President Donald Trump used his address to a joint session of Congress to brag about his supposed accomplishments, attack his critics and spread misinformation about everything from Social Security to immigration.
As is typical of a major speech like this, he sprinkled in a fair number of applause lines for his faithful followers in the now-unrecognizable Republican Party. But one stood out to me in particular:
“As you’ve heard me say many times, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on Earth, and by far. And now, I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called drill, baby, drill.”
You’ve probably heard Trump says this before. He’s tweeted it dozens of times, used it throughout his three presidential campaigns and even repeated it in his inaugural address in January. Yes, “drill, baby, drill” is quite a crowd-pleaser. I should know. I coined it in a speech to the Republican National Convention on a September night in 2008 to raucous applause.
And I’ll be the first to say that the president is using it wrong.
I know this may be hard for some of us to hear, but that convention was more than 16 years ago. The world was quite a different place.
America’s energy landscape was different too. Crude oil production was at its lowest point in 65 years. Just two months before I said those words, the United States saw what remains the highest average price for gas in our history, when adjusted for inflation. There was only one electric vehicle model in circulation, and only 430 charging stations in the entire country — a far cry from the roughly 61,000 available now.
Not that this matters to Trump, a man who discards facts and context with the same careless abandon with which he fires public servants.
It doesn’t matter to Trump and his administration of sycophants that domestic oil production hit record highs under President Joe Biden, who also encouraged parallel policies to develop and promote alternative fuel sources.
Trump doesn’t care that, despite his claims of energy independence, the United States never stopped relying on foreign oil during his first term.
His dedication to “drill, baby, drill” wasn’t born out of some noble concern for everyday Americans. And Trump hopes you’ll forget that his dedication to “drill, baby, drill” wasn’t born out of some noble concern for everyday Americans. It’s out of loyalty to the big oil industry that bought him during the 2024 campaign. Let me be clear: I have no regrets about coining the term “drill, baby, drill.” It reflected a political stance that responded to the reality of the landscape we were facing at the time. What is regretful is Trump once again flinging words out to the nation without care for their context, masking those empty sentiments as policy. On Tuesday, he did with “drill, baby, drill” what he’s done with words like “patriot,” “freedom” and even “conservative”: wrung out its meaning and repurposed it to suit his own selfish agenda. Don’t fall for it. To borrow a phrase, “think, baby, think.” For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. ET on MSNBC.
Michael Steele
Michael Steele is a co-host of "The Weeknight," which airs Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC. He is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Evan Brechtel
Evan Brechtel is a segment producer on MSNBC's "The Weekend." 
