Lee Zeldin Just Appeared on Fox News and Exposed the Biden Lie That Cost Every American at the Pump
Biden killed the Keystone XL Pipeline on his first day in office.
Now EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is on Fox News explaining what four years of that mindset actually cost you.
And what he said about the damage – and what Trump has already done to reverse it – is something every American needs to hear.
Biden Spent Four Years Methodically Dismantling American Energy
Zeldin didn't mince words on Jesse Watters Primetime Monday night.
Pipelines killed. Power plants targeted for closure. Baseload power – the reliable, always-on electricity that keeps your lights on in January – regulated out of existence one rule at a time.
"If we were building pipelines rather than killing them, instead of putting plants out of existence," Zeldin said, "we would have more reliable, durable baseload power in this country."
Biden signed the Keystone XL death warrant on January 20, 2021 – his first act as president.
Senators Steve Daines and Jim Risch forced the administration to come clean about the cost, winning a legal fight requiring a full accounting from the Department of Energy.
The DOE's own numbers: between 16,000 and 59,000 American jobs eliminated, and a positive economic impact of between $3.16 billion and $9.6 billion thrown away.
That was just the opening move.
Biden followed it with canceled lease sales across Alaska, a freeze on new federal drilling permits, and a Clean Power Plan finalized in April 2024 that required coal plants and new natural gas baseload plants to install carbon capture technology by 2032 – technology that didn't commercially exist.
The choice was simple: install the impossible or shut down.
https://x.com/epaleezeldin/status/2054189480404206009“>https://x.com/epaleezeldin/status/2054189480404206009
Zeldin Called It What It Was – a War on American Energy
Less than two months into Trump's second term, Zeldin stood at the EPA and announced 31 major regulatory rollbacks on a single day – what he called "the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history."
The greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants: repealed.
The 2024 MATS amendments – the rules engineered to force coal plants to close: finalized for repeal in February 2026, saving American families an estimated $670 million.
Zeldin had a name for what Biden built: regulations designed "to regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence."
"The intent of the Biden administration," he said, "was to go after baseload power throughout the entire country, to reduce access to energy, to get rid of jobs, decimating communities, making it harder for Americans to afford to survive."
That's not an attack line. That's the documented record.
The Part the Media Will Never Tell You
On Jesse Watters Primetime, Zeldin went further than pipelines and power plants.
He rattled off the full downstream list: critical minerals, rare earth, extraction through processing, batteries, chips, magnets, semiconductors.
Every one of those supply chains is currently dominated by China.
Biden's energy blockade didn't reduce global fossil fuel consumption by a single barrel – it just shifted the contracts to Russia, Venezuela, and the Middle East, where extraction standards are a fraction of America's.
Biden didn't save the planet. He handed the business to our enemies.
Zeldin made that point directly: "We tap into these resources so much better than so many other countries do elsewhere around the world."
Trump has been rebuilding the supply chains Democrats spent four years surrendering – clearing the regulatory path at the EPA while negotiating critical mineral access across Africa and the Pacific.
The on-screen graphic Monday said it plainly: "Trump Unleashing Energy Dominance."
That's not a campaign slogan. That's the policy record – and it's already working.
Sources:
- Lee Zeldin, Jesse Watters Primetime, Fox News, May 12, 2026.
- "EPA Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History," U.S. EPA, March 12, 2025.
- "EPA Continues to Reverse Democrats' War on Beautiful Clean Coal, Finalizes Repeal of Costly Restrictions on Baseload Power Generation," U.S. EPA, February 20, 2026.
- Senators Steve Daines and Jim Risch, "Biden Administration Report Admits Cancelling Keystone XL Pipeline Killed Thousands of Jobs, Cost Billions," Senate.gov, January 5, 2023.
- "EPA Proposes Repeal of Biden-Harris EPA Regulations for Power Plants," U.S. EPA, June 11, 2025.
