Energy Secretary Chris Wright accused the Biden administration of deliberately undermining America's energy infrastructure, saying former President Joe Biden's team "literally wanted to drive our energy system into the ditch" through misguided subsidies, regulatory hostility toward fossil fuels, and a politically motivated drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Wright made the remarks during a Tuesday appearance with his wife, Liz, on "The Katie Miller Podcast," where he laid out a sweeping indictment of the previous administration's energy record. The interview, first reported by Fox News Digital, captured the secretary in blunt form, warning that the damage from Biden-era policies will keep energy prices elevated unless the current administration moves fast to reverse course.
Wright framed the stakes in stark terms:
"If you get energy wrong, you destroy your society."
That line set the tone for a wide-ranging conversation in which Wright took aim at solar subsidies, the depletion of the nation's emergency oil stockpile, and what he called a regulatory stranglehold on Alaska's vast natural resources.
One of Wright's sharpest criticisms targeted Biden's decision to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Wright said the former president drew down the reserve to lower gas prices ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, a move Wright cast as politically calculated rather than strategically sound.
The reserve exists to protect the country during genuine supply emergencies. Using it to manage pump prices before an election is exactly the kind of short-term political gamesmanship that leaves taxpayers holding the bill later. Wright argued the Trump administration is now cleaning up that mess.
Wright told the podcast that by the end of next year, the reserve will hold "meaningfully more oil" than when President Trump took office. That pledge amounts to a direct rebuke of Biden's drawdown, and a signal that the current administration views restoring the reserve as a national security priority, not a political afterthought.
Biden's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on Wright's remarks.
Wright did not limit his criticism to the reserve. He described what he called "trillions of dollars" wasted on subsidies to unreliable energy sources like solar power, money he said produced little meaningful return for American consumers or energy security.
To illustrate the point, Wright offered a striking comparison. He said that if every solar panel on the planet vanished overnight, the world would lose just 1.2 percent of its energy. By contrast, losing 10 percent of global oil production would trigger "a massive crisis." The gap between those two numbers, in Wright's telling, reveals how badly the Biden administration misjudged where to invest.
Wright also pointed to deteriorating energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, warning that repairs are needed and that delay will only push prices higher. The concerns Wright raised about Biden-era leadership were not limited to Republicans. National Review noted that as early as June 2022, nearly 50 Democratic officials and voters told the New York Times they doubted Biden should run again, describing him as "an anchor" on the party amid frustration over his inability to advance his agenda.
Wright put it plainly on the podcast:
"Just outrageous. We, fortunately, pivoted before too much deep damage. But we've wasted trillions of dollars. We need to repair the energy infrastructure in the Gulf. If the damage grows, it just means energy prices are going to be higher for longer after it."
Wright reserved some of his toughest language for what the Biden administration did to Alaska. In May, he claimed the state had endured "more sanctions, more restrictions on production of oil and gas" than everything the United States imposed on Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea combined.
That comparison is designed to shock, and it should. Alaska sits on enormous reserves of oil and natural gas. The state's economy depends on resource development. Yet Wright said the Biden administration "strangled" it with regulation, locking away resources that could have strengthened American energy independence and lowered costs for consumers across the country.
The broader pattern Wright described, subsidizing unreliable sources while punishing reliable ones, is not a random policy failure. It reflects a deliberate set of priorities that put ideological goals ahead of practical energy needs. Wright himself connected those priorities to Biden's electoral defeat, saying the energy record was "another reason I think President Trump won."
Biden's struggles extended well beyond energy. His own party's internal divisions over his 2024 candidacy reflected deep unease with the direction of his presidency. Democratic National Committee member Steve Simeonidis of Miami said at the time that claiming the country was "on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality."
Wright also took aim at what he called the broader environmental movement's business model, one built, he said, on exaggeration and fear rather than honest assessment of risk.
He told the podcast:
"It's so much easier to sell fear than to sell reassurance. You know, that's the asymmetry in politics and activism... But the environmental industry really has become sort of a fear-selling industry. And boy, you can raise billions of dollars to scare people about things like nuclear power or climate change, where there's like a kernel of something there, but they're just wildly exaggerated. And unfortunately, it's been effective."
That framing matters because it explains how policies that make Americans poorer and less secure can survive politically. If voters believe the alternative is catastrophe, they'll tolerate almost anything. Wright's argument is that the catastrophe narrative has been oversold, and that the real damage comes from the policies enacted in its name.
The questions surrounding Biden's decision-making during his final years in office have only multiplied since he left. Reports about his cognitive struggles becoming a political flashpoint added another layer to the debate over whether his administration's choices reflected sound judgment or something far less reassuring.
Wright, who began serving as President Trump's energy secretary last year, has made reversing Biden-era energy policy a central part of his mission. His willingness to speak in plain terms about what went wrong, and to put specific numbers behind his claims, stands in contrast to the vague reassurances that defined the previous administration's energy messaging.
Even the behind-the-scenes maneuvering around Biden's exit from the 2024 race has raised questions about the honesty of his team's public posture. Jill Biden's forthcoming memoir promises to address the circumstances of that withdrawal, suggesting the full story has yet to be told.
Meanwhile, an active DOJ investigation into Biden's autopen use has kept questions about his conduct and decision-making in the public eye well after he left office.
Wright's podcast appearance amounted to a comprehensive bill of particulars against Biden's energy legacy: a depleted strategic reserve drained for political convenience, billions in subsidies directed toward sources that supply a fraction of global energy, a regulatory regime that treated Alaska worse than hostile foreign nations, and an environmental movement that profits from fear at the public's expense.
Whether the Trump administration can repair the damage fast enough remains an open question. Wright expressed confidence that the reserve will be replenished by the end of next year and that the regulatory stranglehold on domestic production is being loosened. But he also warned that if the infrastructure damage grows, higher energy prices will follow, a cost borne not by the policymakers who created the problem, but by the families and businesses that depend on affordable, reliable power.
When a government spends trillions chasing energy sources that account for barely one percent of global supply while draining the nation's emergency reserves for a midterm election bump, the word for that isn't policy. It's recklessness, and the bill always comes due.
