said in a statement Thursday.

Matt Smith, a data analyst with Kpler, told USA Today that an average of $5 per gallon is “by no means beyond the realms of possibility.”

“Gasoline prices will remain high as long as oil prices remain in the triple digits,” Smith said. “It’s going to hit the pocketbook far harder.”

With expectations of “strong driving demand” throughout the summer driving season from Memorial Day to Labor Day, JPMorgan analysts predicted the price could pass $6 a gallon before fall. The price per gallon could jump another 37% by August to a $6.20 per gallon national average, Natasha Kaneva, JPMorgan’s head of commodities research, said in a memo Tuesday, Insider reported.

Just remember this admission when you’re pumping $6 a gallon gas that Biden not only did this, but that he intended to do it all along. I wonder if his fellow Democrats will embrace these prices in November and in 2024 as enthusiastically as Biden does here.